Category Archives: social media

#SocialCV

A little over a month ago, I saw a tweet from @ValaAfshar saying that his company, Enterasys was going to be hiring a senior social media strategist.

And? So? Big deal. A lot of companies are realizing that they need to get into the social media game and are doing the same.

Except there was a difference with this position. Enterasys planned to do their recruiting through social media, using each candidate’s social CV. Interesting!

At that point, I wasn’t sure what Enterasys did. Vala and I have been following each other on twitter for a while now. I remember connecting with him for the first time about the NBA Draft. Vala was going to the Draft as a guest of the Celtics. Color me green and not because that’s the Celtic’s color!

When I saw him eating cheeseburgers on the Patriot’s team plane, I remained a little green. Cheeseburgers are my favorite food! Oh, and I love football. 🙂

So, when I saw Vala’s tweet about the job with his company, it caught my eye. When I saw how the process would be conducted, I was even more intrigued and knew I wanted to be part of this first (that I know of) social media job hiring process.

I’ve really been trying to find my place since I gave up directing the pageant. Trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. 🙂 I know I want to work in Social Media. I feel like I was born just waiting for social media to happen. I’ve been approached by some really cool people with some really great opportunities but nothing has felt just right. Yet.

So I talked to David about this possibility. Since he is mostly coming and going and just needs to be by an airport, moving to the Boston area would work just fine. Added bonus, one of my best friends, Debbie, lives right in North Andover about 10 minutes away from Enterasys. Cherry on top.

I decided to go for it!

My first concern was that, by choice, I have no klout score and a klout score of 60 is required. As you know if you read this blog (or listen to me much) I deleted my klout profile a couple of algorithms ago because it seemed to me that klout was going to try and turn me into a mean girl and penalize me for talking to folks they deemed “less influential” than I. Well, I am gifted by my relationships with EVERYONE I interact with. Liz Strauss, one of my connections on twitter, wrote a great blog post that describes pretty much the same thought process I had when I was considering deleting my klout profile. But,simply said, I’m no one’s mean girl.

I considered reactivating my klout profile but I quickly discarded that idea. It didn’t feel right to me to change who I was and what I believe in for a job. I mean, hopefully I’m going to be at this job for a while and they will see the real me so why fake it?

You know how I am about being R.E.A.L! 🙂

I commented on the blog that I didn’t have a klout score but Vala told me it was okay, I have clout and that would be considered.

I do have provable clout. The coolest example of that was my trip to Washington D.C. as a superfan guest of Eight O’Clock Coffee. The two story suite I was given by Doubletree is my second favorite.

Kred score. Until around a month before I heard about the Enterasys job, I think I had been to Kred once. Just to check it out when people were talking about it as a klout replacement. I sort of dismissed it because that’s exactly what it looked like to me, More of the klout same. But towards the end of January, Kred started awarding badges to their top 1% Kredsters. I went to look and see what the fuss was all about and my score was pretty high. Then I wondered why I didn’t get a badge. And then I did. 😉

A candidate’s Kred score must be 725 with an outreach of 8 in order to qualify for this position. Mine was 845 with an outreach of nine. I just checked, though, and my score is now 859. So, not sure if Kred will ultimately ever be important to me other than for this purpose but it was kind of cool to see it rise 15 points in a month. Of course that got me wondering what it takes to move the outreach score up but I’m just not going to get all caught up in that. 😉

1,000 twitter followers was required. I had more than that and in the past month I’ve gained a lot more. Some of them, I know, are related to the #SocialCV but I do hope they’ll stick around even if they don’t pick me for the position. I like them!

Next on the list:

Consideration will be made to those applicants who have published works

regarding social media, peer influence, digital marketing, and related thought leadership.

Well alrighty then! I finished my first book Pageant Savvy, Social media for the savvy pageant gal in February. They were delivered into my hot little hand on February 19th, the day after this recruitment period started. Talk about your good timing! Not only is my little book pretty (so pretty!), it adds to my #SocialCV and my qualifications for this job.

An IT background would be preferred, and I don’t have that, but it’s not required. Working alongside David in the telecommunications field for all of these years, I do have more of an understanding of IT than I otherwise might have. [Insert paragraph break here. WordPress won’t do it. ;-)]

And there it is. The last day of the recruitment process was yesterday and it looks like there are some great candidates. I’m excited to be one of them.

In the past month, I’ve not only learned a lot about Enterasys but I’ve learned more about social media and about myself. I wish all of the candidates the best and wish Enterasys the best in choosing the right candidate for the position. While I hope I’m the one, if I’m not, the world is my oyster and the social media realm is large and growing. How exciting! 🙂

I’m not a number

Yesterday on twitter, I started seeing all of these tweets.

Hmmm Kred. I had been there at least once. I always go and check things out to see what they are about, if they are useful. I see people giving other people +Kred (whatever that is) but I don’t live in there and the number certainly doesn’t concern me.

Still, I was intrigued and clicked through to see my score. Hmm. It’s pretty high? Why am I not a 1% Elite Kredster? In the middle of a tornadic afternoon, I found myself starting to feel concerned, ripped off even, that I hadn’t made the cut.

Well, in my inbox this morning was the golden email. There it was:

Thank God they realized it! Ha!

In the light of day, well, it’s still dark but as I sit here with my new prize, I come back to the idea I’ve believed since Klout started messing around with their algorithms, I’m not a number!

I deactivated my Klout account several algorithm changes ago because, the way I read it, I was going to be penalized for interacting with “less influential” persons than myself. I call BS on that!

