vanessa interview (1)

Vanessa Shimony discusses her favorite social media platform, TikTok, and how it incorporates features from other platforms. She primarily uses the messaging feature to share TikToks with friends. Vanessa aims to spread positivity through her social media and wants her profile to reflect her bright and vibrant personality. She has always been aware of her digital footprint and protects her privacy by keeping her accounts private and not sharing personal information. She believes that trackers and targeted ads are part of the cost of using social media, as long as users are smart about their online activities. Vanessa explains the inspiration behind her artistic and alluring logo for her podcast, which focuses on women in media. Her dream professional job is to be a broadcaster, either in sports commentating or news anchoring. She plans to focus on posting content related to her profession and showcase her experiences to potential employers. Vanessa intends to have separate professional Hello everyone, welcome back to my podcast. I'm your host, Susanna Coyle, here today with Vanessa Shimony, here to talk about social media presence. So Vanessa, I was reviewing your podcast episode on SoundCloud the other day about your social media, where you talked about Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok. So what is your favorite social media platform? Well first, Susanna, thank you for having me today. It's an honor to be here. But second off, I think my favorite is probably TikTok, just because TikTok is definitely the most engaging, in my opinion, out of all the platforms. You know, you have live, you can DM people, you can video call people, you have a live streaming option, you have an option where you can buy things. There's a lot of unique parts about it, but I feel like, you know, Instagram has the DMing part, but Facebook has like a shopping center. And it kind of just like incorporates all the big parts of all the other social media platforms and puts it into one. And that's what I think is the most unique about it, is because every single thing you possibly want to do on a social media platform, you get on TikTok. Right, and what would you say is the feature that you use the most? The feature I use the most is probably DMing, probably messaging people, just because like a lot of the feed I get, I'll see something and it'll make me think of somebody. So then I'll want to send it to a friend and then it'll make them think of somebody. And I kind of like, I just end up sending a lot of TikToks I see that make me think of people to other people. So I would definitely say that messaging aspect is probably the part I use the most. Right, I see that. And they have like the option to like DM within the app and like send the link outside of the app. In your audit, you mentioned only using social media to post positive content. So what do you want social media users to think about when they see your profile? I mean, I feel like the whole purpose of creating social media was to spread positive messages and positive aspects about life. So I feel like when people see my feed, I want them to know that that is a reflection of my personality. I'm somebody who's like very bright and very vibrant. I'm somebody who doesn't like to focus on negative things. So I feel like I would want people to see my feed and think, oh, like that's a true representation of her personality. Because it is, in my opinion. I think it is. Right. And like, have you always been aware of the concept of digital footprint? Oh, absolutely. Because I grew up with three older siblings. And, you know, my older sister is eight years older than me. So I was always hearing my mom talking about, you know, like Nadia, like you have to be, Nadia is my sister's name. She'd always be like, Nadia, like you have to be careful. College acceptance people look at the things you're posting in high school. And so it's kind of been rooted into me at a young age. So I have definitely always been aware of that. Okay. And how do you attempt to protect your privacy online? I mean, I mean, obviously it's not like I'm going around like sharing passwords with people. I'm the only one who has any access to my account. The majority of the social media platforms I have are private. So I'm in control of who's following me, who's not following me, who's seeing what I'm posting. And I think as long as you just don't leave anything in your account that could hurt you or leave any information in there as like, quote unquote, people, that the people who run the accounts can come back and take from you, then I think you're probably in an okay spot. So all this stuff like online about like trackers and targeting, like does that scare you at all? Or you just think it's like part of like the cost that comes with social media? I honestly do think it's part of the cost. I think that, I mean, as long as you're not posting anything that can come back to get you at the end of the day, I feel like trackers, like they can throw targeted ads at you. They can do other stuff that they think they'll be able to get you with. But as long as you're smart about what you're doing, you're not clicking on random links that people are DMing you. You're not going out of your way to leave like your credit card information in apps and things like that, then as long as you're smart, I think you're probably in an okay spot. I agree, yeah. I saw the logo for your SoundCloud. It was super artistic and alluring. Thank you. I loved it. So how did you come up with that? Well, I definitely wanted my logo to represent who I was. So I wanted to pick orange because orange is like a bright color. It's very loud. It's very welcoming. So that was definitely what I was going for. And I wanted to do more of like a feminist kind of approach to my logo because my focus was women in media. So I did a silhouette of a woman just because I feel like nothing could tone harder about a message with women in media than literally a picture of a woman on the logo. And I felt like the contrast between like the darker orange and like the bright white kind of like went together well. So that was kind of what I was looking for with the color scheme. But, yeah, other than that, I kind of was just trying to leave the rest of it simple, nothing crazy. But like a welcoming and like a woman image was what I was going for. So that's how I did it. Right. And what is like your target or dream professional job? My dream professional job is to be a broadcaster. I'm not exactly sure yet. I want to do one of two things. I either want to do sports commentating or I want to do news anchoring for a TV station. But either way, I want to be in front of the camera. But, yeah, those are definitely my two ideal dream careers. Okay. And do you hope to like take a feminist approach to that like from your logo or maybe you might? I don't know. I definitely am considering it because I feel like news anchoring and any kind of broadcasting I feel like is definitely a male-dominant profession. So I feel like even just me trying to be successful in it alone is enough of like a feminist approach to it, if that makes sense. Right, yeah. What direction do you want your social media profile to take as you enter college, like begin to navigate the professional world and like get into all those jobs? Yeah, for sure. I think I want to stray away from kind of like the social aspect and focus more on posting about things that are related to what I want to do as a profession. So if I'm doing an internship with like a news company or if I'm doing like if I take like a trip with some kids in my broadcasting major to some sports event somewhere across the country, like I definitely want to be focusing more on posting about experience I'm getting so that when employers look at my account, they're like, wow, like she's actually putting herself out there. She's trying to get experience because that's what they're looking for is people that are going to go above and beyond. So that's what I want them to see when they come across my feed. Yeah, I like that kind of like a photo resume. And how do you plan to distinguish like a professional profile versus like a more casual family and friends profile? I mean, obviously you can only make two accounts. You can have one for your business side of your life and then you can have another one for that social like family aspect of your life. But I think that, you know, having them separate honestly is probably best just so that like employers can see one side of you and then they can see the other side of you and they don't have to go into the same account trying to savor between like which is what, if that makes sense. So I will probably go about having two different accounts, one professional and then one like casual. So you can see like the work side of you and then like the other side of you, you know? Yeah, because I would agree. Like I think the personality is like just as important as like the professionalism. So I think that brings us to the end of our interview. Thank you so much. Thank you, Susanna. Yeah, I enjoyed it.