Maha Slamani

Media Writing Portfolio

Media Professional Q&A

Jorden Jackson works as a digital content/multimedia specialist, social media manager and creative writer for mHelpDesk and DealYah. A Liberty University graduate with a Bachelor of Science degree in American government and politics, Jackson pursued a public relations degree after graduating from college. She gave the following interview to Maha Slamani on July 13 for a media writing assignment.

Thank you for meeting with me today; I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to do this. What inspired you to want a career in the media field?

The pleasure is all mine! I guess you can say that I did a lot of soul searching in college. I was an American government and politics major, because I wanted to be a lawyer because lawyers make really good money; however, I quickly learned that I absolutely abhor politics and governmental studies and was constantly working on my blog and social media sites instead of doing LSAT practice tests. I did my research to find out if there was any way I could turn my love of social media and blogging into a career, and decided to try and work in the field of public relations after college. Now I can honestly say that I am very happy with my career and love going to work every day.

How did you make that change?

I definitely continued to work hard at my major despite the fact that I was very unmotivated and did not want to work in that field anymore, but I always made sure to get as much practice as I could for the future and build up my credibility by making sure my social media sites and blog were perfect first. That way it would be easier to apply for jobs, because I could show employers that I already had a lot of experience. In regards to post-college, I ended up not going to graduate school. I got really good job offers prior to graduation and decided to join the workforce instead.

How do you apply your knowledge in regards to media to everyday real world situations?

I have been able to make money from my personal blogs and social media sites because of how anal I am when it comes to them. I have also gotten pretty good job offers by looking at random companies’ social media sites and sending them e-mails regarding changes they should make. The media also helps me become more aware of things happening around me, and I do get involved in certain activities based off of what I have heard or read in the media. I think that is about it in regards to ‘real world situations,’ just because social media really is all online and virtual so there is not much I can do with my knowledge in regards to media outside of a computer screen.

How did you choose your particular branch of media?

I chose to work in social media and creative writing because I love to write and I am very creative. I also love social media and how it affects people nowadays. I am also very

interested in designing social media sites and blogs for companies and trying to sell their products through the use of social media tools.

Did you have any prior experience working or interning in media while you were in college?

Honestly, I really wish I did look for a good internship or even a job where I could have gotten paid to work with social media and blogging; I feel like that would have been very fun and an amazing learning experience. Unfortunately, I was always so busy with school and did not have the time; however, I did work very hard on my personal sites until they were perfect, so I feel that I really learned a lot and gained a lot of experience from that.

What is your specific style of media?

I work mainly in social media and blogging; I find that those are my favorite types of media to work on so I do not deviate from them much at all.

How long have you been working in media?

I have been working in media for over seven years now.

What do you hope to do with the rest of your career as a media professional?

That is a really good question and I can honestly say that I have not really thought about it at all. I probably should start thinking about that. Right now I am very happy where I am, working at the executive level for two different startup companies, but maybe one day I may want to be a public relations executive for a Fortune 500 company. I will definitely think about that. Thank you for asking that question!

You are very welcome! What do you hope to gain with the position you are in now in regards to your career?

I honestly just hope to gain a lot of experience and be the best that I could possibly be in regards to what I am doing career-wise.

How do you feel you have helped your companies grow as a media professional?

I was one of the first staff members with both companies, since they are both startups. I am basically helping to build the companies from the ground up and I am in charge of doing all of the social media marketing and blogging so that both companies can build their credibility and make sure they look really good online in regards to their images.

As a media professional, how can you continue to help your companies grow?

Yes, I can definitely continue to help my companies grow. Social media and blogging are huge now in regards to how companies are doing their marketing and trying to gain consumers. The campaigns I have designed so far have been working very well, and I am continuing to work hard and design more campaigns that I am hoping will be very successful in regards to the growth of mHelpDesk and DealYah.

Take me through your creative process. How do you go about designing campaigns for your employers?

