Lauren Landry of BostInnovation Edu asked that she write a bit about my social media-obsessed self. I was honored to be considered newsworthy! Other BostInnovation Edu spotlightees include fellow BU Social Medialite Emma Tangerine Tangoren.

I get asked these questions a bit from time to time, so I decided to post some excerpts from what’s to come in the BostInnovation Edu piece– stay tuned!

What initially drew you to social media, and what do you think it has the power to do?
I was initially drawn to social media because I thought it had the power to do so much. I’m an advertising major and sociology minor, so I could sense that it was people my age who were really involved and engaging online, and a lot of the conversation was (and still is) about the field of social media itself. I’ve been tweeting since 2009 (January 5th, to be exact– I hope to have a 3 year twanniversary celebration), and at the time, every platform was developing very rapidly. The only people online to engage with at first were fellow Bay State (the nation’s longest-running and award-winning college soap opera) folks, but I’ve always loved watching what brands do in social and how they use this raw space as a way to explore their audiences and their own brand. Every day I come across a new drool-worthy campaign or strategy from somewhere.

Truthfully, when I started thinking about internships and potential career goals during my sophomore year at BU (shout out to Jon Scagos, who sat with me for hours composing my resume and helped set me up for life– his help was extraordinarily valuable),  I quickly realized that my obsession with Twitter was something I could leverage to set me apart in the aggressively competitive job market. Every AdAge and Mashable article I’d read said something about how “emerging” the field was, and I knew that, as a “millennial,” I could provide companies with a fresh perspective they need. Twitter and social media was very confusing for a lot of people, and I just decided to keep calm and tweet on.

Many of my positions were self-created and self-appointed. For example, I approached the President of my sorority and explained why a social presence made sense for philanthropic and recruitment efforts. It evolved into a really fun position with Twitter and foursquare presentations to the group, and has served as a relevant way to include my Greek affiliation on my resume.

Interning with Showtime Networks and HBO were two of the most educational opportunities I’ve had, ever. I interned in essentially the same department at both networks (though the companies are structured differently), and both of the Digital Marketing and Social Media teams taught me so much about gauging audiences, quantifying the social space, and how and why a creative manipulation of the platforms is crucial.

Sabrina Caluori was my supervisor at HBO and she has an absolutely incredible understanding of the bigger picture of social media marketing. Her leadership in particular really emphasized all facets of a social strategy and helped me understand the greater why that, in this industry, often gets buried beneath things that are “cool,” where a lot of brands can forget the actual purpose of their message.

In a meeting last summer, Sabrina said “social media is not a campaign, it is a long-term strategy,” and I’ve loserly been obsessed with that quote ever since. I’m going to get it tattooed on my face. Social media is so new that people get confused between campaign and strategy, but I think HBO’s social media presence is a great example of social media with strategic longevity.

HBO Connect, HBO's social experience

Not many college students have close to 2,400 followers on Twitter. How did you build that following?
I’d like to think that my Twitter following is based on my keen expertise and personal enthusiasm for the space. True life: I’m friends with @JoJoistheway and a lot of her fans follow me for some reason. Anytime she tweets at me my follower count triples. #idonthateit

During the World Cup, an Argentine fan of JoJo @ replied me with a twitpic of a customized “Monte” jersey they’d produced, asking for my address to mail me the gift. I politely declined the offering.

What are your top three favorite Twitter handles and/or blogs to follow?

Holy hashtag, I could never name just 3 faves. On Twitter, I learn the most from following @SabrinaCaluori, @kaitlinmaud, & @schneidermike. Among others, they’ve taught me a lot about the industry and have served as huge mentors whether they know it or not. For entertainment, @lenadunham and @BretEastonEllis are hilarious to follow because they often become the characters they’ve created. My latest favorite blog is DEFINITELY Suri’s Burn Book. Whoever is running that tumblr is absolutely brilliant and poor Suri Cruise has never been, and may never become, quite so awesome.

Stay tuned for the full piece #comingsoon!

HERE IT IS

I. love. this. word.

zeitgeist. Say it aloud. zeitgeist.

tweet it.

hashtag it.

it’s an awesome word. I don’t remember where or when I first heard it, but I know that if there’s an opportunity to use it, I go for it. Not everyone is sure exactly what it means, though it isn’t too challenging of a word that no one’s ever heard of it or couldn’t decipher its meaning based on context.

Zeitgeist is a word that truly captures how awesome words with cool meanings are, since it means something awesome, and sounds awesome too. zeitgeist itself is awesome. and the word is awesome. and the concept is awesome.

At a time when technology and cultural shifts are so ubiquitous, I find myself integrating this term into casual conversation more often than could be considered normal,which inevitably leads to the conversation shift towards a discussion of the word zeitgeist.

