When it comes to writing articles or blogs there are certain things we need to pay attention to make sure our writing pieces are engaging. Some of these things include grammatical errors, telling the complete story, and the importance of the use of images.
Through reading articles and conducting peer reviews of classmates, something that stood out to me was how headlines and a lack of information can be misleading to the reader. When I peer reviewed Will’s self-introduction blog I realized the importance of storytelling when it comes to writing. Connecting your personal story to dreams you had as a kid to how you are applying those goals now is a great way to draw in your readers. This is definitely something I will incorporate into my own that I had not done with mine. In his blog, he specifically told a story of how he dreamed of working in video production in sports and how he is working to make this dream into a reality today.
Something else I noticed when conducting these peer reviews is how important it is to put yourself in the reader’s shoes to make sure they understand what you are talking about in the article. For example, if you write an article about an event but do not know the context behind it, then the reader will be lost and will most likely click away to a different article. Today, attention spans are short so it is also important to include a captivating introduction to make the reader want to continue reading.
These lessons are not only helpful for writing articles but for social media content as well. Even for short captions and visuals on social media, You always have to think about how you will draw the viewer in to interact with your content.
As someone who is currently interning at Girls’ Life Magazine as an Editorial and Social Media Intern, learning about these important elements of writing was incredibly helpful for me as I can apply them to the articles I write for the magazine. As an intern, I write articles on entertainment, lifestyle, beauty and more. For example if I am posting about a beauty trend, I would make sure the the graphic is colorful and eye-catching and then write a caption that encourages interaction like “Which look would you try this fall?” With this knowledge, I will now pay closer attention to the voice, headlines, and flow of my writing to make sure my pieces are engaging from start to finish.
A picture always has a thousand words. When looking at images or posters, each one tells its own story. Whether it is the color, the subjects in the image, or the background of the image, these are the elements that tell the meaning behind them. As someone who wants to work in entertainment marketing, I thought I would analyze the stills and posters of some of my favorite movies.
This Zombies 4: Dawn Of The Vampires movie poster does a great job of telling you what the movie is about. With this movie being the fourth one in the franchise, you can definitely see the themes of unity and embracing each other’s differences which is what the Zombies movies are all about. In the center, you have Addison, Zed, Eliza, and Willa who have been the main characters throughout all of the movies. Zed and Addison (in the center of the four) are holding the glowing bloodfruit, a key element symbolizing the energy and connection between the vampires and the daywalkers, the newest supernatural groups introduced in this installment. In the background, you see Nova (a daywalker) and Victor (a vampire), hinting at how the story could continue and how the main characters are taking what they learned throughout the four movies and passing them to the next generation. Visually, you see the orange side representing the daywalkers and the blue representing the vampires, showcasing division and unity. Even if you have not seen the movies before, the poster conveys these themes through its imagery and color design.
Zombies 4: Dawn Of The Vampires (2025) Movie Still
Another still I found from Zombies 4: Dawn Of The Vampires was another one I found very interesting and felt visually told the story very well. The main thing that helps convey the story in this still is the use of focus in the image. The characters focused in the image are Addison and Zed. You can tell from the photo that they are a couple and that they come from different supernatural universes by their appearance. Addison is an alien and Zed is a zombie. The focus on these two characters, contrasted with the blurred figures of Victor and Nova in the background symbolizes the closing of their chapter. They watch the new generation from afar with admiration, recognizing themselves in Victor and Nova’s story. In the first Zombies movie, Addison and Zed faced a social barrier as zombies were not accepted at their school. But now, they are mentors bringing the vampires and daywalkers together. This still beautifully and emotionally captures the passing of the next generation of the franchise.
