As sad as it is to say, there are not too terribly many instances of college courses I have taken where I can honestly say that I learned something useful. Do I usually learn something, sure. But useful? Not always. Marketing Management has been the exception. From in-class lectures to a weekly blog, I can truly say I learned something useful every single week.
Blogging was probably my favorite, for two reasons: I forgot how much I liked to write, and I have become acquainted with AdAge.com. I have started to visit AdAge more and more as the semester has progressed. I drew much of my inspiration for blog posts from this website. Marketing Management and AdAge really opened my eyes to how much marketing and advertising really intrigued me. I started a marketing minor at my father's suggestion. It was not until I took this class that I really saw the potential to have a successful, and more importantly, interesting career in this field. Seeing examples of unique marketing campaigns in class and on AdAge always had me thinking, "how did they come up with that," and, "how could I come up with something better?"
This semester I have also been able to draw important insights from the social media pages our teams managed and the books we were assigned to read. My favorite book, hands-down, was UnMarketing by Scott Stratten. His book was an eye-opening experience about the way marketing is typically done, and how it really should be done. I wrote a full review of UnMarketing, and it can be found here. Helping to manage the A-State Rugby team's social media pages was a very rewarding experience as well. This was helped in part by the fact that they already had such a large following to begin with. We have consistently been able to reach thousands of people every week to spread the word about this fantastic team. I was personally in charge of creating/touching up the photos and videos that we posted throughout the semester. I was happy that I could apply the skills from my major and minor so seamlessly, and I hope this is a trend that continues on into my post-college life.
Blogging was probably my favorite, for two reasons: I forgot how much I liked to write, and I have become acquainted with AdAge.com. I have started to visit AdAge more and more as the semester has progressed. I drew much of my inspiration for blog posts from this website. Marketing Management and AdAge really opened my eyes to how much marketing and advertising really intrigued me. I started a marketing minor at my father's suggestion. It was not until I took this class that I really saw the potential to have a successful, and more importantly, interesting career in this field. Seeing examples of unique marketing campaigns in class and on AdAge always had me thinking, "how did they come up with that," and, "how could I come up with something better?"
This semester I have also been able to draw important insights from the social media pages our teams managed and the books we were assigned to read. My favorite book, hands-down, was UnMarketing by Scott Stratten. His book was an eye-opening experience about the way marketing is typically done, and how it really should be done. I wrote a full review of UnMarketing, and it can be found here. Helping to manage the A-State Rugby team's social media pages was a very rewarding experience as well. This was helped in part by the fact that they already had such a large following to begin with. We have consistently been able to reach thousands of people every week to spread the word about this fantastic team. I was personally in charge of creating/touching up the photos and videos that we posted throughout the semester. I was happy that I could apply the skills from my major and minor so seamlessly, and I hope this is a trend that continues on into my post-college life.
While the stats for my personal blog pale in comparison to those of the rugby page, I am still satisfied with my results. Taken from the Google Analytics linked to my account, my blog received 431 page views over the semester. 52.3% were returning visitors, while 47.7% were new visitors. My average session duration was 2 minutes and 32 seconds and users averaged 3.32 pages viewed per session. I also used Bitly.com to track my individual blog posts when I pushed them to social media. Most of the results are not astounding, but I thought it would be a good practice to try.
Overall I think this class has been one of the most useful I have ever taken, especially from a real-life application standpoint. We were tasked, both individually and as a group, to complete tasks and be involved in processes that we will certainly be exposed to in the "real world." Being able to have early exposure to these concepts just puts us one more step ahead in an already brutal job market.
Overall I think this class has been one of the most useful I have ever taken, especially from a real-life application standpoint. We were tasked, both individually and as a group, to complete tasks and be involved in processes that we will certainly be exposed to in the "real world." Being able to have early exposure to these concepts just puts us one more step ahead in an already brutal job market.