What’s going on in the life of one of your favorite authors? Well, as you know (ahem): I write. I teach. I mom. What you may not know: I just finished my first graduate-level marketing course at SNHU! I am pleased and proud to report that I ended up with an A-.
I’m so proud of myself!
I went into the course expecting to be overwhelmed and clueless because I had no previous business or marketing knowledge. Still, I was excited. I like learning new things and genuinely wanted to see if there might be something to market my books better. I can honestly say that I was right—at least partially.
I was almost immediately overwhelmed, but not for the reasons I’d expected. A tornado ripped through our town—forcing schools to close early for the school year and leaving many (including my family) feeling as uprooted as the trees surrounding us. I immediately started to drop out of the course. I didn’t have a clue as to what I was doing anyway. Still, there was an unexpected thing that stopped me: the discussion board.
Come to find out, I’m not as clueless as I’d thought. Despite being one of the few students in the course without marketing experience, I found that I absolutely loved the online discussion board. It was far less intimidating conversing with my peers than starting at the unfamiliar terms and concepts in my textbook for hours on end. They didn’t care about what I didn’t know. They seemed genuinely interested in what I did know. Living near Walmart and my own shopping experiences there and at the Dollar Tree gave me a unique perspective to add to our conversations about pricing and target consumers. The discussion board gave me hope that I could push through, and I did with help from our professor.
You could say that I went from wondering why I was even taking the class to wondering what other marketing techniques and strategies I may have observed in my day-to-day life without having noticed. Am I still overwhelmed? Absolutely! However, I know that I am far from clueless. I made a SWOT analysis. Me! The fact that I have been able to develop a marketing plan piece by piece has made what would’ve seemed an impossible task possible.
I look forward to pairing what I’ve learned from this course to what I’ll learn in my next course on social media marketing. Oh, my next course starts next week. Wish me luck!
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