Social Media Workshop 2025

This year I was able to attend the annual social media workshop hosted by the Ohio Northern University chapter of Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA). This one-day workshop brought students, faculty, and outside professionals together to engage and discuss various aspects of social media such as how it has become a primary source of marketing in today's society. 

Throughout this workshop, I was given the opportunity to attend multiple different sessions and listen to professionals share their experiences and advice. After the keynote speaker, Jason Therrien gave his insight regarding social media in 2025, I attended a session about how to leverage LinkedIn presented by Kevin Pack, a consultant at Cardinal Health. During his session, Pack discussed how LinkedIn has significantly helped Cardinal Health share its message about what they do by creating content that will reach a variety of people, even some who may not be as familiar with the corporation. The second speaker that I chose to listen to was Rachel Lepoudre, an accountant director at Identity. Lepoudre presented some of the best practices to utilize when building your own personal brand on LinkedIn. As a student, this session was extremely important because LinkedIn is one of the world's number-one sites for job placement. Therefore, hearing the Do's and Don't when building up your own platform for employers to view will become beneficial when seeking work in the near future. The next session I attended was hosted by Kendall Cooke, a social media specialist for Oodle. Cooke discussed how having a strong social media presence will resonate better with potential employers, competitors in the field, etc. I found this session quite interesting because she mentioned that if you don't have a decent presence on the social media platforms that work best to reach your target audience then you will have a more difficult time promoting yourself or your company. Finally, the last session I attended was presented by McKenna McFadden and dealt with Abercrombie & Fitch and Hollister's social media presence. Out of all of the sessions that I went to throughout the day, this one was my favorite. A few reasons why I enjoyed this one so much was that I got to learn how a business in the retail industry utilizes a content calendar and creates certain types of content based on what its viewers have positively engaged with the most. 

I am pleased that I was given the chance to learn how to navigate social media platforms from professionals in various fields by attending the social media workshop. I learned how to best utilize LinkedIn, build my personal brand, create a strong presence on differing social media platforms, and adapt to content to better reach your target audience. No matter what career path I follow after college, these are all factors that will be important to achieving whatever I choose to do.