While reading the different articles provided I was able to get a better understanding of how the web works, specifically from the article How the Web Works. I thought the analogy of the client and server as a customer and restaurant was really clear and gave me a better understanding of what each part does such as the DNS and HTTP.
I also enjoyed Getting started with HTML because it served as a refresher from the codeacademy lesson as well as teaching me some new elements such as boolean attributes and linking an external webpage.
Lastly in The Evolution of The Web I learned about how rapidly the web has evolved over the last ten years. From 2009-2012 alone there were 10 different versions of firefox, that's more versions than there were in the first decade of Opera. It really is an exponential learning curve much steeper than I anticipated.
What I find very interesting about the job of social media manager is just how flexible the job can be. Any company, celebrity, small business, tv network, movie company or even government facility can hire a social media manager to, in a nutshell, manage their social media. But it's not as cut and dry as it may seem. Some roles and responsibilities of a social media manager are to be knowledgable not only in whatever company they may be advertising but also what trends are popular at the moment with their target audience. One must be able to adapt quickly as trends come and go within weeks, and if they're not up to date they may lose out on a target audience and miss the opportunity to bring foot traffic to their page. They must also be profficient in their communication as sometimes it is the social media manager's job to reach out to other content creators for collaborations and brand deals if the company wants a specific person to endorse them. Not only are they communicating outside of the company but inside as well, promoting upcoming events or deals and staying up-to-date on all the news from inside their company so they may relay it to their audience.
While the annual salary can range from 35k-125k the average is about 71k a year, this number most likely flucuates based on how big the company is, how many followers an account has, and how frequently they post. As for places that offer this position, as I said before this job is very flexible, if a business has a social media account, they can have a social media manager. I've seen small local stores have a social media presence, as well as large companies like Starbucks or Google. I will admit it was hard to find a social media manager as they are usually behind the scenes and sign NDA's and such, for example if a senator had a social media prescence and a manager to do it for him they wouldn't want the public to know it's not really the senator writing his own tweets.
I did end up finding some people who became famous for the accounts they managed. Ann Hadley who is a keynote speaker, author, founder of the comapny ClickZ as well as a well known leader in social media for B2B companies, some of which may sound familiar like Microsoft and Slack, and is considered a 'LinkedIn' Influencer for herself and other companies that hire her. She has also written a book Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content all about running social media pages for yourself, or for others. I really find what she does, as a social media manager for herself, and other very successful companies, to be very inspiring because she is sharing the knowledge for anyone to be able to do what she does, and it really does drive my earlier point that social media manager is such a wide title that anyone can learn to do it and excel as she has in her field. For more about this amazing woman you can visit her blog here at AnnHadley.com where she has a biweekly newletter, and you can even book her for your own events.
Something I'm very passionate about is the low waste movement and going green, so for my website I'd like to create a collection of diy and eco-friendly swaps people can make, ranging in price and difficulty so that anyone can start somewhere on my page and maybe work their way up. If possible I think that a community page would really be good for people to be able to swap ideas and answer each other's questions, maybe this can also include a no-buy group so people may connect with others in their area to pick things up. I don't have any ideas for a title yet but I am definitely interested in pursuing this topic for my semester project.