Shortly after I began this course, I entered a real life professional writing environment that pretty much mirrors everything required here. Collaboration, critique, unexpected events, deadlines, and realizing that everything is a learning curve. While a seemingly insignificant “skill,” learning to communicate when help is needed has been crucial to myself both in this class and in my real life work environment. At its core, professional writing is all about communication, so becoming more confident with “blurting it out” has helped me tremendously.
My advice to future students? Never be afraid to ask for clarification. Once you’re being paid to do something, falling flat on a project or failing to deliver because you did not entirely understand the requirements becomes a huge motivator to ask as many questions as possible. Ask for critique on everything you do, and do not be afraid to challenge ideas or criticisms. Sometimes, great ideas come from fresh, inexperienced minds, and no one is correct 100% of the time. Collaboration is what makes organizations strong.
As the social media coordinator, it was interesting thinking about Twitter’s professional uses. Until this class, I had only ever used it casually, but I was very familiar with its features and how some companies use it. To avoid being too similar to the blog, I chose Twitter over Facebook. Furthermore, the character limit posed an interesting challenge and forced me to think about how to convey hundreds to thousands more characters from just 140. Being forced to work with such a narrow scope forces you to think more the quality of the content and what marketing tactics work. Given more time and experience with online marketing, I would enjoy operating within a social media team.
Overall, what I learned about professional writing is that professional writers can do and learn anything needed. Since the goal is outlined to you from the beginning, you just have to work on bridging the gap between start and completion. This can involve anything from developing a rudimentary skill, having to research something you never knew existed, or collecting data. What matters in the end is that the project is finished, the client is satisfied, and all collaborators (if applicable) had input. Professional writing is rarely a deal between just two people.
