We must remember that as some careers go extinct, new ones are created. Julielyn Gibbons, 29, understands this. As a social media consultant, she helps businesses in Lansing navigate the treacherous waters of the global datasphere.
Gibbons, though always maintaining a mild interest in technology, never envisioned a career in it. After starting at
Michigan State University (MSU) in 1998 with aspirations of running for public office, she was derailed by a severe run-in with Crohn’s disease. Confined to her bedroom, Gibbons saw the web as her only means of connecting to others.
So she began collaborating with patient advocacy groups, using the web to lobby legislators and mobilize MSU’s student government. Eventually, her web experience morphed into
I3 Strategies, her social media consulting agency.
Capital Gains: What services do you provide?Julielyn Gibbons: I provide strategy consultation. The name of my business, I3 Strategies, speaks directly to that. A lot of people can show you how to set up a
Facebook page, but I want to show you how to use it strategically. So, whether it’s for the purpose of growing your business, expanding your brand, messaging, that’s the major service I provide.
But I also provide other things like workshops and training. Also, I do Internet strategy: How do you work social media into your overall marketing strategy? So, maybe your website needs to be redesigned, so it’s a little more friendly. I do a lot of data analysis.
CG: Can you give me an example of a client you had and what you did for them?JG: The one I’m working a lot on lately is
Capital Area Michigan Works. I’m doing a series of monthly workshops that they are providing free to the public—social media tools for job seekers.
So, we have like 15 or 16 percent unemployment rate in Michigan, and I’m basically showing folks who are trying to get jobs how they can tap into social media to increase their likelihood of getting a job [or] new position, whether it’s in a new or existing field. So, that’s primarily workshop-based.
GiftZip.com has a great product, but they need the world to know about it. So I work with them to strategize around their various social media outlets where they’re already at, but then also look at other ones. Some of that is ad buying through social media. Another one is controlling the message within social media. And then another element is making sure their website works and is integrated with those social media facets.
CG: Why does someone need a consultant?JG: That’s a very good question. Social media is still very new. It’s only been around for five or six years, and not a lot of people have a lot of experience with using it strategically.
I used to be the internet outreach director at the
Michigan Democratic Party. We were one of the first state parties in the country devoted to basically evangelizing the Internet and its tools to working on a campaign.
I worked on a statewide ballot initiative [on the] stem cell issue and we strategically used social media and the Internet to get the message out to inform and educate and mobilize and even fund-raise around social media to get that initiative through.
So, there’s a lot of people popping up who say "Oh, I’ve had a Facebook profile for three years therefore, you know, I understand it." That’s good.
But to be able to look at it strategically, that’s a whole different ball of wax.
CG: What are some social networking tools people may not be aware of?JG: Google Wave is emerging as something as something that can potentially change the way we communicate. So that’s still very much in beta but it’s definitely rolling out.
Basically, it’s an online tool that allows for real time communication and collaboration. Probably the easiest way that you can think about it is if you combined email with social networking, so it can be a conversation and a document.
It really expands the possibilities for workplace collaboration as well as with friends and family. And because of its very interactive real nature, it’s changing the boundaries with which we think about social media. It’s changing the way that we’re able to think about how social media can transform our everyday life primarily through communication.
Various agents within the federal government are actually exploring how to incorporate Google Wave into their communications both internally and externally. And so, right now, it’s very much a "take and see" approach, but it’s something that we didn’t even have eight months ago.
That’s the thing about this industry is that it’s so quickly evolving that sometimes it’s challenging to keep up with it all.
CG: What social media trends are on the horizon?JG: Well, I think obviously what we’ve already started to see is corporate America really embracing social media, and I think social media is going to continue to transform the way we think about how we communicate. Not only thinking about how we communicate, but the way we communicate.
What I see as one of the greatest benefits of social media is the influence that it has on our offline lives.
For instance, a lot of people were concerned that people would be spending so much time online that we wouldn’t get together offline anymore and what we’re seeing now is how—especially the
Mid-Michigan Tweet Up group, which I’m a part of—social media is providing and creating more offline opportunities to build communities and strengthen communities than we’ve had in the past.
CG: Right now it seems like most companies use social media primarily for advertising purposes. Do you think we’ll begin to see them used for other purposes?JG: I think that is already happening, but I think we’ll see more of that. Because people don’t just want to be just advertised to, they want to be interactive in a way that benefits them personally. I think we’re going see more businesses, more companies and organizations, act like aggregators than we are just marketers.
I think the successful companies in social media will create opportunities to get involved in areas that interest them, whether it be planning an event or hosting a forum via social media that people would want to participant in. So, they’re becoming the creators of content or opportunities versus letting [consumers] create, and them following.
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Adam Molner is a freelance writer and frequent contributor to Capital Gains. His last article was about
alternative currencies.
Dave Trumpie is the managing photographer for Capital Gains. He is a freelance photographer and owner of Trumpie Photography.
Photos:
Julielyn Gibbons in her East Lansing office
All Photographs © Dave Trumpie