The Pay It Forward Project is the continuation of a series of articles I started here in 2010 spotlighting some individuals who were recommended to me for the article I wrote on Mashable, 4 Essential Traits for Social Media Success in Your Career. The purpose of my project, detailed here, was to profile some social media professionals to keep an eye on in the coming year.
The 2011 Pay It Forward profiles will consist of the 2nd generation of spotlights — individuals recommended by those who were featured in the 2010 series.
Spotlight: Jason Peck
Title: Social Media Manager
Employer: eWayDirect
Who paid it forward: DJ Waldow
Jason Peck is a Social Media Manager for eWayDirect, a full-service emarketing service provider. He is also the founder of Highway 24 Media, LLC, a social media consultancy. He attended UNC Chapel Hill where he studied Journalism with a focus on Advertising. His love for creative writing helped him land an internship for a media agency. But his first love was sports, and he was always interested in the marketing side of athletics.
After Jason graduated in 2006, he landed first job at OnSport, a sports marketing agency. This was like a dream job for a guy coming out of college, and it started him getting interested in new media technologies. In his own words, Jason “nerded out” and wanted to learn as much as possible. He had gotten on Facebook when he was in college, so he wanted to figure out how he could combine his passion for sports and social media.
Jason had started a blog during his senior year of high school as a way to share information with friends about his growing interest in computers and the Internet. While at OnSport, he began writing out his thoughts on social media and its use in athletics. In 2008, he left OnSport and began his own consulting business. PrepChamps helped him combine his passion for social media and helping companies reach the right people with sports. He connected high school students with college coaches who had scholarships to offer by running offline events in conjunction with an online site. After PrepChamps closed, he joined eWayDirect.
Where Jason sees social media going in twelve months: Jason feels that we will see more integration across different business functions when it comes to social media. There will be better collaboration and communication across companies when it comes to the use of social media, depending on what a company’s goals are, who owns it, who the passionate people are, and so forth. Jason also believes that there will be a greater interest in the use of social media to drive product development and customer service, and there will be more focus on tangible measurement. Location-based technologies are very interesting to Jason, and he thinks that companies offering LBS will have to make it easier for people to check in and offer more value to get people interested. He says, “Mayorships are nice, but people want more.”
Some of the people who have inspired Jason:
- His parents: Jason says they were always supportive of anything he wanted to do. His mother went back to medical school when he was fifteen, and they were in college together. Her persistence in pursuit of a dream was inspirational to him.
- Amber Naslund: her blog is a must-read for Jason.
- Wayne Sutton: a prolific Raleigh-based social media aficionado. Jason says he’s one of the people who started tweetups around the Raleigh area.
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