There are few things that can make a millennial reminisce more than Facebook’s “On This Day” feature. With each day, a new notification rolls in with the contents of what I did in years past. For me, it goes back as far as 11 years ago. It’s pretty unbelievable.
Thanks to a recent influx of outdated photos, I’ve spent a lot of timing thinking about my first summer internship in advertising and social media. It was the summer of 2011 and I spent it working full-time as the Creative Services Intern at Ogilvy in Manhattan. It was one of the most incredible opportunities I could have dreamed of as a college student. I still think of it fondly.
That internship was the first time I had exposure to the Facebook content creation process (which, by the way, we didn’t yet refer to as “content”). At the time, that seemed to be the only platform brands really took an interest in. I shadowed a team that made Facebook games and applications for one of the largest chocolate companies in the world. To me, it was groundbreaking that they were even using Facebook as part of their marketing strategy at all. Prior to that internship, I had only seen Facebook as a communication and photo album tool for young people to keep up with their friends. It was just the beginning of social media marketing as Mark Zuckerberg announced the launch of Facebook advertising a year prior.
When I think back to the posts I helped brainstorm on, I have to laugh; I even scrolled back far enough to find some. The team was tasked with coming up with “Facebook statuses” to post once per week that would be engaging for the audience. They didn’t need to come up with images– just text, and often times they had absolutely nothing to do with the brand. I vaguely remember helping brainstorm these two.
At the time, this was what successful content looked like from a major corporation. People were responsive and engaged and the statuses resonated with them. Can you even imagine how much easier our jobs would be if this was still standard?
When I returned to Indiana University that fall, the word “Facebook” started popping up several times in my syllabi. I had to create Facebook campaigns in my advertising classes, and even my eldest professors incorporated their very basic understanding of the subject into our coursework.
The following year I became a Social Media Intern for a startup and the year after that, I started my career as a full-time Social Media Manager. In those two years alone the industry had changed completely. I began working on content calendars (at the time they were in Google Docs) and created basic graphics in Photoshop. It was 2013 and creating statuses without images would no longer cut it.
Facebook Page Likes ads suddenly became accessible even to smaller brands and you needed to post regularly to keep up with your competitors. People also started accessing social media through their smartphones and we had to ensure everything was mobile friendly. Below is a quote card campaign I worked on for a celebrity’s children’s clothing brand.
It was a cute concept that performed really well, but still, they were simpler times. “Hashtag” was barely a word in our vocabulary and it would be another year or so before we started using Instagram as a marketing tool. It’s pretty unbelievable to think that my job didn’t always involve using Instagram because now it is how the Genies spend the majority of their time. Between photography, creating an Instagram aesthetic, utilizing IGTV and Instagram Stories, growth and outreach, monitoring, and advertising, it has become far more complex than I ever imagined. So fast forward to 2018 at Gossip Genie, there are about 20 more items on our daily to-do lists.
It’s pretty fun to look back at all of the ways the industry has changed, but it’s also daunting to think about how much more work has been created! I’m anxious to see how different social media marketing will look in years to come.
