Welcome to the grand finale of The 2024 Holiday Giveaway Extravaganza!
Over the past 10 days, we’ve connected, shared, and learned so much together. Now, it’s time to reflect on the highlights of our year in The Arboretum community.
Here’s What to Do:
Share your favorite Arb or career moment from this year in the comments. What stood out, made an impact, or brought a smile to your face? Engage with at least two other reflections to celebrate the memories we’ve created together.
Today’s Grand Prize: One lucky participant will win an Upgraded Second Monitor & High-End Ergonomic Desk Chair—a dream setup for any social media professional.
Thank you for making this event unforgettable. Let’s celebrate the connections, insights, and fun we’ve shared. Share your reflections below!
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My team produced a vertical documentary for Instagram Reels for Tony Orlando’s last concert ever. It was special night and my team captured the emotion perfectly. They created it over 8 months ago, but it still makes me emotional to watch it.
It is a vibe! Its so great to have work that you are proud of, congrats!
My career moment was publishing! Some of you know I’m passionate about the issue of burnout among communicators working in the social media space. I took the next step, built on a few talks I’d given and wrote a book on the subject!
My book - Social Media, Sanity & You: A Guide To Mental Wellness For The Digital Marketer - paired with my emotional support dumpster fire.
When you work in the digital space and things can be deleted quickly, it’s an AMAZING feeling to hold something with permanence like your book in your hands.
Congratulations!!! That’s amazing!! 🥳
So many great moments this year (incredibly blessed to be able to say this) but one that stood out to me was being able to get more and more buy-in of my teams social media strategy and goals. This would not have been possible without the power of Sprout Social analytics. We have been able to grow our social media strategy and be very purposeful of what we produce and put out on our channels. It was a great feeling to feel incorporated vs. an afterthought :)
A bonus for me also this year was attending one of the Sprout Social roadshows and speaking on stage!
Getting buy-in is so affirming! It sets the stage that you and your work is valued and should be considered from the beginning. Happy dance for being on stage and sharing the knowledge!
My career moment was publishing! Some of you know I’m passionate about the issue of burnout among communicators working in the social media space. I took the next step, built on a few talks I’d given and wrote a book on the subject!
My book - Social Media, Sanity & You: A Guide To Mental Wellness For The Digital Marketer - paired with my emotional support dumpster fire.
When you work in the digital space and things can be deleted quickly, it’s an AMAZING feeling to hold something with permanence like your book in your hands.
I LOVE the emotional support dumpster fire. I have a podcast titled this for entrepreneurs and the fact you wrote a book means we’re one step closer to having people understand the mental health impact of dealing with raging people on the internet and leadership who traffics in magical thinking. I hope you are invited and paid to speak on many many stages!
My favorite Arb moments are the webinars, often I feel like I’m the one who is thinking about things wrong when I work with others outside of social media, and it’s super nice to have the confirmation that yes, I am an expert and I need to lean into that.
My favorite career moment is when I delivered a strategy to a client, and the amount of geeked they were and the ensuing work they’ve done, make me feel like it nailed not only who they are but was able to create a road map that made sense to their brain and how they think. I pour so much intro strategies both creative and research, that it really does make me heart smile when clients can see that I can see them, their business, and the impact they want to make.
Choosing to be an optimist in life means looking at my biggest career moment as a positive. I was laid off from my job last month after 5 months of being in a weird limbo as the company was in the process of shutting down and it was unclear if I would be moving over to the company that was acquiring the brand I worked on.
I’m extremely fortunate in this situation that my family is financially sound and have some time to figure out what the next path is for me, and that I’ve spent the last month stoking the fire of unemployment by applying, interviewing and lining up freelance work.
While the future isn’t 100% clear, I’m confident that something will work out and I will find an opportunity that is equal parts rewarding and fun.
I think finding out how my social media posts are actually making a difference in sign ups for our school events.
