How I ended up working in Social Media/ PR

I've decided to do a little series of career related posts, quite a few people on Twitter seemed interested (thanks guys). I'm a little bit nerdy when it comes to all things career and employability related, so I'm actually pretty excited to write this and share my (v short) story so far...

Psychology is something I will always enjoy, I love thinking about "why we are the way we are" and I'm still not bored of that, but throughout uni the thought of becoming a psychologist or counsellor was never something I wanted to fully commit to, which was at one point my end goal and the career I was aiming for. At the age of 13 (8 years ago) I discovered YouTube, and I was hooked, instantly. I have loved beauty and YouTube for a large chunk of my life now, and it took me a while to realise how much that meant and could translate into a career.

In the last year of my Psychology degree, I just couldn't engage with the thought of working outside of the field. At the end of last year I was lost, anxious and annoyed that I didn't have something that made me excited about my future. I can't remember exactly what happened but I remember discovering a whole host of PR roles and jobs titled "Social Media Manager," I wasn't living under a rock, I knew these roles existed, but I just dismissed them as something that I couldn't do. Over Christmas 2015/ January 2016 I realised that promoting my blog through my twitter and Instagram was something I really loved doing, and I looked forward to it! My career path was under my nose for years, quite a few things stopped me from realising sooner, but it was mainly because I was just too worried about what people thought of my blog, and scared that I had wasted my time at uni... Silly I know!

I currently work in house for a online beauty retailer, a typical day see's me organising content for the different social media platforms, PR work which is mainly outreach to bloggers and organising collaborations with digital influencers, taking and editing images for the social media and writing blog posts. I have also worked on some bigger projects alongside this. I did manage to get this job through a really good friend, I was very lucky to have known the right person I guess. I know it's easy for me to say this, but I honestly think if you want something enough then you will be able to get
there! I wouldn't have been able to get the job if I couldn't demonstrate all of the skills needed for it.

One major factor in helping me realise that I wanted to work within PR/ Social Media was being a part of the BloggingGals team, it gave me some good experience to talk about in my interview and also the chance to manage a social media platform. The team were amazing and although it was hard fitting it into my final year at uni, I'm so glad that I did! - I have wrote a post about my thoughts on uni here

The next post will be my tips on getting yourself a job within social media/ pr without a degree/ associated qualification (so if you have any specific questions then please ask!). I'm then going to move onto what it is actually like day to day in more detail. I also work freelance along side my full time job so I will bring that up in a post too I think. I really hope that these posts are helpful (whilst also allowing me to talk careers which I love).

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