There are many times in my life where I've had the distinct feeling of biting off more than I can chew. Entering a doctoral program in my 20s. Buying a 40 year-old house that was covered in the ugliest wallpaper I'd ever seen, learning to canoe when I was 4 months pregnant, you get the idea. The most recent occurrence of this feeling in my life happened as I was sitting in my office this summer and preparing the new course I'd volunteered to teach. Social Media Marketing. It's all the rage after all, and we have requests from companies, weekly and sometimes daily for interns or new positions for students who can develop a social media presence for these employers.
So, what's the first thing you do when you start preparing a new course? Why, pick a textbook for guidance, of course. The textbook will give you an idea of the really important concepts to focus on, as well as the proper and logical order in which to cover the topics at hand. Not to mention that textbook will come with lovely canned PowerPoint slides that I can adapt to my own needs and style and a test bank to make test writing easy (for me, not the students of course, let's not be ridiculous). All of this, and give the students a nice bit of information about the subject bound neatly between two covers.
Well, in this instance, for this subject, which is brand spanking new, there doesn't happen to be a text book. Not one. No where. Well, then, the answer is simple enough. Write a text book. This is it, my ticket to fame, glory, and millions in royalties from all the poor students who will have to pay to buy my textbook at outrageously un-worth it prices...but wait. It occurs to me, daily, as I read and assimilate information about social media, that by the time I cover this material in one, two, or three months time, it will stand a grand chance of being outdated, not to mention how outdated any textbook would be the second it rolls off the printer. So that's the real reason there aren't any textbooks available. And thus, I begin to understand just how challenging this field is at the moment, as well as how much opportunity exists for students who can learn how to learn about social media. So what it boils down to, is that this course is, and must be, quite simply different from any course I've ever taught. What has to happen is that the basics need covering/teaching and the content must be actively sought and created as we go. Students will need to help find the newest content. And I think this will be the case for many years to come as marketers and business people struggle to truly understand and harness the power of the social web.
Unlike some people, and here it is in print to be held against me forever if I'm wrong, I really don't think Social Media is a fad. I think that the nature and way companies use it will change slightly to drastically in months/years to come, but that we are right this moment actively developing strategies and theories that will really change how marketing is done. I think social media is here to stay. And I'm not just considering projections of the popularity of social media, but rather, looking rather personally at my own sordid relationship with social media--particularly social networking sites.
My husband is fairly convinced I need a 12-step for Facebook addiction and I'm inclined to agree. I love social media. I can waste more time on Facebook than anyone I know. Being a natural procrastinator, I believe it is the world's best tool for avoiding unpleasant tasks that you'd rather not address at the moment. It's so innocent, that little tab at the bottom of my computer screen and it takes seconds to click on it and see if anyone in my little universe of most of the people I've ever met in my life has said something interesting. Most of the time, someone has. At least something more interesting than what I'm doing (i.e. grading, research, syllabus-writing, you get the picture). I was late to the social media bandwagon (in all things, I am NOT an early adopter). I couldn't understand why I would want to broadcast my every move or thought throughout the day to a community of people who could care less. However, I find myself back in touch with people that I knew 15 years ago and haven't seen or heard from since. I find myself in touch with people I didn't even particularly like in middle or high school...and I find myself sharing with them the biggest events of my life. "Getting Married Today," "Brian and I are expecting a baby in January," etc as well as the more mundane, "Brian talked me into going canoing and we almost died," or "I don't understand why people leave their houses at all in the summer." And I'm a trespasser in their lives and moments too, the good and the bad, the big and the small...and I am so interested by it all, as an individual.
As a marketer--I'm enthralled.The possibility of social networking is endless. It is exciting. It comes at a time where nothing that used to work is working anymore. I truly think that those that learn about it now, on the cutting edge, will be at an advantage as they enter the job market in years to come. And that's why, even though I think I've lost my freaking mind in volunteering to teach this course, I couldn't be more excited to be doing it.
