The semester is quickly coming to a close and with that comes the end of my Intro to Marketing class. I've learned so much in these few months that I know I will be able to apply to my career as I move forward. This will be my last blog post for "Marketing Madness" so I wanted to summarize what I've learned thus far. But worry not -- you can find me on Twitter or read my personal blog.
1. Marketing is about people.
Between reading Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People and watching Seth Godin's "Modern Marketing Workshop" on Skillshare, I definitely learned that marketing is all about connecting with people. You try to imagine your ideal customer and appeal to them, you optimize your emails to get people to interact with you, you make real personal connections to win people to your side. Too often, we encounter marketing that annoys us as consumers because it hasn't taken our feelings into account. Don't make that mistake: be real and genuine with the people you're speaking to.
2. LinkedIn is a powerful tool.
Between our lessons on how to build your LinkedIn page and the amount of speakers we've had who mentioned LinkedIn, this class definitely convinced me of its importance. I've been urging my friends to make profiles and connecting with as many people as possible. I even connected with an Elon alum over LinkedIn! LinkedIn is a great way to make connections and find jobs. Many people are unaware of its most useful feature: you can look at a company that you want to work for and see if you have any second connections who work there. Ask your mutual connection to introduce you and voila: you're in the door.
3. Event Planning is more complicated than you realize.
When Professor Kelly announced that we were planning a fundraiser for HOPE, I never imagined the amount of work that would go into it. And we didn't even have to figure out the logistics, as Professor Kelly took care of that for us. As I said in my previous post, marketing an event takes an incredible amount of time and effort. Even if I never have to do that again (which seems unlikely), I definitely feel differently when I see marketing materials for an event on campus. I think about how much time and effort the organizers are putting into it and how important it is to them that the event does well.
4. You never know where your life's path will lead you.
We've had an amazing number and variety of guest speakers talk to our class this semester and they demonstrated that your career path may not end up looking anything like you envisioned it to. Many of the speakers talked about opportunities that arose that they never expected or had careers that were completely different from what they wanted to do when they graduated from college. In today's job market, what you think you want to do may not be what you end up doing. The important thing is to be flexible and open to new opportunities that come your way.
1. Marketing is about people.
Between reading Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People and watching Seth Godin's "Modern Marketing Workshop" on Skillshare, I definitely learned that marketing is all about connecting with people. You try to imagine your ideal customer and appeal to them, you optimize your emails to get people to interact with you, you make real personal connections to win people to your side. Too often, we encounter marketing that annoys us as consumers because it hasn't taken our feelings into account. Don't make that mistake: be real and genuine with the people you're speaking to.
2. LinkedIn is a powerful tool.
Between our lessons on how to build your LinkedIn page and the amount of speakers we've had who mentioned LinkedIn, this class definitely convinced me of its importance. I've been urging my friends to make profiles and connecting with as many people as possible. I even connected with an Elon alum over LinkedIn! LinkedIn is a great way to make connections and find jobs. Many people are unaware of its most useful feature: you can look at a company that you want to work for and see if you have any second connections who work there. Ask your mutual connection to introduce you and voila: you're in the door.
3. Event Planning is more complicated than you realize.
When Professor Kelly announced that we were planning a fundraiser for HOPE, I never imagined the amount of work that would go into it. And we didn't even have to figure out the logistics, as Professor Kelly took care of that for us. As I said in my previous post, marketing an event takes an incredible amount of time and effort. Even if I never have to do that again (which seems unlikely), I definitely feel differently when I see marketing materials for an event on campus. I think about how much time and effort the organizers are putting into it and how important it is to them that the event does well.
4. You never know where your life's path will lead you.
We've had an amazing number and variety of guest speakers talk to our class this semester and they demonstrated that your career path may not end up looking anything like you envisioned it to. Many of the speakers talked about opportunities that arose that they never expected or had careers that were completely different from what they wanted to do when they graduated from college. In today's job market, what you think you want to do may not be what you end up doing. The important thing is to be flexible and open to new opportunities that come your way.