The Importance of Multimedia

 

The funny thing about the textbook and my life as a current multimedia student specialist is that social media is a large part of what we do. Meaning a lot of the items the textbook states my reaction is “wait I do that now! I didn’t know that was a textbook element of social media.” 

An example of this is in chapter 4 of Karen Freberg’s “Social Media for Strategic Communication” she mentions several definitions of key social media roles. A few examples being a social media strategist, content creator, multimedia/video producer and writer/editor which all happen to be aspects of my job. Oftentimes in the creation process for a person who wants to use our services, they will come to us either with an example video in hand or a general idea of the tone and goal of the video. Personally, my favorite is when they give us the general idea and tone as this allows us to be a little more creative. 

For example, every year the Greek life sororities are required to create a video to show what it’s like to be in their sorority. The goal is to make the potential new members want to join the sorority based on what they see in the video. Last recruitment season, the Delta Zeta sorority came to me and asked for an upbeat video with a voiceover of girls talking about life as a sister. However, when it came to the voiceover, what the girl was saying and the upbeat editing style didn’t match. So instead, I created a video with inspiring ethereal sounding music, using slowed footage of the sorority having fun. The result was a heart throbbing video that showed you that the sorority was a family and an atmosphere you wanted to be in.

This project involved every element of the key social media roles listed previously; which is a large part of what makes the job fun and rewarding. And as the textbook states, “the best content creators are able to identify which stories and insights their key audiences want without knowing they want it.” I hope to get there with every project some day, but for now, I’ll just keep on creating to the best of my ability.