Social Media: Trend or Fad?

As an intern/entry-level employee in 2012 the pressures of my life consist of learning how to handle life out of college, staying professionally competitive in a digital era and figuring out what could be the next “Facebook”. Normal, right? If you lived 20 years ago it might not have been, but today it has very well become known as normal.

As a digital retailing major out of University of North Texas, I knew that I had to get in on this digital revolution. Pressures of college consist of finding the job you are passionate about, the job that will mean something and the job that will be here 20 years from now. The answer to that for me was social media marketing.

Social Media provides the client/consumer relationship quality, brand awareness capabilities, and integrated marketing strategies that pull the entire marketing industry into a new span of needs/wants/ and must haves.

So it’s not just a fad then?

“In 2011, Facebook topped Google for weekly traffic and 80% of companies are using social media for recruitment.” (Socialnomics “10 WOW Social Media Statistics” http://www.socialnomics.net/2011/06/07/10-wow-social-media-statistics/)

Does this sound like a fad? Definitely not. What does this mean for an intern/entry-level worker, an older business, or even a new start-up? Hello, ever seen a relay race, it’s like Facebook handed our generation the baton!  Baby Boomers are starting to see that this isn’t just a fad, and that they better grab the baton or hire someone who will! It’s the perfect time for my generation to take up that baton and run with it! There are few, I would argue maybe zero, generations that have had the ability to sit in a room with top-level executives at the age of 23. And yes, do things we consider as everyday routine (tweeting/blogging/posting). Who would have thought?

So yes, I introduce myself to you as an intern who has seen and realized that social media strategies will continually change and evolve, as fads do, but that sky blue color of Facebook is a trend that isn’t going anywhere.

Happy Socializing!

Jessica Pittman can be contacted at jessicapittman11@gmail.com or connect with her on LinkedIn.