Paddle The Rouge – The Social Media Experience

The past few weeks, I’ve been working on an amazing event – Paddle the Rouge. It was a really surreal experience because while I was surrounded by amazing people who are activists and environmentalists and nature enthusiasts, I was there for something very urban and not nature filled. I was the social media coordinator.

Back in March, I began an online certificate program at George Brown college for Social Media Marketing. As much as I enjoyed teaching ESL, it turns out that it’s a very unstable job market here in Toronto. After a few months of job hunting, I decided to stop wasting my time looking at ESL. I decided to pursue a career in something that I’ve always enjoyed, which is social media. After taking a few courses, I decided to start getting my feet wet in the field. I went out networking and looking for social media experience through volunteering.

Through a very lucky series of events, I got to start working with CPAWS Wildlands League. They were looking for a wide variety of volunteers for their event, Paddle the Rouge and social media was one of the opportunities. I was soon adopted as the social media coordinator for the event, and was swept up in a very real situation where I was going to weekly update meetings and suddenly using EVERYTHING that I had learnt in my classes. Facebook updates, tweets, Hootsuite and auto-scheduling, tracking hashtags as we got closer to the day… It was exciting but nerve wracking as well because I was putting my skills to the test for the first time where it really counted.

Paddle the Rouge – The Day Of

I hadn’t seen 4am in at least ten years. But here I was, waking up at 4:30am to catch my ride to Rouge Park. We were at the park by 6:30, and I was stunned to see that we were not the first ones there. Early bird might get the worm, but people who fish are up before the birds.

Rouge Park is BEAUTIFUL. Especially as the sun is low in the sky and everything is waking up. However, everyone in our group was already in various stages of wide awake, and we had a lot to set up. While it was need-to-know for the week before, Friday night it was official and public. The Prime Minister was coming to Paddle the Rouge. A LOT of things need to be done to accommodate the Prime Minister! Our team was calm, cool and collected (on the outside, at least) and everything seemed to come together quickly. We were sharing the park with a volleyball tournament. It could have been chaotic, but it ended up being fine.

My job for the day might have seemed simple, but was time consuming. I tracked the #PaddleTheRouge hashtag, retweeted people, and kept our social media engaged. On top of that, I ended up doing a lot of engagement with regular people at the beach. There were a lot of questions about what was going on, so I got to educate them about our event.

The Prime Minister

At 10am, I rushed over to the stage where all the guests would be. I was in the media pack, ready to film everything through Facebook Live. I’ve been itching to use Facebook Live since learning about it, and it was the perfect opportunity.

[fbvideo link=”https://www.facebook.com/259132727038/videos/10153780838747039/” width=”500″ height=”400″ onlyvideo=”1″]

 

It was amazing to get to see the Prime Minister. Not only because he’s very handsome, but just because he’s the Prime Minister and it was such a good cause. I was really proud to be helping out with the day, and especially proud that I was able to help keep people engaged throughout the event. (Secretly, I was even more proud to know that my video went live before all the official outlets thanks to the video live streaming.)

“We’re Trending!”

The rest of the day was a breeze once the announcements were over. We had about 50 kids learning to canoe and kayak, lots of individuals taking part, and a lot of families too. For me though, the most exciting part came midway through the day, when one of the staff came running over towards me.

“Rebecca! We’re trending!”

Thanks to the Prime Minister for tweeting our hashtag #PaddleTheRouge, our event was trending nationally. I was so excited! I wish I could have said I had anything to do with it, but all the credit goes to the Prime Minister and the other ministers who were using our hashtag. Either way though, I was ecstatic, because it meant that I would have something to show at the Paddle the Rouge wrap up meeting next week.

So Now What?

The day ended as a huge success. I couldn’t be more pleased with the entire team, and I’m glad that I was able to be even a small part of the event. But I’m suffering from the Day After Blues. What do I have to show for it?

• A sun burn
• A sun burn headache
• Lots of social media to sort though
• So many retweets!
• Amazing experience 
• Hands on experience on the things that I have been studying
• Clarification that I am heading the right direction because I got to see me really working in this field
• Lots of new friends and people to work with in the future (I hope!)