Digithoughts

Even though I graduated from San Diego State University last May, my heart hasn't wandered far, and I continue to find myself back on campus. I found good reason, when SDSU's College of Extended Studies and San Diego Ad Club hosted Marketing and Media Careers Panel in support of its Digital Marketing Certificate program.

Three successful San Diego MarCom professionals told stories and gave advice on starting a career in marketing and communications, industry trends, marketing processes, and client engagement activities. The panel featured Lisa Kaufmann of Digitaria, Sean Monzet of NBC San Diego and Dana Meyer-Maxwell of Cricket Communications. All three began their journey from very different starting points, yet arrived at a very similar place.

Lisa, an account strategist for Digitaria Sports, discussed the “digital process”: getting to know your client’s business, engaging on multiple levels via the client's social media, analyzing the competitive space, understanding business challenges, keeping ahead of trends. This sets a foundation for translating goals and strategy into a healthy and innovative user experience and then engaging a client's objectives consistently across multiple disciplines within the agency--design, tech and marketing--and providing actionable insights through analytics.

It’s not easy, of course. Every company faces organization challenges. Internal communication has an impact on company culture and morale. When an organization is responsible for communicating their client's brand, it is essential to deliver a successful brand experience internally to execute the experience externally on public scale. This is done through adapting and improvising internal processes, adding collaborative communication and forming models that support organizational consistency.

With the economy so tight, of course there were a lot of questions about getting a job.
Panelists’ advice: Think differently. Be a nonstop media consumer. Engage socially. Research, research, research. And most importantly: Know what you want, and go after it!

Above photo courtesy of Joel Ortiz. For more photos from the event, please visit Joel Ortiz on Picasa.

Susie Pollasky Digital Marketing Associate

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