My other win was getting yearbook sales up during our initial sales opening discount period from like nothing to double digits!!
Next year I have some more ideas for that to bump it up!
My favorite ARB moments are the live trainings I love them and learn something every time!
Being able to see direct actions attributed to social is a huge win! Congrats on that.
My favorite moment of this year was surpassing our revenue goal for affiliate marketing during our first year starting it. I came in a couple months after it began and am happy how it’s continuing to grow. Can’t wait to see what 2025 has to offer!
Congrats on surpassing that revenue goal! Affiliate marketing is a tough game - any growth is a win, and growth that results in surpassing a goal is always cause for celebration.
One of my favorite career moments this past year was attending a conference dedicated to career growth. I got to hear some amazing speakers (including Lauren Graham!), and the whole experience was so motivating and inspiring. It helped reinforce that I’m thankful to work for an organization that believes in my potential and actively supports my professional development.
This is incredibly nerdy, but a big career win for me this year was creating and documenting an official social media strategy and set of digital policies for my organization. I’m a social media team of one on a new communications team of two, so this kind of documentation has never existed at my organization. I’m so excited to have something to point to when people come to me with questions about what can go on social.
This is a game changer! I know how much of a lift it can be to get policies officially documented, so big big win!
A neat career win this year - I’m a social media manager, and not usually a long-form article writer, but I felt super strongly about a topic at our college and wrote an article that was eventually picked up by the newspaper for the whole university! Sent to over 90,000 inboxes! It was very cool!
That’s an amazing win! It’s incredible to step outside your usual role and make such a big impact. Having your article reach over 90,000 inboxes is no small feat!
My career moment was publishing! Some of you know I’m passionate about the issue of burnout among communicators working in the social media space. I took the next step, built on a few talks I’d given and wrote a book on the subject!
My book - Social Media, Sanity & You: A Guide To Mental Wellness For The Digital Marketer - paired with my emotional support dumpster fire.
When you work in the digital space and things can be deleted quickly, it’s an AMAZING feeling to hold something with permanence like your book in your hands.
CONGRATULATIONS! This is amazing! I need to grab a copy of your book and I am so curious where your Emotional Support Dumpster Fire came from...
The emotional support dumpster fire was a gift I received from a friend to celebrate. But both can be found on Amazon. If you’re crafty, you can actually purchase a crochet pattern for the dumpster fire on Etsy!
It’s been my first year here! Participating in the Arb has been great and has helped me connect with people I otherwise would have never met. Working solo and entirely self-taught, the Arb and the mentorship program have been great helps for me to stay up to date on platform changes, best practices, and career planning. This forum has really helped me feel less isolated in my roll.
Community is so necessary!
For me, my career win for the year was convincing leadership to create a student worker position to support my work! As the only full-time staff member responsible for website edits, graphic design, social media, and all else events and communication, it was really wearing on me - now I have a student worker for 10 hours a week who can help with newsletters, website edits, and of course, creating posts on Sprout! Sprout has been a great tool for us to use as it helps streamline the review process, giving her power to create while allowing me to make any necessary tweaks as needed.
Congratulations for getting support for your mighty team of one!
Fav career moment was a new job in a new industry! I now work in tourism, which has been such a fun switch from the non-profit world I started my career in. It’s been great to challenge myself in new ways and broaden my marketing skillset.
For me, my career win for the year was convincing leadership to create a student worker position to support my work! As the only full-time staff member responsible for website edits, graphic design, social media, and all else events and communication, it was really wearing on me - now I have a student worker for 10 hours a week who can help with newsletters, website edits, and of course, creating posts on Sprout! Sprout has been a great tool for us to use as it helps streamline the review process, giving her power to create while allowing me to make any necessary tweaks as needed.
Gaining an intern on our team was a big reason I wanted to switch to Sprout this year! It made such a difference being able to create workflows and approval processes, and Sprout is so user friendly that our intern had no problem jumping on. Having that extra help makes such a difference. Happy for you!
