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After running my own Web
Design company from home for almost 7 years, getting back into the 9-5
job market was an adventure, to say the least. Having devoted myself to
building full blown Content Management Sites (CMS) using Joomla and
Wordpress for function and customized themes for design, I was happy to
find out that I hadn’t limited myself to something that I couldn’t apply
in today’s workforce. CMS knowledge and experience were actually in
demand in the 3-D world that existed outside my home!
Having a strong background in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is always
a skill that’s in demand, so coupled with my Social Media (SM) and
Blogging knowledge and experience I brought a lot to the table no matter
where I interviewed. Having been out of the mainstream workforce for so
long, I was relieved to find that the payscale for my area of expertise
was actually fair.
In short, a New Media Specialist is kept busy with web development, site
maintenance, SEO, Blogging, Social Media Management, Branding,
Marketing, and to an extent, Public Relations (PR). In my opinion, PR
and SM go hand in hand today.
As a web design, SEO, blogging and a full-time New Media Specialist I
spend a lot of my time researching Internet and Marketing trends. As
technology advances, it’s my responsibility to not only keep up with
everything as it evolves, but I also have to be innovative enough to
create my own strategies to take advantage of all that these brave new
technologies have to offer. Companies that fail to keep up with the
trends and advancements are failing to continue their past successes.
Companies that embrace the changes (by hiring someone like me) are
seeing increased sales, increased brand awareness, and their biggest
worries are “growing pains”.
As I spend my personal time researching, I sometimes like to share what
I’m finding. So, if you’re interested in bringing more success to your
business, you may want to consider hiring me for a special project or
visit my digital playground,
DESIGNLABWORKS.COM for more details.
My Social Media Philosophy
Using Social Media to
increase brand awareness and improve the “customer experience” is a
topic for another day. The main thing I find myself repeating
consistently is that in order for SM to benefit your business, it must
be interactive (s-o-c-i-a-l)! Linking a blog to a Twitter account so
that it spits out your blog’s post links is not interactive.
Social Media must be measured, monitored, and nurtured. Building a
community out of your target market should be your goal when utilizing
SM in your marketing strategy. If it’s not, you should really reconsider
using it at all, because lack of activity in SM could do more to damage
your brand than help it.
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