One of the most common questions I get via email or on Instagram stories is usually something along the lines of, “How did you start your career in social media?” – and it’s usually a question pretty hard to answer quickly via email or Instagram message. So today, I wanted to give you all a little run down of how I got my start in my career, a few lessons I’ve learned along the way. Believe me, I remember that feeling of sheer panic when I graduated from college and was like, “What the hell am I supposed to do now?!” Hopefully this will ease some of your nerves because you’re definitely not alone in feeling that way!

My entry into social media and advertising was a little unconventional, which is why I think my story usually makes people feel a little better if you don’t quite have it all figure out. I went to three colleges for undergrad (I joke I was the Goldilocks of Midwestern colleges!) and ended up at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. Lawrence is a small liberal arts college, which was perfect for me since I didn’t know what I wanted to be at all when I ‘”grew up” (and believe me, there are many days I’m still not sure!). I graduated with a degree in English and a certificate in education and was pretty gung-ho on the fact that I was going to become a high school English teacher. I was a big fan of Freedom Writers, so I figured I could totally handle anything high schoolers threw at me.

….yeah, turns out, I was totally and completely wrong. High schoolers are tough, and I quickly realized that being a high school English teacher isn’t all it’s cracked up to be (don’t get me wrong, some people love it (and they’re saints), but being a teacher totally wasn’t for me)). So when I finished student teaching I had no job and literally no idea what I wanted to do next. I didn’t want move back home with my parents – so I took on an odd house sitting job and ended up watching waayyyyyy too much of the Oprah TV channel to try to find some inspiration. After some soul searching I realized I wanted to work in advertising, but had no idea where to start. Outside of my English degree, I’d never had an advertising internship and had little experience with writing PR pitches, thinking of creative ideas, and had little understanding of what advertising was outside of the first season of Mad Men. So I took a job back at school at the information desk, and spent all my downtime from answering calls to apply for at least a hundred jobs and internships in anything related to social media, PR or advertising.

And to be clear, social media was barely a thing back in 2012 when I graduated college. People were just starting to realize that social media wasn’t a fad like so any people thoughts, and that it could actually do a lot for branding and driving sales (imagine a time when people thought social media was just going to go away one day, ha!). So luckily for me people didn’t have a ton of experience out there in social – and I was a young kid who could use Facebook, wield a camera (kinda) and had decent copywriting skills for someone who didn’t know what copywriting was.

So I applied to a job at a start-up called B Connected in Appleton, and had an interview with the owner who was hiring his first employee – a guy who was only a year older than me but had started a business in his basement that was quickly picking up steam. He asked if I was good at Photoshop, photography, account management, etc.- and I just nodded my head and was like, “YES! I AM SO GOOD AT ALL THOSE THINGS!!!!”, and when I was offered the job a few days later I had my “oh shit” moment, because I wasn’t good at any of those things….and definitely hadn’t spent more than 30 seconds on Photoshop in my life. So, I started this little blog and started practicing my skills at night after faking-it-till-I-made-it at work every day, while learning so many valuable lessons at my first job that have helped me to this day. (And as a side note, B Connected is still crushing it back in Wisconsin – and they’re up to at least 19 employees! You go, Brad Cebulski!) So anyways, I worked that job for about a year, and then ended up moving over to another company to work with Johnson and Johnson as a client doing more analytics and leading a community management team (I had a team of 13 people I managed as a 23 year old – talk about a learning experience!). After working there with so many iconic brands, I realized that all the creativity the agencies they worked with brought to the table was exactly what I wanted to do, so I set my big audacious goals for Chicago – and decided my new dream was to work in social media there.

For someone without an advertising degree or any real internship experience, it was a challenge to get my resume in front of people at agencies in Chicago – even though I was lucky enough to have some really good work experience.  So…I did what anyone would do in my situation – stalk the shit out of everyone on LinkedIn and blindly send emails pleading for advice  🙂 It mostly worked, and people were kind enough to give me tips on how to break into the industry and the types of agencies I should apply to. And then through blogging, I reached out to another blogger who I knew worked in advertising (Emily of Isn’t That Charming!) and asked her if she could spare any advice too since I was thinking of moving to Chicago. Much to my surprise, she told me she just put out a job for a community manager at the agency she worked at, DDB Chicago, and told me to submit my resume. A few weeks later, I was moving to Chicago to start my new job at DDB with Emily as my manager (yes…I was lucky as hell, and have Emily to thank for so much of my career!).

I worked on the McDonald’s account at DDB for about three years, and it was a crazy, roller coaster of a first big account to work on at an advertising agency. And while there were definitely more late nights than early ones – I loved most of my experience there, especially the amazing people I had a chance to work with. When you have tough clients, it usually brings you and your co-workers together that much more quickly – and McDonald’s is a crazy client to work with because you’re always bringing your A game, AND there’s usually over 20 big campaigns happening every year. Plus when you work on social, you work on just about every campaign that’s going on – from US campaigns to larger global campaigns like the World Cup and Olympics. I learned so much about campaign planning and social strategy and what good creative looks like – and we even were one of the first brands to do advertising on Instagram (the founder Kevin had to review all the creative – which in the beginning was me taking photos by myself on an iPhone…things have clearly gotten much better for both McDonald’s and myself ;))

After working at DDB, I worked at a few more agencies – including Ogilvy working on the Modelo and Corona Light accounts. After working so many years on the agency side, I wanted to get the experience of working at a big company as a client to really lead social strategy for a brand. While I had moved my way up to becoming more of a social strategist (and leaving the creative to the creatives!), there’s always so many layers of approvals you need to get anything done. Being on the client side gives you more ownership to really lead the change happening for the brands and seeing you vision come to life even more. A year an a half ago I finally moved over to the client-side to work at ALDI the grocery chain and heading up their social media there. It was so rewarding getting to evolve the work on social there, explore new platforms and have an amazing team of people both at ALDI and at our social agency. But I also had a 2-3 hour commute every day in my car out into the suburbs that was killing my relationships and social life, especially since social is never just a 9-5 job.

And now….I’m at Kraft Heinz working as a social media manager across 8+ of their brands, which has been a crazy, fun and fast-paced experience in the past few months I’ve been there. I won’t get into the day to day details of my job now (I’ll leave that for another post in the future!), but it’s been nice getting to work on so many iconic brands and have a much closer commute to downtown Chicago. Double thumbs up! So…that was a long post about how I got from graduation to today, but it’s definitely been a journey (and an ongoing one too). For someone who didn’t have a plan back in college, everything still has worked out pretty well – so I don’t want you to think that just because you didn’t major in something, or have 30 internships in college, you’re not going to be able to get to where you want to be. Most things are possible, they can just take a little longer when you go the less conventional route 🙂

In the next few weeks, I’m planning to share a few tips I would have told me 23 year old self, and some helpful career lessons I’ve learned along the way too! And most importantly – I’d love to know if this type of content is helpful for you, so please give me feedback in the comments below! I’m an open book, so let me know if you have questions I can answer too. xx!