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Thomas Ritchie: From Journalist to Marketing Specialist
October 3, 2023 | | 1 Comment
Thomas Ritchie worked in the Journalism industry for over 25 years before he decided to take his talents to the corporate marketing world.
Ritchie, a Waterloo, Iowa native, started out his career as an obituary writer for a small newspaper. Eventually, he found himself working for the largest newspaper in Sioux Falls, “The Argus Leader”. When he first started there, the company had around 75 employees and was thriving. Ritchie loved creating news stories on sports, local businesses, politics, and anything else that was newsworthy. With the introduction of social media, Ritchie saw the Argus slowly disintegrate and lose circulation. He decided it was time to venture into a new career path because of the opportunity that was there.
Ritchie left the journalism world and created his own company called “Creative Fire”, where he helped companies build websites and market their brand. He thoroughly enjoyed this opportunity to explore all that social media had to offer while still helping companies market themselves, and he realized that he was very good at it.
Today, Ritchie works for a trucking insurance company and when asked what he does for them, he gave this simple answer, “I drive people to our website and get them to buy our $18,000-$22,000 insurance”.
He added that an important aspect of his job is lead generation, because that is what gets people interested. Ritchie mostly works with social media apps like facebook and twitter, but says that the company will have to start producing forms of short video media if they want to keep up with competition.
“It gets more people to convert and buy”, said Ritchie when asked why this form of media is important. He mentioned that Tik Tok is the leading social media app right now, and that other apps are copying them for a reason.
When asked about whether or not he missed his old career Ritchie said this, “I miss journalism every day”. He mentioned that if journalism was the same today as it was 25 years ago, he would still be working in that industry. Things have just changed so much and the job is much less enjoyable now in his opinion. He said that although marketing and journalism are two different worlds, he still uses what he learned in journalism in the marketing world. Things such as knowing your audience, being able to get their attention, and getting your message across are all very important in both industries.
Comments
1 Comment so far
Nicely done, Charles. The lead could be a bit more “exciting,” but it’s accurate and the story is pretty well focused. Shorter grafs, though. And some good quotes.