K’S PATHMy passion for animals and the welfare of them led me to The Kuwait Society for the Protection of Animals and Their Habitat (K’S PATH) during my 18-month deployment with the US Army. K’S PATH is Kuwait’s only non-kill animal shelter, giving over 200 abandoned domestic and wild animals home. Like most non-profit organizations, they are limited by a small operating budget. They depend on volunteer workers to help in the day-to-day care of the animals and donations from outside resourc-es. Using my marketing and fund-raising experience, I helped spearhead a social media project for K’S PATH to increase out-reach, donations, and awareness. The content I created for K’S PATH’s Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram accounts has resulted in over 20,000 followers across their social media platforms.

STREET CAT STERILIZATION CLINICSKuwait has a large street cat population that continues to grow because they are not neutered. Because of limited resources and assistance, I used my military connections and had the US Army veterinarians get involved. Both the Army and K’S PATH personel decided to implement a Trap, Neuter, and Release (TNR) program. By using social media we were able to bring awareness to the program. This increased donations and volunteers directly to the TNR program. This also led to increased involvement by the US military due to the positive publicity. We were able to acquire over 1,000 new followers on Facebook and Instagram combined.

SUMMER FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGNTo successfully feed and care for the over 200 animals that call K’S PATH shelter home, it would take 10,000 Kuwaiti Di-nar (the equivelant of $35,000 US currency) per six months. Thanks in large part to our social media platforms, we let the the public know this and were successful in reaching that goal and then some in just two months. The final amount raised equaled over $50,000 US.

NATIONAL RECOGNITIONThe various social media platforms played a huge role in the growth of K’S PATH. The Kuwaiti government took notice of this and granted the non-profit legal status, officially recog-nizing them as one of the nation’s humanitarian resources. The United Nations honored K’S PATH for their efforts in vol-unteer work and humanitarian service in turn.

K’S PATHVOLUNTEER WORK & GROWTHWhen I arrived in Kuwait and was introduced to K’S PATH, they had just under 300 registered volunteers. During my time as-sisting K’S PATH we doubled that number. 250 of those volunteers I recruited from the U.S. military by reaching out through the Army and Air Force Company’s Facebook pages and through official U.S. Army online military publications. Social Media, particularly Facebook and Instagram were key in getting the K’S PATH mission and it’s need for volunteers out to the Kuwaiti and military public. For my efforts I was awarded the U.S. Army’s prestigious Military Outstanding Volunteer Service Medal as well as the Humanitarian Service Medal.

CROSSFIT ARIFIJANDuring my 18-month Army deployment to the Middle East I volunteered my time to serve as the Social Media Manager and Facebook administrator for CrossFit Arifijan (CFAJ). My main objective in that role was increasing awareness of the CrossFit affiliate to over 20,000 U.S. Soldiers and civilian employees stationed in and traveling through Kuwait. I did this using unique keywords and hash tags, posting articles, videos and pictures specific to our demographic, posting workouts, using the page as a message board and general gym and CrossFit news. During my time as Social Media Manager, CFAJ garnered 1,500 new followers with over 150 post engagements.

THE PETITE ATHLEATCourtney Worthington was one of the CrossFit coaches in Kuwait. She left Kuwait to come back to the U.S. to pursue her own personal training, CrossFit instruction and nutrition business. She asked me to assist her based on my previous success with the CFAJ social platforms. The first step was to create a unique brand that would separate her from other people in her line of work. We created “The Petite Athleat” to fulfill that objective. What followed was a social media plan that would immerse all followers and clients in her day-to-day life. The immersion process includes blogging, photos, workout and nutrition tips. To date her combined followers total over 16,000.

ILLINOIS NATIONAL GUARDAs a Public Affairs Officer for the Illinois National Guard (ILNG) it was my duty to oversee all content that was put on the official social media sites. These included Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr. Most of the content was press releases accompa-nied by photos. In addition to that, I was also tasked to work with the National Guard Recruiting and Retention Department to create content that would shine a positive light on the National Guard and promote the ILNG mission and policies to their 20,000 social media followers. During my deployment to Kuwait I served the same role for the 3rd Sustainment Brigade, an active duty Army entity, and their combined 8,000 followers on Facebook and Twitter.

COLLEGIATE ATHLETICSThe beginnings of my social media background started with collegiate athletics, one of the biggest beneficiaries of the social media boom over the last five years. The role of social media in collegiate athletics has been to promote and to inform follow-ers of their particular brand. This has led to multiple billion dollar industries and now acts as the main source for information for fans, alumni and students.

SOUTHEAST MISSOURI STATE UNIVERSITY REDHAWKSServing as the webmaster for the official Southeast Missouri (SEMO) Athletics website, I had a lot of input on the branding and promotion of the University’s 18 varsity athletic teams. At the time Facebook was only available to those who had a .edu. Using this knowledge, I set up the athletics official Facebook page to attract students and faculty in 2009. It was humble beginnings, as we had just 170 followers that first year. That number would double in 2010 and then triple in size to over 1,200 followers by the time I left in 2011. During that same period I started the departments official Twitter page. Currently the pages I started at SEMO have over 15,000 followers on Facebook and 6,900 on Twitter.

SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY EDWARDSVILLE COUGARSMy current role for the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) Cou-gars Athletic Department is official department sports photographer. I provide photo content from various SIUE athletic events to be used not only for press releases but for branding and promotional use. My role is not just to take pho-tos of the action but to keep an eye out and capture unique images that can be used for branding and promotions. SIUE is like many other college athletic departments as they use social media as their main resource for these two initiatives. Currently they have a combined 17,000 followers across all their official social media platforms which include Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

ATHLETE’S EYEMy passion for photography goes back to when my father built a darkroom for me in the garage when I was in high school. It was something I expounded on later in college and culminated when I was formally trained by the U.S. Army. This led to me create Athlete’s Eye as my outlet for that passion and at the same time generate extra revenue. Recently, through the use of my knowledge and experience in social media, I started both an Instagram and Facebook page specifically for my young business. This allows my work to get seen and to hit specific demographics by using creative tagging. By using the right hash tags I was able to increase the number of followers on my Instagram page from 7 to 212 during a two-day span. This has led to increase business and requests for more pictures that capture the uniqueness of athletic competition. This social media project is one that will continue to grow as I stick to the formula of demographic tagging and creative photographs.