Interviewing a Social Media Expert

 For my Social Media Marketing class I was asked to interview a social media expert and make a podcast of that interview. This was a completely new experience to me that brought about a lot of questions initially. What exactly is a social media expert? Who would I ask? How does one go about editing and producing a podcast? Luckily for me, the first two of these questions were easily answered. I quickly figured out what an “expert,” in social media would be someone who makes a living off of it. Someone who actually knows about social media enough to make it their livelihood. I was lucky enough to actually have someone like this in my family. That being my cousin-in-law Emily Brock, an accomplished marketer who currently is working in pharmaceutical marketing at a company in New York. She works remotely so I was able to go to her house in Lima to interview her. Talk about an opportunity to learn!

 I went to Emily’s house at about 8 P.M to get started, and I wasn’t even fully aware of her immense experience in social media marketing specifically until I began the interview. As it turned out, Emily prior to working in pharmaceutical actually was a social media coordinator for most of the fast food industry of Lima, Ohio. Big names like Arby’s, Burger King, and others reached out to her hoping to gain some ground in the quickly evolving social media landscape. Needless to say, these credentials made me excited for what I was about to learn.

 And learn I did. I asked Emily a series of questions regarding her experiences with issues in social media, and for every single one it was as if she had a script that she was reading from. It was all so detailed for it being on the spot, it was truly remarkable to see her talk about these things for minutes at a time without stopping for a second thought. She told me the details of how Meta makes marketing with social much easier, such as how bots work to produce immediate responses to customers on social media. Another question I asked her was over the threat of negative feedback via social media and she had a great deal to comment on surrounding that. She told me that a good marketer never shuts off their comments and responses to social media posts because shutting down criticism is just as bad as it being there to see. To see a company’s social media shut off comments takes away a lot of credibility due to the fact that rather than rectifying issues with customers in the comments they choose to simply put them out of view. I agreed from a consumer perspective completely, as I have seen this kind of behavior on social media before and I also found it very shady.

I wish that I had more time than 5 minutes to let her continue talking about her experiences in social media, because her knowledge of the field was truly remarkable.  The show notes were as follows: Introduce Emily and allow her to explain her credibility to the audience, ask Emily two or three questions concerning issues in social media, asking her the positives of social media marketing, and also a constant reminder to put my feedback in from the consumer perspective. It is no wonder why she is considered an expert in her field. That concluded the interview and I drove home, left in awe of all I had just learned.