So, say it again. zeitgeist. Now use it. zeitgeist. Now use it tomorrow. and then once more next week. and then always remember to use it always, for it is an AWESOME word.

In high school I joined indoor track and race-walked so I could have athletics on my college resume and appear well rounded. Sports? Not my thing. Hashtags? Something I can get on board with.

Mississippi State painted a #hailstate hashtag in their end zone for a big game and HOLY HASHTAG this is brilliant. The idea is so obvious and it had never been done before! I don’t really follow baseball (that was a joke that some people may not know that I know was a joke, and end zones are for soccer football, obviously, and I knew all that before coming across this story).

This is an AMAZING way for fans at the game and at home to follow along and promote the hashtag and the game.  It’s the first time I have ever felt left out coming from a football-less school.  We can be sure to see this start happening in professional sports and all over the place. With foursquare event check ins as well, the social experience at sporting events (and all events) is sure to expand in the coming months exponentially. I raise my teacup to you, Mississippi State Bulldogs. Brava. #HAILSTATE

It is hardly a secret that Eastern Standard (Kitchen & Drinks) in Kenmore Square is my happy place. The restaurant is absolutely perfect for any and every and all occasions, and I absolutely love it there.

Garrett, silver fox.

In fall of 2010, when I learned that Garrett Harker and Jackson Cannon, the brilliance behind ESKD, were opening a seafood haven on the same block as ESKD, I thought things in Kenmore Square could never possibly get better. Alas, I should know that anyone behind something as magical as a Blueberry Thrill will always have more delights up their sleeve. Island Creek Oyster Bar (ICOB) was not the only space in the east of the square, and I learned last summer that the vacant space that had been a bar/ lounge months prior, was to be the next execution of the glorious Commonwealth Avenue vision.

The Hawthorne is the lounge to Eastern Standard’s restaurant, if you will, and it is far more than that. “Bar 500A” (as the Twitter handle speakeasily asserts) offers craft cocktails, fine wines, and small bites that match perfectly with the venues sleek and simultaneously homey atmosphere. Opening night was packed with swanky Bostonians who had similarly been waiting with bated breath for the doors to open.

menu snapshot

The Aviation, one of my favorite cocktails that ES prepares exquisitely, can be made “ancient or modern” and both ways are DIVINE. The coming weeks will allow the bar to settle itself and really shine as the premier hang out (and GREAT party venue) on Commonwealth Avenue. I look forward to many evenings of decadence at one of my new favorite spots!

the main bar room

I’m not a huge fan of burgers. But I know a damn good one when I eat one.

My friend was interning in New York over the summer and her office would send her out to pick up burgers for lunch. Finally, Katie tried it and understood why it was worth the car they sent for her, and she took me to the hell’s kitchen location of 5 Napkin Burger for dinner.

I decided to try this burger of 5 napkins, assuming that surely the namesake of the restaurant would be at least remotely satisfying. It was so much more than that. It oozed. It dripped. I felt the sensation of the taste of this burger throughout my entire body and as I chewed each bite was more rich and delectable than the first. This is the best burger I’ve ever had.

I don’t even like half the ingredients, but together they do something WILD. There’s one in the Prudential Center, and Katie and I frequent it more than the average post-freshman-fifteen college student should. Some things, like anything with a rosemary aioli, are just worth it.

I was a senior in high school. I had been watching General Hospital at 3pm every weekday since I was in the womb. I was a major Drama Club nerd, and loved acting. I was looking at Boston University for the first time and touring the College of Communication.

On the wall outside of Studio East on the third floor of the COM Building, I was on a student-guided tour and the film major had just pointed to a poster, explaining that this was the stage where Bay State, the nation’s longest-running, award-winning college soap opera, was filmed every Tuesday.

That was the moment.

I had to come to BU. I had to be on Bay State. Period.

Fortunately, the admissions process worked out nicely for me and by the time I arrived on campus freshman year I knew which club email list I wanted to join.

In auditions, I remember choosing to read for the role of Olivia Montgomery because she seemed the most like Blair Waldorf, my beloved character from the CW’s Gossip Girl.

I got a callback. I was ecstatic. I read again for Olivia. This role needed to be mine. A week later, I got a call from an unknown number, and was offered the role because they “really loved the bitchy Blair Waldorf quality” I brought to the role. Win. Destiny.

I haven’t looked back since. 5 seasons and many episodes of elevator fires, marijuanna scandals, sex, drugs, and murder, and Bay State has been one of the best experiences of my college career. It was a great way for me to satiate the part of my appetite that wanted to act, but try something completely different from musicals and plays. The production is entirely student-run and is a true testament to what students with an affinity for daytime TV can do when they get together on Tuesday evenings. The entire cast and crew is brilliant, creative, hilarious, and Bay State will be something I miss more than anything when my time at BU ends.