Frozen (2013) Still
This still is from another one of my favorite movies, Frozen (2013). I felt that this still truly represented the main message of the movie really well. In this image, you can definitely feel the emotion. You can see how heartbroken Elsa is from accidentally freezing Anna’s heart as she embraces her frozen figure – showing love, protection, and sacrifice. I also felt like the snow in the background did a great job of symbolizing the tension in this scene as there are a lot of flurries flying around everywhere. Through Anna’s posture that she was frozen into (her holding her hand up to stop Hans from killing Elsa), you can truly see the close relationship her and her sister have as she tried to sacrifice herself when Hans tried to kill her. This scene is caused by the scene at the beginning of the movie when Anna and Elsa get into an argument when Anna keeps asking Elsa why she always shuts her out and does not understand why they could not be close like they were when they were kids. Elsa accidentally strikes her with her powers and runs off into the mountains. She later learns that the only thing that could save Anna from a frozen heart was an act of true love. She thought she had this with Hans, but that was not the case. He ended up tricking her because he only wanted to be crowned king of Arendelle and have the kingdom for himself. The main message of this still shows that an act of true love does not only come from significant others but from your family as well. In the end, Anna becomes unfrozen and she and Elsa live happily ever after.
Breaking Dawn Part 2 (2012) Still
From another one of my favorite movies, Breaking Dawn – Part 2, this still definitely captured the story clearly through its visual details. In the image, Bella and Edward stand protectively in the snow, with their daughter Renesmee slightly behind them and Jake in his wolf form by their side. Edward and Bella’s concerned expressions immediately convey tension, emphasizing their focus on protecting Renesmee. Having been conceived in Breaking Dawn – Part 1, Renesmee is growing rapidly, making her a target in the vampire world, where immortal children are forbidden because they can never mature. The Volturi are approaching to investigate and potentially punish the Cullens, raising the stakes even further. Family members in the background stand ready to defend them, highlighting the seriousness of the moment. Through posture, expressions, and the snowy setting, this still tells a compelling story of protection, loyalty, and the lengths a family will go to keep their loved ones safe.
The Hunger Games: Mocking Jay Part 1 (2014) Still:
In this still from The Hunger Games: Mocking Jay Part 1, I think there is a lot of symbolism here. With Katniss in the center, wearing her battle armor, and the poor people of District 8 holding up their fingers, it shows that she is the symbolism in hope of restoring peace to the people of Panem. The people surrounding her look dirty, tired, and sad. The people of District 8 all looking at her with hope shows how much they believe in Katniss. In the still, Katniss also has a concerned expression on her face as she only wants to help them and is determined to fight for their rights. In the Hunger Games, President Snow as he believed control was necessary for order which is how all of this started in the first place. In the series, Katniss volunteered as tribute in the 74th Hunger Games after her younger sister Prim was reaped to be in the games. In the end, she and Peeta, who was the male tribute alongside her, who she eventually fell in love with. With them almost sacrificing their lives when they were the last two tributes left in the arena, these people truly believe in her making a difference as no one in Panem has ever taken this stand ever before.
From a Disney Channel original movie How To Build A Better Boy (2014), you can tell that the main characters and nerds of the school, Gabby and Mae, are being victimized by Naveah (the girl in the red) based on the way they are positioned in the photo. Gabby and Mae are facing towards her and her minions and along with their other classmates in school. You know these girls are Naveah’s minions without knowing anything because they are posed right next to her in a line wearing angel wings on the back of their shirts. You can also tell her classmates are victimizing them as they are all facing Gabby and Mae– some of them having smirks on their faces. Before this scene happened, Mae thought that Jaden, her crush and Naveah’s ex-boyfriend, was going to ask her to the homecoming dance. After Naveah overhears her telling Gabby how she thinks he likes her, she is furious and that is what leads to this moment. As Naveah is focused on targeting Mae, you can tell that this will be the central reason to the actions that happen later in the movie– Mae and Gabby building a robot boyfriend.
