Hello everyone, my name is Keith Knight and I would like to show a little bit about my senior project and the work behind it. One of my biggest dreams is to be a content creator for the Major League Baseball or an affiliated team. My emphasis is video production with a module in digital and social media. Because of this, I thought the best way to help me reach my dreams and to show off both sides of me was to create my own social media account/blog.
WHY MAKE AN ACCOUNT TO TALK ABOUT ALL TEAMS?
The easiest thing I could’ve done is gone into a deep dive of researching and making a fan account of my favorite team but one thing that frustrates me with the official MLB Instagram account or other popular accounts is they focus heavily on the top teams and top players because it’s what drives the audience and creates the most buzz. I wanted to not only talk about the best players and best teams, but also about the little guy and the teams you don’t hear about often. I wanted to challenge myself and make a social media account that focuses on all MLB teams so fans can be up-to-date on everything MLB. My goal for my senior project was not to become an overnight superstar and gain millions of followers, but to show and build a portfolio that I have a strong passion of the sport and will put the time in to research and learn about every team.
During my time working on the project, the offseason was wrapping up and I spent most of my posts and talks about the offseason and how teams are doing in Spring Training.
MY PLANS AFTER SENIOR SHOWCASE
The best thing about this is that as I get ready to present at the Senior Showcase, Opening Day of MLB is the exact same day! After I finish my senior project, this is not a closed chapter as there are still 162 games of baseball and plan to turn this into a passion project to help build my portfolio.
BIGGEST CHALLENGES
One thing I wanted to do was be by the books. This meant following all copyright laws. MLB are quite strict even with fair use and considering I couldn’t travel around the country to take my own photos I attempted to get a license. To my great surprise a major organization didn’t have time to get back to me about a senior project. So to stay within copyright laws, I did spend a couple of hours on a few posts to create my own graphics that I would use in said post.
In addition, I felt like the best way to get opinions from fans was to ask fans. A friend told me “you want honesty, go to Reddit, you’ll get honesty whether you like it or not.” So I went to reddit and got about 40 comments and over 2k views and started having great conversations until I discovered I breach some rules about “projects/surveys” and that isn’t allowed. So I had to instead view comments on Instagram to help fuel my opinions on fans.
MY BIGGEST TAKEAWAY
I am a big believer in doing what you love for work so it doesn’t feel like work. This senior project was a lot of work but it was something I loved doing. Learning about each team made me love each team in their own little way. While my heart stays with the Cleveland Guardians, I learned about the optimism of the St. Louis Cardinals, the heightening motivation of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and the determination of the Seattle Mariners and their fans. This project helped me fall in love more with America’s pastime.