Jill Handshew earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism (emphasis in advertising, minor in marketing) from San Diego State University in 1996. She is currently a senior marketing manager at Experian. Her primary responsibility is promoting Experian’s credit data products to the financial services industry, including credit unions, banks, and collection agencies. Handshew utilizes different marketing channels to accomplish her company’s goals and was looking for a way to enhance her digital marketing and social media skill set by taking courses at SDSU.
Handshew’s desire to expand her knowledge brought her to the Digital and Social Media program at SDSU’s College of Extended Studies. She has recently finished four courses and hopes to complete the program in May 2013. One of the classes Handshew took was Increasing Traffic to Your Website I. In her view, “The Increasing Traffic class with Michael Martin has been the most beneficial because I manage several web pages on Experian.com and I wanted to see what I could do to increase traffic and search ranking. I’ve already used some of the best practices he shared, and have begun to see the fruits of my labor.”
From the four courses, Handshew says one of the best takeaways was the hands-on experience. “It’s been helpful to go into a classroom, listen to an instructor that’s doing what I do, have them take me through best practices, and introduce me to some new things that I wasn’t privy to.” She was also able to gain experience through course projects. “In Greg Block’s Social Media Strategies for Business class we formed groups and were instructed to create companies and social media accounts to promote them, which I thought was pretty cool.”
Handshew’s future plans are to earn her certificate and continue to grow. She says, “I didn’t have these types of classes available to me back in the day; it was all very old-school. This program has been very helpful, not only learning from the instructors but also sharing and networking with the other students.”