Stream episodes 24/7 at butv10.com!

That was my disclaimer. (I love HBO. I love GetGlue. I interned at HBO. This is a biased post.)

I was honored to intern this past summer in the Digital Marketing & Social Media department of HBO in New York. As a social uberfan, getting to see how the network leveraged social media and their networks to engage audiences and fuel conversations (two of the most over-used phrases #ever, but nothing else accurately describes the outcome of a great social strategy…) was remarkable.

In particular, HBO’s work with GetGlue was very cool. GetGlue is the social network that works like “foursquare for entertainment” and users can check in to the show they’re watching, for example, and share their viewing experience with their friends while gaining “stickers” and other virtual rewards.

HBO, however, took the platform further to offer more to fans of HBO shows. In anticipation for the newest season of True Blood, HBO worked with GetGlue to make stickers that would allow users to obtain the virtual reward of the sticker (bragging rights), and then every few winners would randomly win a special sticker that would win them a bottle of real-world Tru Blood. A simple promotion, that goes above and beyond the expected, and solidifies the fans’ relationship with the show, rewarding them in all sorts of ways! Their victory is shareable, and continues the fandom. What a brilliant use of the platform at a time when many brands are in the process of navigating the emerging social space. Check out what GetGlue’s blog had to say about the stickers here.

Last October, my dear friend and fellow COM (College of Communication, the communication school within Boston University) student, Chris Wilcox approached me with a “quick biddie problem.” Adopting the long-adored COM concept of biddidom (being a typical, cliche, CHICK, chatting via Blackberry, rocking Uggs, and so on), Chris proposed that I be the Miss to his Mister COM and compete in BU Programming Council’s annual Mr. & Miss. BU Competition. Two students from each of the 9 schools and colleges at BU compete to wear the official Mr. and Miss BU crown, and they get tickets to some hockey game that seems to matter a lot to everyone, excluding sports-pass waiving me.

Favorite Decade Day: 60's Mad Men!

I was absolutely honored to become Miss. COM, and after a week of themed picture-taking and Facebook blasting preparation, at 7pm on Saturday, Chris and I donned our scarlet and white sashes to begin our rapid descent to rest among the other well-meaning COM hopefuls who were robbed of the chance to tweet about a University pageant victory.

Past COMtestants (Mr. and Miss BU contestants from COM) always seemed so naturally to fit the role of Mr. and Miss BU that most students make the assumption that victory is only follower-count deep. This is not the case. Let me say, Mr. and Miss CFA can rock the CFAsbah, and our questions were biased and unfair. #obvz.

Learning the opening dance sequence was the greatest challenge we faced, but fortunately my high school Drama Club Presidency (*rubs dirt off shoulders*) was spent learning many a box step, and I can work jazz hands better than Sharpay Evans.

Sharpay and Ryan, of High School Musical, dance and bop to the top

The Newlywed Game meant each contestant had to know enough about the other to guess whether they preferred Starbucks or Dunks (EASY. CHRIS IS SO DUNKS. I AM SO STARBS.) Chris and I have known each other since freshman year, so we assumed we had this in the bag. Alas, despite having found one another in a group ice breaker at the third Admissions Ambassador meeting in January of 09, Chris and I could not properly identify one another’s preferred newspaper publication. Sorry, panel of question-concocters, there’s about  A BERJILLION to choose from. #RIGGED.

Then the contest moved on to “Name that Hashtag” which put far more pressure on us than I could ever have imagined, and Chris and I froze and bombed COMICALLY and miserably when given random pictures to assign witty hashtags to. #twaddictproblems

Lastly, it was time for “TALENTS.” This was the big make or break of the show, and naturally Chris and I rewrote the lyrics to the Spice Girls classic “Wannabe” at 1pm that day, because in COM we major in #procrastination. If I do say so myself, our performance was not the absolute worst, and nothing we could have done could have lived up to the mastery of some of the other schools. I mean, CFA CLEARLY has an advantage here. Then again, one would think we’d have a leg up in the hashtag round, so #nevermind.

When it came time for deliberation, counting @DeanElmore as a follower on Twitter did NOT help the votes, and we regretfully relinquished our hopes to Mr. and Miss. CFA who did genuinely perform astoundingly overall.

Despite a treacherous defeat, Chris and I had an absolute BLAST participating and making fools of ourselves in front of the entire student body. All’s not lost, I got to put that I was Miss COM on my Linked In page, and I kept my sash. To be buried in. From that time I peaked senior year of college.

A big thanks to everyone that came out to support us!!

