Gaining experience in the dynamic world of digital marketing
Thomas Breideband has a Magister Artium degree in Theater and Performance Studies and American Studies from Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany. He is currently a dual degree PhD candidate in the Department of English at Georgia State, and the American Studies Department at Mainz University. His research interests lie at the intersection of New Media Studies, Rhetoric, and Social Capital Theory. When he is not working — which rarely happens — he plays and records a variety of music with his beloved Fender American Telecaster. You can read more about Thomas and his work on his blog.
This semester, I’m having the great opportunity of working at the digital marketing agency Foundry 45 in Atlanta as a Digital Media Specialist. Foundry 45 specializes in the creation of Virtual and Augmented Reality experiences for various mobile platforms, tailored to the needs of clients from the business, educational, and public sector interested in communicating their brand and products in immersive new ways.
The 360 video recording above was created by Foundry 45 of a Georgia Tech touchdown against the Tennessee Volunteers during the 2017 Chick-fil-A Kickoff game.
The internship I’m doing happens in a collaborative work environment and provides exposure to various aspects of digital media marketing including social media management, content marketing, search engine optimization, and web analytics.
Over the course of the last few weeks, I have leveraged my research, writing, and project management skills to write and distribute marketing content such as case studies and blog posts as well as manage the agency’s entire social media presence.
The internship is giving me a great behind-the-scenes look into the professional writing sector. One of the most interesting things I’ve learned so far (and something I’m going to reserve an entire post for in the future) is that in the context of writing for digital marketing, content creators are not merely writing for human audiences, but they also need to take into account ever-present non-human audiences, i.e. search engine algorithms that are designed to analyze distributed content for the purposes of ranking websites in Internet search results.
I look forward to incorporating the things I’m learning at Foundry 45 into my work as a SIF fellow. I am currently leading a project to overhaul the SIF website, and I’m particularly interested in taking cues from my internship work and help improving site traffic for the SIF website.
More to come in the near future.