Monday, December 21, 2009

What Marketing Looks Like to a 17-Year-Old

What better way to start a week than by sharing the gift of knowledge with the industry's up-and-comers? Today, we're excited to have Abbie hanging out with us, a 17-year-old writing extraordinaire from a local high school. Halfway through her day spent skipping school, uh, I mean learning from professionals, we asked her to reflect on what she came in expecting and how she sees things now.

Everyone, meet Abbie:

Hello, my name is Abbie. I’m a high school senior job shadowing at Axiom Marketing Communications for the day to learn about marketing. To my knowledge, I always thought marketing was about advertisements and meetings.  But within the first ten minutes of being here it was all about social media and reaching numerous people at once.

Social media in my eyes is just a fun way to connect with friends, family, and classmates. But because of social media there is the chance of creeping and stalking, which is the main reason why I don’t personally have a Twitter account. However, in a matter of minutes, I realized the amount of people that are reached through a single Tweet and the impact that would occur.

Marketing is a lot different than it was once thought to be, but with the rapidly changing technology and communication, it’s clear that the marketing business also has to change in order to keep up with their directed audiences. It’s crazy to think that a one-hour Twitter Party can influence and benefit multiple people.

Weird, our 17-year-old visitor is noticing what Mashable thinks will be a big trend for 2010: The give and take between personal privacy and online "TMI." While college students seem to lean towards online popularity (and earning it by posting shocking, possibly embarrassing photos and information), the High School Class of 2010 (or at least Abbie) is still skeptical to reveal personal information online.

So, that leads to today's question. How do you decide what to post online? Are you guilty of the TMI trend in hopes of getting more attention and, in turn, more followers and friends? Or are you a little more modest in what you share in hopes to protect yourself? In other words, how do you gauge what's okay and not okay to share online?