I love lamb. Inspired by Lambfest ’11, when cooking for my roommates this week, I decided lamb was indubitably going to be on the menu. I come from a family of great cooks, so I have always loved good food and cooking. Home-cooked meals have always been a relative normality in my apartments, and  why not, when cooking can often be just as easy as trekking down the block to Raising Cane’s? (Which by the way, when done properly, can be pretty darn delicious in its own right, my first impressions about that place were way off.)

For the lamb, I couldn’t open the tin of the rub that I picked up at Lambfest, so I just concocted my own with some of my favorite herbs and spices. I cook with a lot of rosemary so I added some (read: a lot) of rosemary. (ALWAYS. ALWAYS ROSEMARY. ROSEMARY CHICKEN. ROSEMARY POTATOES. ROSEMARY CHOCOLATE CAKE. ROSEMARY’S THE BEST BEST BEST!) Though I detest the licorice taste of fennel, fennel seed is my ABSOLUTE favorite, and I love it in sausage and on some meats. With the richness and heartiness of the lamb, fennel seed is perfection. I finished the chops off with some garlic, soy sauce, olive oil, salt, pepper, (the usual), and popped them into the broiler until they were done!

I have always loved radiatore pasta, and whoever claims that all pasta tastes the same: never eat pasta again. You are not worthy. Radiatore pasta tastes better than all others; wagon wheels come in a close second. The supermarket on BU’s campus does not carry enough radiatore variety, and I had to settle on some weirdo veggie brand of radiatore pasta that apparently gives you like 19 full servings of vegetables? It just tasted like pasta. Doused in pesto and parmesan, obviously. My roommates last year all loved parmesan cheese almost as much as I do, and it was a running joke that we were “parmesan people” because we would go through 5 containers of the store-bought cheese every 2 weeks. (I actually don’t think that’s such an exaggeration.)

Spinach is one of my favorite veggies, and it’s so easy to prepare! I hate how you buy a whole package thinking it’s this monstrous amount of green and then when it’s sautéed there’s enough for maybe 1.5 portions. Spinach is all water so it shrivels quick and magically disappears in the pan, but I love sautéed spinach in a pan with some olive oil, soy sauce, garlic, salt, and a tiny squirt of lemon for some zest.

The meal was the perfect satisfaction for my extended lamb cravings, and the indulgence was a simple, practical meal on a Sunday night. #DELISH

I am not a “foodie.” I really like eating good food. Lamb is one of my favorite foods. If lamb, tuna tar tare, or truffle oil are anywhere on a menu, I indubitably will be ordering those menu items. When I heard about the American Lamb Pro-Am LAMB FEST in Boston for the reasonable rate of $25, I knew I couldn’t miss it. My friend Mister Wang is a foodie, and on Sunday we ventured to Hotel Marlowe in Cambridge to stuff our faces with LAMB.

American Lamb, BostonChefs.com, and Boston restaurants (Russell House Tavern, Pigalle, Bambara, & KO Prime) teamed up with bloggers (Doves and Figs, Just Add Cheese, Cave Cibum, & Two Recipes) to provide four lamb dishes to taste (once, twice, thrice…) and vote on. There were also delicious drinks to accompany the dishes, and Kevin and I sat and discussed texture, taste, presentation, while unleashing our inner Padma.

Russell House Tavern’s Chef Michael P. Scelfo & Doves and Figs‘ Robin Cohen served up an Autumn American Lamb Roast Stuffed with Lamb Apple Sausage and a sweet jam that was perfectly sweet and savory, and ended up winning the competition.

My vote went to Pigalle’s Chef Marc Orfaly and the bloggers of Just Add Cheese. Their Moroccan Style Lamb Chapati was #beyond. I don’t even like Moroccan food and it was just the right amount of curry that didn’t overwhelm the dish, and TWO TEXTURES OF LAMB!? I helped myself to three portions. Sorry I’m not sorry. It was absolutely splendid and cucumbers will subsequently never be the same for me.

Runner up for me was Bambara and Cave Cibum‘s Pumpkin Rice-Stuffed Lamb Roast. It won visually and tastefully in my book (but nothing was like that darn Moroccan dish). The colors were the purdiest, and the dish itself was equal parts seasonally appropriate and delicious.

Phoning it in in last place for me was KO Prime‘s Roast Lamb tacos that weren’t anything particularly special when compared with the other dishes. I only had one helping of the tacos, while the other dishes got at least a second try for my vote.

American Lamb also provided a rub that I intend to douse lamb in this week, and my phone and computer are now bedecked with their delightful I Heart Lamb stickers. While I personally think the Moroccan Lamb was the greatest lamb dish ever to be prepared, the jam and Lamb Roast deserved to win just as much, as all the dishes were genuinely incredible, and I’ll usually enjoy lamb prepared in any possible form. Congrats to the scrumptious winners, and I’m off to finish digesting this unfortunate, but well worth it, food coma. #stuffed