The first step is always to meet with my employers and decide exactly what we are trying to accomplish with the specific campaign we are working on. Then from there, I decide which videos, photographs, captions, blog posts and statements to include and I work on drafting it. After that, I show my work to my employers and make any changes they suggest before finally posting all of the pieces of the campaign.

What do you feel are your main goals when designing campaigns and doing your job in general?

I always want to build a genuine bond between the companies I work for and the consumers. I always make sure to make everything I do in regards to the campaigns I work on as heartfelt, personable and humorous as possible, so that our consumers feel like we are their friends and that there is a person with thought and feelings behind the social media accounts and blog, and not just a nameless company like a machine. I also make sure to post frequently and reply to comments and messages right away. At the end of the day, it is really important for me to make the consumers feel as if they are family, not just consumers.

Pre-Event Story

Facebook to host Boost Your Business Event in Maryland

Facebook will be hosting one of its Boost Your Business popup events in Glen

Burnie, Maryland on July 20 from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.

“This Boost Your Business event is a great opportunity for owners of small

businesses in the area to meet each other,” said Nina Ferritto, the event’s main speaker and

a staff member of Facebook’s Small and Medium-sized Businesses (SMB) Growth Global

Marketing Solutions team. “These small business owners will be able to attend a free

event where they will not only be able to network, but they will also learn about how they

can use Facebook to help grow their brands.”

Sponsored by Facebook and the Northern Anne Arundel County Chamber of

Commerce, this Boost Your Business event will take place over one day.

The event will conclude with a giveaway, which will provide a few of the area’s

small business owners the chance to win Facebook advertising credits.

Facebook will be providing a catered breakfast for all of the event’s guests in the

main ballroom located in the special events venue named Michael’s on Eighth Avenue.

At the event, Facebook will have some fun activities for the guests to participate in

before the main event begins, including a photo booth as well as a station where everyone

will be able to customize their own pins for their businesses.

Facebook’s main purpose in hosting this event, as well as others of its kind, is to

educate small business owners on how they can use Facebook to help them grow their

companies. “This type of event is unlike any other. The attendees can learn how to

increase the amount of consumers their businesses have by a large amount just by using

certain features on Facebook,” Ferritto said.

The event will include a panel of businesspeople from around the area that will

share their stories in regards to how Facebook helped them grow their brands. The

panelists will also take questions from audience members, hoping to give them advice that

will help them with the growth of their companies.

“Facebook hosting this Boost Your Business event in the area will definitely help

bring all of the businesspeople in the area together,” said Congressman John Sarbanes, the

United States Representative for Maryland’s third congressional district and one of the

event’s special guests. “It is a good opportunity for everyone to collaborate and realize

how much they can help each other when working together, as well as how much

Facebook alone can help them with the success of their companies.”

According to Facebook’s website, this event is designed to help small business

owners improve the quality of the content on their companies’ Facebook pages, create

engaging material that will resonate with their target audiences, and learn how to create

advertisement campaigns on Facebook.

“Facebook has really thought of everything in regards to this event,” said Ferritto.

“Everything from the food to the activities, speakers, special guests, panelists, and

giveaways are uniquely tapered to the small business owner community and will help

benefit said community. No other company has ever hosted anything like this before, I can

assure you of that.”

Registering for the event is absolutely free, and registration is open up until the

event day on July 20 on Facebook’s Boost Your Business web page. Guests will receive a

confirmation e-mail that they must print out and bring with them to be allowed entry into

the event. The dress code for this Boost Your Business event is completely casual attire.

Event Story

Facebook hosts Boost Your Business event in Glen Burnie

Facebook hosted a Boost Your Business popup event in Glen Burnie, Maryland,

from 10 a.m. to noon Wednesday, July 20.

The event, sponsored by Facebook, had over 100 people in attendance from all

around Maryland, Virginia and Washington D.C. The two-hour-long event started with

opening speeches from Nina Ferritto, the event’s main speaker and a staff member of

Facebook’s Small and Medium-sized Businesses (SMB) Growth Global Marketing

Solutions team, and Congressman John Sarbanes, United States Representative for

Maryland’s third congressional district.

