Amy Righter ’15, public relations, used her passion and creativity to build a dynamic career in social media management. Amy’s hands-on experiences and the relationships she built at URI informed her career trajectory, from starting at a small social media agency to working her way up to social media lead at Taskrabbit.
Why did you choose URI?
I really liked the campus. I’m from Massachusetts, so I knew I wanted to stay in New England. When I first visited URI, I thought, “Okay, I like it here.” I went back a second time, and it just felt right. I’m also a big beach person, so I loved the proximity to Narragansett. I also think part of it was I went into college undecided on what I wanted to major in, and URI has a lot of different avenues you can go. So I think having that option was really great as well.
Did you know what you wanted to study before you enrolled?
I think I just knew it wouldn’t be anything within engineering or science. I’m terrible at math. So I think I knew I wanted to do something that would allow me to be creative. So I was kind of in between marketing, PR or communications and after weighing out the options and talking to different people, PR was the way that I went.
What are some of your favorite memories at URI?
One major thing was the people that I met. I’m so super close to my roommates, they’re like my best friends. So I definitely met a lot of great people. I also interned for the athletic department, doing marketing and promotions during basketball games and softball games. So that was also a big highlight, being able to work the basketball games and being part of all the behind the scenes of everything that goes on. And it’s such a fast paced environment.
I feel like some of the classes I took were pretty memorable as well. I’m still connected with one of my professors, Regina Bell, who’s in the Harrington school. Her and I still talk every once in a while, so it’s great to just have that connection, even ten years later. I don’t remember the exact name of the class, but it was a public speaking class, and our final was a dinner party where everyone got to bring one guest and we had to give a speech at the dinner party. So a really unique experience. I mean, especially just along with the major, my friends would be taking crazy exams and I’d be writing a speech to give at a dinner party. So it’s a little more fun to experience things that way.
What is your current job?
I am a social media lead at Taskrabbit, so I work on all of our organic social media channels from strategy to content creation. And I also manage all of our influencer partnerships as well.
How did you become a social media manager?
Out of college, I started my first full time job at an agency and I was doing social media for clients. So I stayed within the agency world for probably 4 or 5 years. Then I transferred to a different job that was in-house at a company. From there, I had a previous coworker who was working at Taskrabbit at the time when the opportunity came up. So I ended up jumping on it. Before I started, they didn’t have any dedicated social media team, so I was able to just kind of come in and start from scratch, which was great.
What are some highlights from your time at Taskrabbit?
I think definitely coming in and being able to start from scratch was really great for me to kind of be able to take things in different directions. I think one thing that our culture is centered around is testing and learning. So I’ve been able to try out a lot of different things and then come back and say whether it’s successful or not. But also, we’re currently a fully remote company, but we do get together every so often in person. So I recently had the opportunity to travel to London for work, and I had never been there before. So, it’s really fun when you get to go to new places and discover that through work. I’ve also been able to be a part of some of our brand photoshoots, which is really cool. So to be able to be on set at a big professional photo shoot and get to see all the behind the scenes that go into that. I think that’s been really fun.
What’s your favorite current social media trend?
I honestly get hooked anytime there’s a dance even though I’m not a dancer whatsoever. I would never do that on our brand channel but, for some reason, any time that’s trending, I always stop to watch each one. We just did this for our brand. There’s this website called Partiful, and you create an invite to send to your friends and people are doing that, but in a sarcastic way. It’s like they’re sending invites like “come over and rot on my couch.” Just stupid stuff like that. So I think that one’s like a pretty funny one that’s going on right now.
What advice would you give students who want to work in social media?
I think that it’s definitely great to be on top of trends, but also, just having a pulse on what different brands are doing and what’s working or what’s not working for them. I personally don’t think that you need to have your own social media page that’s basically like you’re an influencer because I don’t even have time to post on my Instagram half the time. But definitely just knowing all of the channels that currently exist and like how to use them. And also just have a good pulse on content formats that are working. Like, five years ago or so,TikTok wasn’t even a thing. But now that’s the main thing people are posting to social media. So just being able to have a really great understanding and how it fits into a brand’s overall marketing plan. So a lot of times I’ll collaborate with our PR team because PR and social kind of go hand in hand, but also our email team or our product team if there’s something new that’s coming out that we need to promote. So I think having that understanding of how social fits into the bigger picture is really great as well.
How did your time at URI prepare your for your career?
This is going to sound so dated saying this but, back in my day, we didn’t really have classes that were focused on social media because that was when things were really starting to pick up and that was when people were just starting to have careers focused on that. But I think that just having hands-on experience, especially through internships, was really great because I was able to take what I was learning in the classroom and also apply it to real life. So with my internship with the athletics department doing marketing, I was sometimes creating graphics to post on Instagram to promote games. So, just being able to take different learnings and skills and apply them into the real world before even being out of college. I thought it was a good experience.