Digital Marketing with @MeetNYU

Once I became an Admissions Ambassador at NYU, I was introduced to the Digital Ambassadors Program. This is a team of ambassadors who create and manage the content on the Admissions Ambassador social media channels. @MeetNYU is our handle on most social sites.

While I had never done any type of social media marketing before, I wanted to get involved and learn what it is all about. I applied in the summer of 2020 (during quarantine) and received an acceptance email!

Here at @MeetNYU, we usually use Instagram and this blog, meet.nyu.edu. However, this year the program started an @MeetNYU TikTok page, which the digital ambassadors were going to contribute to. TikTok had a large user growth during the summer of 2020 due to lockdown restrictions. As a team of digital marketers, we needed to use this to our advantage because a large part of TikTokʼs user base could be prospective students. In order to gain exposure, many digital ambassadors created clever TikToks that went viral and boosted our accountʼs follower count. Consequently, I learned a lot about TikTok and transitions so I could make cool videos.

In addition to contributing to the TikTok page, I had to write two blog posts per semester and conduct at least two Instagram takeovers. Blog posts came naturally to me since writing is a large portion of my Business major. It is also something I know I am good at. I enjoy writing articles based on my experience and love to showcase them.

Doing Instagram takeovers is the final portion of being a digital ambassador. I was super nervous about my first one because I had never done one before! Imagine showcasing your school day to nearly 30,000 Instagram followers! Thatʼs a lot of people. But once I got the hang of it, it was a lot of fun. I enjoyed answering questions and virtually showing prospective students around Tandon and NYU. Getting to know prospective students through the question box is a cool experience. Taking over the Instagram page every semester is really fulfilling because of the people I am able to connect with.

As a Business and Technology Management major at Tandon, I am required to take a marketing class, and it fell on my schedule during spring 2021. My professor was outstanding. She fostered conversation while lecturing and assigned simulations for us to run through. We learned about different types of marketing and had a semester-long marketing group project. The best part about my professor is that she also currently works at Chase Bank on the marketing team. As a result, she used her knowledge about business, networking, and marketing to bring in guest speakers from companies such as Peloton, Chase, CommonBond, Square, and Deloitte! The speakers had different types of jobs and roles in marketing. It was truly a fascinating experience to talk to real-life marketers in different parts of their careers.

Marketing is an umbrella term for so many different types of advertisements. There is business-to-business marketing, TV marketing, print marketing, direct-to-consumer marketing, and the like. What interested me the most, however, was social media marketing and how the world was shifting toward platforms like Instagram and Facebook. These platforms allow more user-based marketing, advertisements based on user information. Once we discussed the chapter on social media marketing, it finally made sense. I spend a lot of time on social media, and I loved my role as a digital ambassador. As a result, I realized I wanted to shape my future career into one that includes social media marketing.

Because of my newfound realization, I started applying to marketing internships. Many required at least one year of experience in digital marketing. However, since this is my first year as a digital ambassador, I did not have much experience. Even though I did not have much success in marketing internships, I learned quite a lot.

I reached out to the NYU Wasserman Career Development Center to help improve my résumé and practice interviews. To make sure I knew about the company’s social media strategy, I looked them up on Instagram and Twitter. I also created a TikTok account so I could practice transitions and try to keep up with TikTok trends. In addition, I found brands such as Tentree and Wolven that have brand ambassadors and learned how they use them to increase their social media presence.

Through my own curiosity, I feel more confident about my choice to go into digital marketing and continue to examine digital marketing from an academic and career perspective. I love going on Instagram and seeing the different types of ads that are popular. On TikTok, I learn a lot about the platform and its creators.

In order to grow my experience, I decided to run as a marketing cochair for my sorority at NYU, Delta Kappa Delta. I wanted to increase the presence we have on social media, and on campus as a whole. My sisters and I created a plan for fall recruitment that involves a social media marketing strategy for the rest of the semester! I love that I am able to use my marketing knowledge in a productive way and can’t wait to make it my career.

I want to continue learning more about social media and making an impact in the space. I think that it is important to keep learning, growing, and expanding my knowledge base so I am successful in the industry and can use my talents to propel my ideas further. In the future I hope to work on a digital marketing team and use my skills to make a difference in the world of business and marketing!