“How many public relations and advertising departments are there so that they take their students around the leading agencies of our country under the name of Media Trip, introduce the sector to them or host the leading names of the sector in their classes every week. These were good opportunities for us, and I believe I made good use of this opportunity for myself. Because I first met my first boss on a media trip in 2010.” I continue to share my knowledge and experience about the communication sector in my blog, which I started to write via www.erdalerdogdu.com link in 2007, my blog has been a great benefit to me in name branding from the very beginning to the present. Thanks to my blog, as it coincided with the development of social media channels in our country, I found myself in the concept of social media, which is the latest trend of the communication sector. Later, I tried to improve myself in this direction, I started to provide social media communication support to brands on my own in Izmir while I was at university, I took part in events organized to introduce this new communication trend both at our school and throughout Izmir, and I worked as an organizer. With the support of our academics, I made presentations on this topic by attending lower grade classes. I started to receive offers from leading agencies in the industry before I graduated, and days before I graduated, I was thinking about which agency I would choose, not unemployment. It is also an important point that my academics wrote reference letters for me and recommend me to agencies. Before I graduated, I received a job offer from the head of Zarakol Communication Services, one of the leading agencies in our country, and started to work as a Digital Brand Manager in this agency's Zarakol 2.0 team. Thus, I started to take my first professional steps in the communication sector. After my undergraduate education, I completed my master's degree on Political Science and Public Administration at Sakarya University, Graduate School of Social Sciences. Later, working as Digital Media Director at desiBel Agency and Digital Marketing Group Coordinator at Salt İletişim Group gave me different and good experiences. I had the opportunity to take part in the communication teams of the biggest brands in our country in the field of social media communication, digital marketing or PR. The opportunity to teach lectures given to me by my professors during my university years was a very important turning point for me because the support given by my professors was also the beginning of my teaching life. After my graduation, I continued my career as an instructor concurrently. Because being an instructor gave me the opportunity to constantly research to improve myself and this development made me really happy. In this way, I gave seminars in dozens of different universities, trainings on brand communication in private and public institutions, NGOs and I entered graduate courses in the MBA department as a guest lecturer at Bahçeşehir University for a while. I still continue to give trainings in different institutions. The first years after my graduation passed very quickly. But this was a period that took place entirely with my personal wishes and plans. Afterwards, although it will sound like a radical decision to many people, I made the transition to the public sector in order to specialize myself in public communication, in line with my personal wishes and plans and I became the Corporate Communication Coordinator of Istanbul Medeniyet University, a state university. During this period, with the communication activities we did, we were awarded the "Education Brand of the Year" award at the Brand of The Year awards given by Campaign Turkey in 2018. In the same period, I also took on the duty of special secretary of the rectors who worked at the university for about 3 years. Today, I continue my career as a Communication Coordinator in the Press Directorate of Istanbul - Ümraniye Municipality, which is among the top 10 districts of our country in terms of population.
