What teaching taught me

I noticed it here on LinkedIn. 

A professor at Miami University was looking for someone to teach a social media marketing class for spring semester 2019. I thought to myself “wow, I’d love to do that”.

However, I live in Chicago and Miami is located in Oxford, OH a 5 or 6 hour drive depending on Chicago and Indianapolis traffic.

A couple of days later, that same professor posted again, mentioning that the course could be a hybrid—meaning taught via some combination of in person and online.

My reaction? "Hell, yes." I felt compelled to reach out to Professor Glenn Platt. And, before I knew it I was standing in 100 Laws Hall for my first class. My audience was 60 students, mostly juniors and seniors many of whom were Interactive Media Studies (IMS) majors. IMS is an interdisciplinary program focused on the intersection of business, technology, and design.

Here is what teaching taught me.

1. Social media is for everyone and every brand
2. Real world perspective is difficult to share without context
3. People are amazingly generous with their time
4. Oxford, OH is beautiful and difficult to get to

1. Social media is for everyone and every brand.

I’ve led a number of successful social media programs over the past 5 years. As a result of my experience, I’m a big believer in the medium. I love how social media serves as a platform for individuals and for the brands they represent. We spent a lot of time in class on employee advocacy programs. When I rolled out my first social media program, we made the case by comparing the size of our house list to the size of the aggregated networks of our practice. There is such power in networks and we leveraged that power to amplify our messages in the marketplace.

While I’ve leveraged social media, I hadn’t really studied social media. I learned a ton from our social media text and from the students. For example, I am discouraged from calling Instagram “the Gram”; it’s better for me to say the whole word; I may, on occasion, say "Insta".

2. Real world perspective is difficult to share without context.

Driving back and forth to Oxford, I listened to a number of books on Audible. One of which was Leadership: In Turbulent Times form Doris Kearns Goodwin. There is a section of the book devoted to President Theodore Roosevelt and trust busting. I remember studying this period of American history in high school, and while I memoized facts and figures, I didn’t understand the significance because I didn’t have the business context. 

While my students were all well versed on social media platforms, I could offer some perspective on what social media programs are like in a business context. Where I’ve seen success, and where I haven’t. We had a lot of discussion about starting with business goals and letting the business goals drive the social media program versus social media as the starting point.

3. People are amazingly generous with their time.

In addition to business context, I could also offer students my network. In class, I asked the students who they wanted to hear from. As a result, we heard from fantastic guest speakers including: Laura Beres from Ulta Beauty, Kristine McKenna from LinkedIn, Casey Foss from West Monroe Partners, Pete Krainik who founded The CMO Club, Allison Lewin from f’real foods, Kelly Bennett from Miami University, and Miami alumna Stephanie Anderson.

A huge thank you to all our guest speakers for sharing their stories and their advice. Their generosity was amazing to witness, and I look forward to returning the favor at some future point.

Additionally, my thanks to the students who raised their hands to present on their side hustles. I was amazed with the discussions we had about side hustles and social media internships. I don’t believe I was nearly as motivated as an undergrad.

And, I loved having the opportunity to connect interested students to an internship opportunity with keepwith here in Chicago.

Three students volunteered to talk about their side hustles in front of the class. I doubt I would have had the courage or wherewithal to stand up in front of my peers and share a passion project as did Sedrick, Liam and Devin.

4. Oxford, OH is beautiful and difficult to get to.

Miami is well known for it’s beautiful campus and for being a member of the “Public Ivy League”. While, I love getting to campus, it is not easy to get there whether driving or flying to the Cincinnati airport which is located in Kentucky and then driving up from KY to IN to OH. The time commitment for this class was not insignificant, and while I’m very happy for the experience what I learned is that I’m a terrific guest speaker.

Finally, I must thank Ashley Sieb for her guidance, Murali Paranandi for answering my questions and lining up graduate assistants Winfrey and Maz for their help, and, of course, Glenn for the opportunity to try my hand at teaching.