The focal point of this event was the 100-slide presentation showcasing every way

advertising through Facebook could help the small business owners in the audience grow

their businesses. The slides consisted of various videos, charts and images showcasing the

various techniques regarding advertising through Facebook. Afterwards, there was a panel

of business owners from around the area who owed their success to advertising on

Facebook.

Boost your Business was founded by Facebook in 2015. It is a marketing strategy

being used to help the owners of small businesses better utilize the advertising tools

available on Facebook.

“With over 40 million small businesses on Facebook and only two million of them

buying ads, Facebook realized that they had a huge untapped revenue stream,” said Nina

Ferritto. “This is a good way for the company to tap into that revenue stream in a more

interactive way.”

Facebook’s main purpose in hosting this event, as well as others of its kind, is to

educate small business owners on how they can use Facebook to help them grow their

companies. “This type of event is unlike any other. The attendees can learn how to

increase the amount of consumers their businesses have by a large amount just by using

certain features on Facebook,” Ferritto said.

Boost Your Business is organized into a series of four marquee events in addition to over

30 popup events that are transpiring throughout the summer. These events are taking place

all around the United States. At least one event occurs every week.

Attending a Boost Your Business event is completely free. Attendees must register

online prior to the event, because every event has a limited number of seats. Registration

is always open up until the morning of the day of the event.

After the presentation, there was a panel of four entrepreneurs from the Glen

Burnie area who found great success in their careers through the use of advertising on

Facebook. Each panelist gave a small speech regarding how helpful Facebook is

concerning growing small business, then all of the panelists came together and answered a

series of questions from the audience.

The panel was very diverse in terms of both the demographics of the panelists, as

well as the category of business each panelist chose to pursue. This was done on purpose

to ensure as many people in the audience could be helped in the best way possible.

Attendees were given the opportunity to talk to the panelists one-on-one after the

panel, in case they needed any extra advice, or just wanted to network with said panelists.

In addition to the presentation and the panel, Facebook also gave each attendee a

swag bag full of Facebook and Boost Your Business branded items, and provided a

catered breakfast.

Facebook also had some fun activities for the guests to participate in before the

main event began, including a photo booth as well as a station where everyone was able to

customize their own pins for their businesses.

The event concluded with a giveaway, in which three members of the audience

were randomly selected to receive a year’s worth of free advertisements for their

companies, courtesy of Facebook.

“I wish they had opportunities like this for me when I was starting my business,”

said Caroline Blake, optometrist and owner of Glen Burnie Eyecare. “It would have

helped me jumpstart my business so much earlier on in my career.”

The series of Boost Your Business events will take place annually throughout the

summer. The next time this event will return to Maryland is sometime during the summer

of 2017. More information about that will be available on Facebook’s official Boost Your

Business webpage in the spring of 2017.

Facebook’s Boost Your Business event in Glen Burnie has over 100 people in attendace.

Prior to the commencement of the event, Facebook includes fun activities for attendees to participate in, including this display for people to take pictures in front of.

Boost Your Business event speaker Nina Ferritto gives a presentation on how owners of small businesses can use Facebook advertisements to grow their companies.

Opinion Piece

Television and Internet have a negative effect on how women view their bodies

Around the world, the Internet and television are causing young women to view

their body images negatively, greatly affecting their mental health.

“A lot of young women I talked to throughout the course of my career regarding

how they view their bodies have confessed to having a lot of depression and anxiety

regarding how they look,” said Lauren Trost, a former high school counselor at Hayfield

Secondary School. “They have told me how they have spent a lot of time stressing out

about how they look, and how s lot of this stress to look a certain way comes from what

they see online and on television.”

Research shows that both television and the Internet do, in fact, increase the levels

of stress and depression in young women. According to psychiatrist Anne E. Becker’s

book, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, “Understanding vulnerability to images and

values imported with media will be critical to preventing disordered eating and,

potentially, other youth risk behaviors in this population, as well as other populations at

risk.”