In this still from Mean Girls (2004), you can tell what the movie is about. To the left, you see Cady Heron who is the new girl at school looking over at “the Plastics” (Regina, Gretchen, and Karen) along with her crush and Regina’s ex-boyfriend Aaron Samuels. Looking at the way “the Plastics” are standing together along with Aaron, really shows they are basically “the celebrities” of the school. The way their standing looks like the way celebrities in real life would be posing if the paparazzi snapped pictures of them. Looking at the expression Cady has on her face while looking at them, you can tell that she easily compares herself to them and feels inferior. Especially after she has been hanging around them a lot. Another detail I think is symbolic of how Cady feels around them is the trash can standing in front of her. Seconds after this still, she actually falls into the trash can. Cady originally got involved with “the Plastics” when her new friends and enemies of Regina George Janice Ian Damian Leigh ask her to help them get revenge on her. However, when Cady ends up having a crush on Aaron, this causes things to get messy with “the Plastics.”
Emilie Ackerman is an entertainment marketing strategist passionate about connecting young audiences through storytelling and digital content. Since she was a kid, she has always had a passion of the entertainment world. For her career she hopes to use the power of media to inspire and entertain the next generation, especially through the movies and TV shows that make lasting childhood memories — like the ones you saw Disney Channel or Nickelodeon.
Emilie currently works as an Editorial and Social Media Intern at Girls’ Life Magazine, where she writes and creates social media content that connects with young readers regarding entertainment, beauty, lifestyle, and more. She also runs her own social media on all things young entertainment @emilieacktv. She posts about entertainment news, nail and makeup tutorials based on tween and teen TV shows– Descendants, Zombies, and Vampirina: The Teenage Vampire— and on pop culture.
In the past, she has interned at two PR firms that work in music, writing press releases and doing socials for different artists, has completed the Disney College Program, and has worked at American Girl. Through these experiences, she has been able to work on her media skills and understand young audiences better through immersive experiences.
While she already holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Ithaca College in Television Digital Media Production and a minor in marketing, she is currently pursuing her Masters in Interactive Media and Communications at Quinnipiac University. She wants to learn more about interactive media as she is interested in creative storytelling and in learning how AI is becoming more prominent in the digital world.
In the future, Emilie hopes to work on marketing and publicity campaigns for these tween and teen shows and interview some of the stars and share their stories with fans to show her passion for the kids and family entertainment space as they inspired her growing up. By getting to do this, she hopes to bring the same joy these shows brought to her growing up to kids today.
Do you ever notice how TikTok knows exactly how to keep you scrolling on the app? I notice whenever I say I will go on TikTok for five minutes, it could turn into an hour. This is not an accident — that is persuasive technology. Persuasive technologies are scientifically tested design strategies to manipulate human behavior towards a desired goal, like increasing time on a site or user engagement. The alogrithms pick up on what kind of content interests you so you do not exit the app.
As technology is becoming more advanced and people are generally drawn to their phones, persuasive technologies have caused serious consequences among kids and teens, like depression, suicide, anxiety, and social isolation. Since social media only highlights the positive aspects of a person’s life, young adults tend to compare themselves to others, leading to a loss of self-esteem. I know from my own experience in my twenties that social media makes me feel that way all the time. As a result, I end up getting insecure about myself, and that I might not be achieving enough, or that I am behind in life.
How can we solve this problem? The first step would be awareness. We need to understand that these apps are only designed to capture attention at all costs. The more we are aware of how persuasive technology works and limit ourselves from it, the more we will stop tearing ourselves down. This means setting screen-time limits, avoiding social media before bed, and unfollowing accounts that trigger comparison. Another thing that is really important is reminding ourselves that social media only shows the highlights of people’s lives.
People entering entertainment marketing are always looking for ways to meet the needs and objectives of a movie or television show, to reach its goals and target audience. This is why project management is very important. Depending on what exactly you work on when it comes to entertainment marketing, the way you organize a project can look different, so it might require a different kind of thinking, but the foundation is the same.