This is incredibly nerdy, but a big career win for me this year was creating and documenting an official social media strategy and set of digital policies for my organization. I’m a social media team of one on a new communications team of two, so this kind of documentation has never existed at my organization. I’m so excited to have something to point to when people come to me with questions about what can go on social.
I think people underestimate how important this is, even for small teams. Go you for making it happen! Now I need to go finish my own strategy and policy document for my team, haha.
My biggest 2024 reflection is the growth I have personally had through change within my organization. Bringing teams together and building tons of new relationships done mainly virtually is such a challenge, but I have grown so much this year and really proud of that and all that is to come in 2025! And a plug for Sprout helping to bring our team together virtually is truly the glue where we can improve processes, find efficiencies and make our day-to-day social media world much better! :)
@sarah.scroggins that’s awesome and congrats to you for building those connections within your organization! Our marketing team has been hiring over the past 1.5 years and we FINALLY have a full team and it feels so good for us to focus on connecting and growing now (:
One of my favorite career moments this past year was attending a conference dedicated to career growth. I got to hear some amazing speakers (including Lauren Graham!), and the whole experience was so motivating and inspiring. It helped reinforce that I’m thankful to work for an organization that believes in my potential and actively supports my professional development.
I hear this @amanda.hoffmann! I attended a marketing conference this year and felt the excitement reinvigorate my passion for what we’re all doing. I’m glad you walked away more motivated and inspired!
My team produced a vertical documentary for Instagram Reels for Tony Orlando’s last concert ever. It was special night and my team captured the emotion perfectly. They created it over 8 months ago, but it still makes me emotional to watch it.
Holy cow @nickgilham this is amazing! What a cool project, sometimes months of work makes the end product even more impactful to put out there. Congratulations!
I think finding out how my social media posts are actually making a difference in sign ups for our school events.
My other win was getting yearbook sales up during our initial sales opening discount period from like nothing to double digits!!
Next year I have some more ideas for that to bump it up!
My favorite ARB moments are the live trainings I love them and learn something every time!
As someone who loves the numbers side of running social accounts, looking at the impact in a tangible way can help understand why we all do this job in the first place! Congratulations @ohva.comms on a great year, hoping you success for 2025!
My favorite career moment of the year was being able to collaborate with some social media influencers in our space and put together a successful Instagram campaign reaching more than 500K people! For us, that’s a HUGE number and encouraged me to keep pushing for influencer collaboration whenever we can.
My favorite thing about the ARB is the recording webinars and backlog of learning videos. Super handy since I almost always end up having other meetings at the same time!
Happy working y’all!
This is a minor win, but one of my favorite career moments of the year was my vice president shouting out my social media strategy in an all-staff marketing and communications team meeting. After working in so many toxic offices, it was just a huge win to be recognized for the work I’ve been doing. Some senior leadership has trouble understanding the impact social media has on the brand, so it was a great feeling.
So awesome @tori.zito and great to have buy-in from leadership. Congratulations, you’ve clearly made an impression and deserve that recognition
My favorite career moment was running a successful social campaign for our university’s Homecoming! This year, we moved Homecoming a month later for the first time to align with our basketball team’s home opener. The game was packed! We had some successful giveaways and fun content on social, hitting our registration goals for the weekend. Happy to see everything come together so well!
One of my career wins was coming across a single mom organically using our company’s product (an online real estate pre-licensing course) to help bring her family up and out of their current situation… all while also working a FULL TIME JOB. I reached out and sent her a customized PR box with self-care goodies and study supplies and she chose to unbox it in an additional video, profusely thanking us and sharing the impact our company has made on her. It was incredibly heartwarming.
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Share your favorite Arb or career moment from this year in the comments. What stood out, made an impact, or brought a smile to your face?
Engage with at least two other reflections to celebrate the memories we’ve created together.
