Dawson Banna
My Name is Dawson Banna, and I currently am working in Social Media Management at a Real Estate Company. I have been doing this for a couple of months now, I started back in August of 2022. I graduated from CSUN, in 2020 with my Undergrad in Public Relations. When it came down to choosing CSUN as my university; I was between CSULA and CSUN, but when it really came down to it, CSUN was the school I was meant to be at. If I remember correctly, CSULA didn't offer Public Relations as a major, and I would have had to major in CTVA. At the time, it sounded similar enough. Now, looking back, it was a completely different major that I was glad I did not go into. Public Relations was something I knew I wanted to do since I was around 13/14. I was always obsessed with social media, and how it allowed people to communicate and allow access to any sub-genre across the world. I grew up on tumblr, and just seeing how being on tumblr was a completely different culture in itself was so fascinating to me. So growing up I knew I wanted to learn more about it and I fell into Public Relations. I also had an aunt who worked in the entertainment industry and I wanted to have her job ever since she started!
I do not have too many exciting projects as I am still very new to this Industry but I think every day is a different project and I love the aspect of helping create content and helping clients who think are too shy or not good for video realize that really anyone can do this and it really just comes with practice. However, I also need all the practice I can get behind the camera, experience is basically what I am working for at the moment. I am just putting myself out there and allowing myself to gain any and all experience I can. Although I learned so much from my undergrad, when you actually get to work in the real world, it is not exactly the same as it was in school. So I knew the basics and I had a great foundation on where to start but I was so nervous and I doubted myself a lot. But I think my advice for students who want to work in this career, is to basically just do it, fully send every project and make sure even if you feel unsure, you need to believe in yourself and allow yourself to either succeed or have it not do as well as you think it needed to be and be able to go back and see where you can improve. Allow yourself to fail a little bit and learn from that. In the beginning its your time to learn, and trust that if you are meant to be here, then everything will work out. I think in a year, I don’t know where I am going to be, I would hope that in a year, I’ll have more experience and I'll be able to look back and what I am working on now and be able to see growth in my projects and over time I do hope to be able to work on larger projects and ideally be able to work either freelance or have my own Agency. But we will see!
Right now my typical day is, come in to the office and review what has to be done for the day, whether that be creating content, editing videos, or scheduling a picture to post. At my company, we post every day M-F and we alternate between photos and reels as our main social media platform is Instagram. After we plan out our day it really depends on what I have to do that day content-wise, and then am able to focus on some marketing, we send out some letters to past clients, and also we send out gift boxes to clients that have recently closed on their new house. So every day is different which I love but it just depends on what kind of content I'm creating that day.