Ryan Stephens Marketing

Expanding Your Network: Sharing Your Passions

26
March

So I have had an influx in traffic the last couple of days due to all the discussion surrounding Seth Godin’s Summer Internship. I was not surprised to see other applicants utilizing social media and the Internet in an effort to get noticed. After all, Seth’s internship will invariably have a very competitive applicant pool as I suspect it is one of the most sought after marketing internships for college students in the country.

A large chunk of the traffic I have been getting is coming from I Want To Work With Seth Godin, and more specifically this particular post, Seth Godin Internship Applicants. Take the opportunity to check out Richard’s blog because this guy “gets it.”

Having the opportunity to work with Seth Godin would be a phenomenal experience, there’s no doubt about that. What I am anxious to witness though, is how many of the applicants abandon their blogs, social media campaigns, etc. the minute they found out that they did not receive the internship.

The shortest post in Richard’s blog is perhaps the most profound.

We should aspire to be something much greater than Seth Godin’s intern this summer. We should aspire to be the guy/girl who in 20 years time, and by the reputation alone, can inspire the world’s best young talent to run marketing campaigns just to learn from us. Now that is truly a great career objective.

So what if I do not get Seth’s internship? That’s okay because it is about a whole lot more than that in my opinion. It is about the time I took to connect with Richard and the possibility of us working together on something in the future. It is about reaching out to other young marketers who are not settling for a generic account manager position at a boring firm that is unwilling to take risks. It is about expanding your network and sharing your passions with like-minded individuals.

Regardless of whether or not I get the internship, I am going to take advantage of the additional traffic I have received since I started my mini-campaign, and use it to meet new people that are passionate about marketing and cultivating new and intriguing ideas that have the potential to alter the pendulum of momentum in marketing, to unabashedly flip the script on current marketing viewpoints.

Expanding your network with people that share your passions transforms the work you do from tedious and mundane to more of a contagious and indirect repercussion of the way you operate and live your life.

Posted on by Ryan Stephens

6 Comments

Category: networking, relationship marketing Tags :

  • http://www.sethsfavoriteintern.com Brandon

    Ryan, how’s it going? Brandon from sethsfavoriteintern.com here. Great post. I like what both you and Rich said about teaming up to bounce ideas off one another (aka mastermind group). It’s obvious we’re all on the same wavelength and whether or not we are lucky enough to be an intern for Seth Godin remains to be seen. We should get something going. Send me not if you have a chance.

    [Reply]

  • http://www.iwanttoworkwithsethgodin.com Richard Millington

    I was actually a little dubious about whether Seth had the time to go through countless pdf applications and then scan the applicant’s blog/lens/youtube videos.

    But i’ve taken his comment on Brandon’s blog as a good sign.

    It’s tough to be exceptional amongst a group of exceptional people. In theory, the most exceptional, the most remarkable should jump out somehow. In practice we’re looking for ways beyond the application to demonstrate that we are those remarkable candidates (it’s different from a CV).

    I dabbled with a few ideas, but didn’t follow through due to the short time-frame. Amongst them was finding a few other people interested in the internships, bonding over the internet – perhaps setting up a quasi-project to achieve, and then approaching Seth as a group to pick. Likewise I considered buying a bulk load of the Seth Godin toys and selling out, but that’s too difficult to prove.

    As for the application form, i’ve considered a wide variety of approaches, comic strips, embedded videos, massive pages (hey, he just said 4 pages!), stories, and plenty more. How are you guys finding it? No need to go into specifics, I wont :-)

    It would be great to work on something sometime.

    [Reply]

  • http://www.sethsfavoriteintern.com Brandon

    It’s funny that you said approaching him as a group…I thought about proposing doing the same thing with our social media crew (you, Richard, Sebastian, and myself). I’m also trying to come up with a creative way to present all the info about me. I want it to represent me well and be compelling, yet in as concise a manner as possible.

    It is pretty cool to know if nothing else our efforts weren’t wasted because we can chat and spring ideas off one another. Shoot me an email if you want to talk more off the record.

    [Reply]

  • http://www.iwanttoworkwithsethgodin.com Richard Millington

    heh, I would, but I can’t think of anything secretive enough to say off the record.

    [Reply]

  • http://thepurpleintern.blogspot.com Yifei Zhang

    Hey Ryan,

    I actually just came across your blog via Richard – it’s fantastic to meet other talented and accomplished applicants.

    Just droppin’ by to wish you the best. If all works out, we’ll all be seeing each other in NY soon enough. :)

    Cheers,
    Yifei

    [Reply]

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