When completing work for my social media and for Girls’ Life Magazine, I currently use my notes app or Google Sheets to stay organized. Since I work on my young entertainment social media on my own, I mainly take mental notes on the notes app on my phone. For Girls’ Life Magazine, I fill out a Google Sheets spreadsheet of the tasks I have completed to stay organized. Looking at what I do now, I think there are better ways I can stay organized, especially with my social media.
Since my work involves independent and team-based projects, I apply agile and design thinking in everything I do. On social media, I reflect on what posts worked and did not work on certain social media platforms and why, so they will work better next time. I also ask myself: Did my content align with my target audience? Is what I am talking about interesting enough to make people stop scrolling and watch my content? For design aspects, when I use Canva, Photoshop, or Premiere I ask myself: Are my graphics visually appealing enough to my audience? Do my videos capture their attention at the beginning with an image or text on the screen? Did I include captions on my video? These things are important, as these are the things people see or hear that make people stop scrolling to watch my videos.
Since these are questions I am always thinking about, and I like the way my internship uses Google Sheets to organize things, I decided that setting up a Google Sheet where I keep track of the posts’ engagement would be helpful. This way, I can keep track of each of my posts’ analytics so I can clearly see what is working for my content and what isn’t. This is a lot more helpful than consistently just going back to the TikTok app to check them. To make sure I followed through on this, I actually set it up in Google Sheets like this:
I made separate tabs for each social media platform: Instagram, YouTube Shorts, and TikTok. I also organized the tabs into the titles of the videos I post, likes, views, shares, and followers gained. I am also thinking of putting a comments tab so I can reflect on each of my videos, and making a Google Drive folder for all of my graphics and videos.
Just by doing this, I already feel a lot more organized when it comes to doing my social media. In some ways, I think this sheet will improve my confidence overtime. By seeing each posts analytics on Google Sheets, I can effectively problem solve and help my posts do better. Seeing their performance improve overtime I know will reassure me that I am taking my content in the right direction. Also, by including time stamps of when each post was uploaded, it can help me keep of making sure I am keep a good work/life balance as I can sometimes I can get too caught up in my work especially as I am balancing completing a master’s, creating my content, and doing my Girls’ Life Magazine internship. This process has shown me that project management isn’t just about staying on top of tasks—it’s about learning, adapting, and growing in a fast-paced industry. Overall this process has definitely taught me how to better be an entertainment marketing professional.
For my digital detox experiment, I decided to step away from TikTok for five days, and I must admit – it was very challenging. The reason I chose TikTok for this experiment is that I noticed it is the social media I am on the most. When I checked my phone’s screen time, I found that my average screen time for the app in a week was 26 hours and 35 minutes. While I found this very concerning, it did not surprise me because, in my downtime, I am likely to get sucked into the endless scrolling that TikTok’s algorithm wants you to get sucked into.
Even though I watch TikTok for entertainment purposes, I am also a creator who talks about YA shows and movies, which made it even harder for me to step away from the app. I am constantly used to posting and checking TikTok to see how my videos are doing, but not being able to do this agitated me. Usually, as I am watching TV, shopping in a store, or just with my family, it is so ingrained in me to open up the app to check it. Checking TikTok always gave a sense of validation that the content I make is actually good, especially when it gets a lot of likes.
Since I could not use TikTok, I turned to other social media platforms to replace it, like Instagram and YouTube. Before conducting this experiment, I found that my average weekly use of Instagram was around one hour and thirty minutes. However, limiting my TikTok use made it go up to three hours. I found this interesting, as I thought it would be higher, but because this was a detox experiment, I tried my best to stay away from social media by distracting myself with other activities. While I felt the constant urge to check social media and TikTok, It pushed me to do things I do not do as much anymore, like draw and go through old photo albums and yearbooks. It also encouraged me to spend more time with family. My mom and I ended up going to a tea room that I used to go to a lot growing up.
By the end of the five days, I realized how much TikTok consumes my time and energy. While I missed going on the app, watching and posting content, I definitely felt calmer and present towards the end of the experiment. The experiment specifically made me notice how I can channel my creativity into other things, like drawing and writing. It also reminded me that there is more to life than what is on your screen. While social media can be a fun way to share things and get inspired, this experiment taught me that it is important to take breaks from it and to set boundaries.