Sarah Ramsey, psychologist and mother of five daughters commented, “with

television and the Internet playing such a huge role in the lives of young women

nowadays, it is extremely difficult for women like me to teach our daughters how to be

confident in how they look, and how to have a high sense of self-esteem. They will watch

a movie with seemingly flawless-looking actresses or look at a supermodel’s Instagram

page and that is all is takes for them to start stressing out about how they look and want to

immediately change everything in regards to their physical appearances.

Ramsey also stated that girls who frequently watch television and go on the

Internet to view the women they think they want to look like are three times more likely to

develop emotional issues than girls who do not.

Research also shows that the pressure to look good due to the rise of the media

pushed up cosmetic surgery rates by 20 percent since 2008. Researchers found that these

statistics were directly related to young women wanting to look like the people they

idolized in the media.

I myself have definitely viewed the way that I look negatively, and have wanted to

change the way that I look. When I was around nine years old, most of the celebrities I

saw on television were fair skinned with blue eyes, blonde hair and thin eyebrows. Their

appearance greatly contrasted with my tanned skin, brown eyes, thick eyebrows and

brown hair. I remember telling my mother that when I turned 18 I would dye my hair

blonde, pluck my eyebrows very thin, get my skin bleached, and don blue contact lenses.

Thankfully I did not go though with any of these plans; however, it just goes to show just

how much the media affects young women and the way we view ourselves.

Emma Nance, a college senior at George Mason University, had a very similar

experience with body image negativity due to television and the Internet.

“I noticed at a very young age that all of the gorgeous women on television had

much smaller noses than I did and were much skinnier,” Nance said. “I starved myself for

a long time, and even put a nose job on my Christmas list. I remember constantly being

depressed because I did not feel beautiful.”

Although Nance and had negative experiences regarding comparing her

appearance to what she saw in the media when she was younger, she was able to change

her views as she got older.

“At a point in my life, I started realizing things, like how on commercials for

razors the women shave completely bare legs. I realized that everything I was seeing on

television and online was just one big illusion of how people think society sees perfection.

I realized that this was all one big fantasy and that none of it was real. No one I knew in

real life looked like any of the women I saw in the media.”

In more recent years, there have been more efforts to incorporate a wider variety of

demographics regarding women in the media. Two examples of this include how many

companies stopped editing photographs of their models so that they look thinner, and how

there is a much wider variety of women of all races, sizes, hair colors and heights on

television.

“When we were younger, it always seemed as if there was one type of girl that was

seen as perfect, and the way she was displayed made girls like us think that we had to look

like her or we were not pretty,” Nance said. “It’s amazing how much that has changed,

and how now it seems like there is a celebrity doppelgänger for every average girl out

there.”

Feature Story

Why Wear Hijab?

Fatma Hussein’s college experience differs from that of many American teenage

girls, as she is a religious Muslim who wears a hijab.

Hussein is a lot like the average American young adult. She is an incoming

sophomore at George Mason University majoring in biology. She also loves watching

romantic comedies and hanging out with her friends. While from her various activities and

hobbies Hussein does seem like an average young American woman, she is a religious

Muslim who wears a hijab, or headscarf every day.

Hussein has been wearing the hijab ever since she was nine years old. “I went to an

Islamic private school in elementary school, and a lot of my friends started wearing it, so I

wanted to wear it too,” explained Hussein. “A lot of them no longer wear it, but I fell in

love with it and could not imagine my life without it.”

At the age of nine, Hussein did not really see the hijab as what it was, a lifelong

commitment. She just thought it would be fun to join her friends in wearing it. As Hussein

grew older, she understood the importance of her headscarf and that was when she decided

to keep it on instead of removing it like her friends did.

Hussein has always loved her religion and has always followed it very faithfully.

She has never missed a day of fasting or a single prayer since the age of six. She loved

going to an Islamic private school in elementary school.

Hussein uses her social media accounts to share her religion and thoughts on it to

the world. She frequently posts verses from the Qur’an, Islam’s holy book, as well as

speeches from Islamic scholars.

