Episode with Brianne Fleming (Brand Builder, Marketing Instructor) about teaching social media in school. Is it possible?
Full Transcript:
Brianne Fleming: [00:00:00] Hi, I’m Brianne Fleming. I run a podcast called Making the Brand where I really try to teach people marketing, but through the lens of pop culture.
So I look for marketing lessons when it comes to TV, movies, music. Um, I always look for that golden nugget that we can apply to personal brands or corporate brands. And they’re out there. You just have to look a little harder. I also teach social media and branding for the university of Florida. So I think that’s a perfect segue actually for you to talk about what we’re debating today, Leah.
Leo Morejon: [00:00:43] Yep. So you have two minutes. I’m going to try to mess you up. I’m going to maybe make fun of the Backstreet boys. I don’t know if that’s going to be a good thing or bad thing. I’m going to say that you cannot, you cannot teach social media marketing.
Brianne Fleming: [00:00:57] I guess that makes me a fraud, but we’ll see.
Leo Morejon: [00:01:00] Let’s see.
All right, here we go. Ready? Go.
Brianne Fleming: [00:01:04] All right. I will admit that teaching social media, it is not an exact science. It’s not like teaching math where you’re always going to land on a perfect or where it gets black and whites, but it’s all about a mindset shift. If people stop seeing social media, it’s just this dumping ground for them to document every little thing that they’re doing.
Pictures of their lunch, all of that stuff that people just throw up onto social media. If you. Post understanding that you’re posting something for your audience and making sure that there’s a takeaway for them, you can be successful.
Leo Morejon: [00:01:41] You just taught me all that. I don’t need to do it. And plus social media is changing every single day, every single minute.
How are you going to teach something? That in a book or in a blog post or in a tweet, it becomes older than seconds. How can you possibly teach that ever.
Brianne Fleming: [00:01:54] These strategy changes? This is exactly the same because you still are communicating with an audience.
The medium itself might be changing constantly, but the people who you’re creating content for, we still have the same emotions. You still have to empathize. You still have to entertain. None of that will ever change.
Leo Morejon: [00:02:14] Just going to read a book, you’re reading from a textbook. What else? What are you adding? I don’t have no idea. The textbook says it. I could read a blog.
I could literally read Mashable. I don’t know if people read matchable anymore, but I can read Mashable. Or listen to your own podcasts.
Brianne Fleming: [00:02:26] Well, you have to put all of these strategies into practice. And the thing with social media is you have to test and evolve over time. So you might be posting something yesterday that might not work today.
You always have to consistently be testing and not just considering the old methods, you have to stay on top of all of those changes too.
Leo Morejon: [00:02:46] I don’t know. Now people say, I don’t even need a degree. Why am I even going to go to school for a degree? I’m just going to learn with my internship.
Brianne Fleming: [00:02:53] Well, I always encourage people to get an internship, but it’s always good to take what you’re learning in class and apply it to those internships.
So you can wow. Your boss and maybe they’ll hire you full time.
Leo Morejon: [00:03:05] There we go. Oh, I got the alarm.
Brianne Fleming: [00:03:07] Woooo, I’m sweating
Leo Morejon: [00:03:10] That was amazing. Obviously. Being an adjunct professor, myself teaching social media.
Brianne Fleming: [00:03:16] Yeah.
Leo Morejon: [00:03:17] I couldn’t agree with you even more. It’s important to teach it in school. I am glad that professors like yourself and people like yourself are passionate and there for the students that don’t need teaching them about social media, but making it relatable.
Just having a passion and being there for everybody
Brianne Fleming: [00:03:36] Absolutely. There’s a whole community, if I could give a shout out to Dr. Karen Freberg.
Leo Morejon: [00:03:42] Oh, our friend. She’s the reason I teach.
Brianne Fleming: [00:03:44] No way, yeah. She’s just kind of leading the charge with everyone teaching social media. I didn’t think it was such a big field. I mean, it’s, it’s so new. A lot of people teach marketing and advertising, but it turns out there’s a huge community of just social media professors.
So it’s. It’s a new, new sign of the times, I guess
Leo Morejon: [00:04:02] It is. And the funny thing is I. I think I’m cool sometimes. And then I look at her and I’m like, she’s cooler than I will ever.
Brianne Fleming: [00:04:10] She’s got it down.
Leo Morejon: [00:04:12] Well, Brianne, thank you so much.
Brianne Fleming: [00:04:14] Thank you. Thank you. This was fun. Let me know what the next topic is. All right.
Leo Morejon: [00:04:19] We can debate. I’m going to
Brianne Fleming: [00:04:20] say that N’sync is better than the Backstreen Boys.
Oh, that hurts. I mean, I can go all day on that as well, but uh, but let me know when .
