Entrepreneurship Club Uses Social Media to Hype Disrupt

The Entrepreneurship Club at Fresno City College will host Disrupt, a business pitching competition on April 1.

The entrepreneurship program received a grant to host the competition through the deputy sector navigator, which supports small business at community colleges.

This time around, the program decided to adopt a different path in the promotion and participation for the event.

Instead of the traditional route of having Disrupt held exclusively in person, it has expanded to receive entries online. This new portion of the event began on Feb. 28, when all competitors uploaded their videos.

“We had 50 participants from both community colleges and high schools upload their videos on YouTube,” Amber Balakian, entrepreneurship instructor, said.

Voting began on March 1 and is determined by how many likes a video gets on YouTube.

The top five videos with the most votes, along with two wildcard entries from both community colleges and high schools, will move forward to pitch in person on April 1. The winner will receive $250.

All 14 groups will advance to the state competition where they will compete for the chance to win $1,500.

Expanding the competition to the online circuit has significantly increased awareness and participation for Disrupt as well as the Entrepreneurs Club.

“The younger generation is now online,” Balakian said. “We drove everyone to our Instagram to receive our information. People would put out fliers, but we wanted to emphasize the social networking aspect to leverage participation and gain more visibility.”

Disrupt has brought significant attention to the evolving program. Balakian has been receiving emails from people asking whether it was too late to participate because of the entries now available to view on YouTube.

“At first, we were not sure about whether this new method would work,” Balakian said. “But in retrospect, it worked out pretty well.”

Taking the non-traditional route and focusing more on social media access has significantly helped the event.

“We have a lot more participation overall, especially with the high schools,” said Balakian. “It’s increased the involvement from all different segments including the faculty.”