When was the last time you sat down with a book without checking your phone? Today, fewer people turn to reading for pleasure, especially kids and teens, as they are accustomed to consuming short-form content. While reading takes more time for us to understand and absorb information, and more people now see it as a chore, it is important not to completely cancel it from our lives, as it pushes us to think more deeply.
Reading a novel forces us to focus on someone else’s inner world. Studies have shown that it enables us to become more empathetic as we are introduced to situations a character is going through that we may not experience in our own lives. Empathy is the most complex form of attention we can possibly have as it teaches us to understand other people’s emotions. While kids can learn things from TV shows, movies, and TikTok, reading is a different kind of engagement.
As our world has become more technology focused, we are consuming more short-form content than ever before which causes our attention spans to be shorter. I know from my own experience that nowadays when I read, my mind wanders much more easily compared to ten years ago when I read books in middle school. However, for kids growing up in this digital environment, sustained reading feels very unnatural to them as they were born with technology at their fingertips. In order to solve this issue, entertainment studios who create kids content need to closely partner with publishers. Studies have generally shown that when we read things we are interested in, we are more likely to retain it. Since franchises like Descendants, Zombies, and Monster High are popular among kids, books published about the characters and their story arcs would definitely capture their attention as this would keep them interested in reading for more.
As someone who wants to work in children’s / teens entertainment marketing, I know these stories will build kids’ empathy, imagination, and understanding of perspectives in book form. They include themes like embracing uniqueness, acceptance and belonging, and teamwork. While short-form content and movies can still be a great way for kids to be immersed in stories, putting stories like these on text will engrain the messages of these franchises’ themes even more.
Throughout my life, I never thought too much about the concept of multitasking as I had always thought that this was a normal part of my life. At jobs I have had, I was very used to interacting with customers, listening to coworkers, and answering phones all at the same time. While this can be normal throughout our daily lives, I have never given much thought to how many times it has made me lose my train of thought or made me forget what I was doing in the moment.
While multitasking has made me forget things, I realize it has also made my anxiety go up. As a result, my mind becomes paralyzed as I try to get things done as efficiently and correctly as possible. While multitasking is a vital skill in the workplace, it is often perceived as negative in the context of media consumption.
Multitasking in media consumption is the act of using two or more digital streams simultaneously, which I often find myself doing. When this happens to me, I notice how I unconsciously pick up my phone while watching a television show and scroll through social media, allowing my mind to fall into autopilot as I mindlessly and repeatedly scroll through social media or other digital content without purpose. However, this makes sense as the most popular source of media consumption today is short-form content — TikTok, YouTube Shorts, etc.
As someone who wants to go into young entertainment marketing, this concept is very relevant as it largely affects the way kids consume media today. While I grew up with technology, it did not drive my childhood as it was not as advanced then. Back then, I did other activities that kept me occupied like , trading Silly Bandz. playing with my stuffed animals, or wait for a new episode of a Disney show to air on television. However, kids today have always had technology and social media at the center of their lives — since the moment they could walk, so they do not know a life without it. They are used to the constant notifications and fragmented attention. This is highly important to note as this impacts networks like Disney and Nickelodeon who create media for kids. It interferes with their learning, engagement, and the lasting impact of their stories.
This fragmented attention is similar to the term local sleep, when small specific parts of your brain enter a temporary sleep-like state while the rest of your brain remains awake and functional. This is especially detrimental to the brains of children, as their prefrontal cortices are still developing, which can negatively impact memory, learning, and engagement.
For companies that create kids’ media, this is a challenge. They need to develop media that does not distract them and keeps them engaged. By understanding how kids today consume media and recognizing terms like multitasking and local sleep, we can create content that helps us devise solutions to this issue.
Emilie Ackerman 