We are brands

If the above Facebook screenshot doesn't show you enough, college students aren't people. They're brands. We're instructed to brand ourselves to not only obtain jobs, internships and leadership positions, but to advertise what we are involved in.

At first, some see this as bragging. Oh, person X wants to show everyone that they're involved on campus so they put up pictures from it. After almost three years at Mizzou, I see it as the standard, more of a requirement. Word of mouth advertising is no longer done by conversation, but by our social media outlets. If you are a campus group with an upcoming event and don't have your whole organization change their profile pictures to reflect it, you're bad at publicizing events. Judged.

Seeing my own profile look like this a few weeks ago made me feel ridiculous. Where is the me in here? But pondering the concept, I noticed that this IS me. I give a vast amount of my time to these groups, and want the best people to continue their success in the future. So I sacrifice branding myself on one outlet and brand them for a few weeks. And if one more person applied for Homecoming Steering Committee or remembered to register for Relay For Life, it has succeeded.

So next time you're publicizing something, understand that it's the norm to create profile and cover photos to get the word out. College students become invested in their activities and to an extent, want their friends to know what they're involved in. We spend so much time on our Facebook pages, why not advertise things we like there? One Facebook study cited by Mashable declares that Facebook profiles do in fact accurately predict job performance. After being forced to do it so many times, I think that someone willing to change a profile picture to recruit for an organization knows how to make sacrifices, is confident in his or her social skills and loyal to groups. Now, go sign up for Relay For Life of Mizzou!