“I am very supportive of Fatma and I love how she wears the hijab so proudly,”

said Noor Kabbani, Fatma’s best friend “She has always been so strong regarding her

beliefs, and loves to share her beliefs with the world.”

Kabbani, also a young Muslim woman attending George Mason University, is one

of Hussein’s friends from elementary school who decided not to wear the hijab, because

she was not comfortable with the idea of covering her hair.

Since she first started wearing her hijab, Hussein has had to deal with many trials

and tribulations. She has been bullied both in person and online, and has lost many friends

and not been accepted by many people.

Despite all of the negativity surrounding Hussein due to her wearing her headscarf,

she still remains strong and refuses to remove it.

“If people do not like me the way that I am and are petty enough to bully me

because of something that has nothing to do with them whatsoever, why should I have to

suffer and take of my hijab to please them?” Hussein said. “I love my religion and wearing

my hijab, and I like myself the way that I am with this hijab, and so do my family and real

friends.”

The hijab makes Hussein feel whole in her religion and closer to God. Although

she did not exactly understand its purpose when she first wore it in elementary school, she

does now and truly believes in it with all of her heart.

According to research, hijab is the Arabic word meaning veil, or cover. In Islam’s

holy book, the Qur’an, God (Allah) mandates Muslim women to wear the hijab. The main

purpose of this veil is to keep a woman’s physical beauty hidden, so that men are

compelled to focus on the real personality of the women, and not on their physical beauty.

“By wearing the hijab, I know for a fact that the man who falls in love with me

and wants to marry me will want me for my personality, and not for the way I look,” said

Hussein.

In addition to emphasizing a woman’s personality over appearance to men, it is

also believed that the hijab helps bring about the stability and conservation of marriage by

helping to strongly reduce or eliminate the chances of extramarital affairs.

Hussein’s family is extremely supportive of her wearing the hijab. Her mother,

sister, grandmother and aunts wear it as well. They are all very religious, and strongly

believe in the powers of the veil.

While Hussein’s family and close friends all support her wearing the headscarf and

love that she wears it, Hussein says that they never pressured her to keep it on, and even

said they would be very supportive if she decided she did not want to wear it anymore.

According to Slate, a study done in 2007 showed that 51 percent of Muslim

women in the United States wear hijab all or some of the time. There are around three

million Muslims in the United States, with one million of said Muslims being women.

That means around 500,000 women in the United States wear the veil.

While Hussein is one of many women in the United States who wears the hijab,

she is one of the much smaller amount of younger women who choose to wear the veil.

“While I am sure they do exist, I personally do not know a lot of girls my age that

wear hijab full time,” said Hussein. “I do know a lot of girls in high school and college

that wear it when they go to the mosque, on special occasions like the holy month of

fasting (Ramadan) or holidays like Eid, or when they are around a lot of older Muslim

women that wear the hijab.”

Hussein, along with her mother and sister, are setting out to inform more young

Muslim women about the importance of wearing the hijab, in hopes of inspiring some of

them to wear it. They are doing so by starting a social group for Muslim women of all

ages at their Mosque. The women will meet at the mosque every Saturday evening, enjoy

a potluck lunch and time to socialize, and then hear speeches from guest speakers who

wear hijab on the importance of the veil and why it should be worn.

“I think this is an excellent initiative, and I really hope that it will be successful,”

said Hussein. “The women in my family know how important the hijab is to us, and how

much closer it brought us to God and our faith, and we are hoping that by telling our

stories, these women will want to feel the same way, and choose to wear the hijab as

well.”

The target audience for this weekly event that will take place every Saturday at the

Muslim American Society community center and mosque is young Muslim women in

high school and college who currently do not wear the hijab.

Hussein poses for a picture in her hijab and formal prayer dress, or abaya.

Hussein (right) poses for a selfie outside of her mosque with her fellow hijab-wearing friend Dana (left).

Hussein (middle) poses for a selfie with her mother (right) and younger sister (left) on her high school graduation day.