Our guest presenter this week was Angela McLean, an experienced journalist and communications specialist. With her impressive resume, Angela shared various tools and bits of expertise on how to stand out with digital content.
Starting with her role at the formelry known, Ryerson University working for their social media platforms, Angela makes a strong note that we need to be meeting students where they are an a natural way. For students specifically, forcing content that “should appeal to them” will just steer them away instead. One great point Angela mentioned was to “speak with them, not at them”. Although it can be hard for University social media coordinators to break out of their social style guide, I truly agree that this is a more effective approach and can be taken into consideration with many of the fellow universities in the city. I appreciated her example of interviewing students about their outfits in various campus spots rather than showing all the different campus spots which sparked a new way of thinking in my head.
Today, there are so many resources and articles that claim that they will help your company or business grow their following and reach their target audience. I find many schools also get stuck in this mindset, making their content easy to scroll past. This leads many teams to believe that XYZ will get you X amount of followers but when they don’t reach that number, they are confused and disappointed. No article will tell you exactly what you need to do for your brand to make it stand out. In a place where everyone is trying to get into the world of digital influencing/marketing, understanding how you can be creative yet effective will make you stand out from other candidates. Balance is key!
Another point Angela brought up was the need to be versatile in your media skills. In digital marketing, it is very helpful to be able to have skills in photography, video and audio recording and editing, graphic design and content writing. With traditional journalism transitioning into various forms of digital media, only being knowledgeable in writing may become a negative when entering the job field. Understanding how to move writing into video as well can be a great tool to showcase your skills and understanding of the current state of media. 
At Guelph-Humber, one of the set-backs I have found over the past two years has been the intense focus of journalism in our program. Now in my third year, I am just starting to open up about photography and graphic design. I would love to see in the future, more required courses that are hands-on with media tools so each student can come out well rounded but with a specialization under their belt. I know that after graduation, there will still be lots to learn. Even if you feel like you would never want to do video editing let’s say, as media students we need to be open to try everything that comes up as who knows where it can lead us in the future!
