Lessons Learned from Managing a Marketing Team

What I Did

This fall I managed a team of 5 content creators in creating and running a Tik Tok social media campaign. We built this campaign based on the needs of our client (marketing program), executed, and analyzed our work. We collaborated every week with each other, brainstorming using sticky notes to eliminate group influence. During our production we practiced the sprint development life cycle in two-week increments. How we started the sprints were with the practice of lean meetings and the use of Kanbans. These helped me and my team stay organized and allow for tasks to be pulled by individuals instead of pushing tasks on to them.

Agile Workflow

Agile methodology is described as forming stages that teams use to develop an execution, from ideation to completion. This is something that was difficult to wrap my head around being a student for 20 years being told what to do, following a schedule, and turning things in one and done style. The agile workflow taught me how to work on the fly and embrace change. We had multiple issues that arose throughout the quarter; guests canceled, dealt with rescheduling, distribution, and promotion issues. As someone who’s very critical and struggles a bit with unplanned changes, this methodology made me better at being ready to bounce from task to task and doing what I can control and not worrying about what I can’t.

Relationships are Key

As a student managing yourself is hard, let alone a team of five –– trying to figure out how to engage and involve student in a school project is especially hard. The strategy I took from my experiences allowed me to be successful. I looked back on my educational career and thought about professors I would ride for and professors I wouldn’t ride for. What was the difference? The professors I would ride for are people who cared about me and the people around me, they cared about our future and were equally, if not more, invested in helping us learn. I made sure to show that with my team. I learned that building a relationship with them through school and through personal life. I made sure I showed interest in them and their success. Value is a big thing for me too, if I don’t see value in what I’m doing I have a hard time staying focused on the task at hand and finishing. I made sure to show them the value in our project and how it’s going to help them in the future.

This taught me a great lesson; it taught me how to tap into motivations and triggers. As a leader, I want to create that motivation and help with what triggers them to perform tasks, much like the professors that I respect. It taught me to tap into old experiences for guidance which can be beneficial when you’re stuck. These are skills I’ll take with me into the professional world and continue to succeed with working on teams!

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