Vanessa Van Edwards created a Facebook page for her college internship office when the platform was brand new. She became the only person who knew how to run it, which gave her unexpected power in the office and changed how colleagues saw her. That one decision sparked her entire career in social media.
This completely changed my internship. I have a funny example of an accidental expert power that I developed, and it changed the course of my career. In college, I went to Emory University. I had an internship in the study abroad office. At the time, Facebook had just come online. Social media was like, just happening. I said to my boss, hey, we should have Facebook page for the Emory study abroad office. And she was like, what's Facebook? So I explained what Facebook was, and she said, great. If students are on it, we should be on it too. So I did some research. I practiced a little bit, and I figured out how to create a Facebook page. I asked students, students to send their pictures of going abroad. I posted them on the Facebook page and ushered in inviting students. And there started to be a lot of buzz on the Facebook page. The Facebook page became the number one way that students were reaching out to us. I was the only person in the office who ran the page, who knew the page, and who had some technological expertise. My boss started to invite me to team meetings to discuss what was happening on the Facebook page. In a way, I had developed this expert power as being a social media expert.