I love all of the people I meet on twitter. It’s such a rich and diverse group that you’d have a hard time assembling in real life on a daily basis. I learn and gain from ALL of them not just the top dog Klout wise.

When I started seeing articles that employers weren’t even looking at your resume’ if you didn’t have a certain Klout score, I thought, “now the world has really gone mad”.

I think that within my sphere I am influential to a certain degree. When I get excited, people get excited right along with me. I can see this with my own eyes and I don’t need a number to prove it.

I have gotten some very nice, real life, tokens of appreciation from various brands because of this quality. I haven’t even blogged about my trip to Washington DC as a guest of Eight O’Clock Coffee and I really should. It was a dream trip. Did they look at my Klout score to pick me? No, I don’t think so because when you go to Klout and look for me, you see this:

No, they saw me actually influencing others regarding their brand. I’ve been drinking their coffee since I was 15. It’s my favorite and it’s not a secret. I drink it, I hoard it, I tweet about it. This is real, not some put on. They noticed, called me a Super Fan, and flew me to DC for the experience of a lifetime.

I think the numbers are probably fun to a certain extent but should they mean anything in real life? I would give a hearty NO! to that.

So, if my klout score is the reason that someone will or won’t hire me, I guess I’m destined to be an unemployed trophy wife forever. Dang the bad luck! 😉

Friends Friday – January 25

Every so often on a Friday, I’ll see the larger friends grouping that facebook has spilled out and there will be a collection of people that I want to tell you about. Today is one of those days.

Here they are:

First comes my friend Janice, or J as I like to refer to her. I love this woman. She is our neighbor in Bartlesville. I’d say that J knows me just about as well as anyone on earth. We spent a couple of years walking around the neighborhood every morning, getting exercise, picking up garbage and talking. We called ourselves the Old Bat Patrol and we even had t-shirts. In addition to being so amazing and grounded, J’s married and her husband Keith, is an equally fabulous person. With a great beer fridge. 🙂

Dan Gordon and I became friends on twitter and have become friends in real life. He’s a great guy and is the owner of Samuel Gordon Jewelers in Oklahoma City. Dan was very supportive of the pageant while I was running it and allowed us to shoot an end of the year video in his store when the weather turned bad outside. He let the girls try on hundreds of thousands of dollars of jewelry which they loved! Dan’s got a great family and one of my favorite things to see on facebook are photos of his little girl, Hadley, who looks from every photo to have such an amazing personality. I hope to meet her some day.

I have known Debbi Raffalli for a long time. Back in the day we were both Pampered Chef consultants. In fact, I even WAS Debbi when I crashed a Pampered Chef convention in Washington, DC. She had two nametags. All went well until we were at dinner one night and a girl at our table said, “Oh I know you! We email together!”. Oops. 😉 Debbi gets me and I wish she was my next door neighbor. Although we might get into a lot of trouble. 😉

Mariam Kobras is another of my twitter friends who will become a real life friend as soon as we are on the same continent. Mariam is an author and lives in Germany. The next time she’s here, I’m going to throw her a book signing party so prepare to save the date. 🙂 Mariam is another person that I wish lived right next door and she is another person who gets me even though we have never met in real life. To consider Debbi and Mariam and I as neighbors? Hmmmmm… BIG FUN! Mariam’s first book is The Distant Shore, and her second Under the Same Sun are both available to purchase and she’s writing the third!

Laura Webster. You know she was named after me, right? 😉 Laura is my cousin Cindy’s oldest daughter and I adore her. She makes me laugh and you know how I love to laugh! Laura is on the way to her first big gig as deputy director of Leg Up India. I’m excited for Laura’s new adventure and I know she’ll do a great job. Laura is almost an exact replica in looks to Cindy. Especially in this photo below!

Tiny little Alisha Loper is another twitter friend who’s become a friend in real life. She is so tiny and cute! She’s a new mom and looking at photos of her little boy make my heart happy. He looks like a mini-me of her husband and it’s awesome to watch her be a good mom. Alisha is a talented designer and I love when she shares her work so I can admire it. 🙂

I’m trying to remember how I met Dawn Allen. I think it was through the Real Housewives of Oklahoma of which she is one. Dawn is terrific. Fun and kind and she clearly knows the importance of a good tiara. 🙂

LeAnn is my daughter-in-love Nikki’s Aunt Lee. I think she may have been one of the first relatives of Nikki’s that I met and she welcomed me like I was a direct member of the family. Lee is so nice and friendly and makes me believe that “in-law” can be “in-love” as I like to call it. She has a cute little granddaughter, Brighton, and I love seeing photos of them together.

So that is how facebook shook it out today. I am again reminded how blessed I am to have these people in my life. Makes it FABU! 🙂

“Pinterest is for sad women.” Oh yeah?

A facebook friend of mine made a comment about Pinterest that I responded to. So, as you know, I was notified of all the follow on responses. I was really surprised to see this:

Wow! Really?

Immediately, I thought of five men who I follow on Pinterest.

Reg and Aaron are huge in the social media world. The other three (Lennon, Ryan and Rex) are my Oklahoma City friends, successful businessmen in their own rights.

I was relaying this information to David and discussing the different ways people are using Pinterest and remembered another friend of mine, Dan Gordon from Samuel Gordon Jewelers in Oklahoma City. He (note I said he and not she) held a Pinterest contest at Christmastime.

And then I had to know.

I know for myself, when I post a recipe or craft project from my blog to Pinterest, my blog traffic TRIPLES. Yes, that’s right, triples.

So I asked Dan how his Pinterest contest went over. And he replied:

“I believe we had close to 40 participants pinning hundreds of items on the Samuel Gordon website. SamuelGordons.com website traffic went up over 400% for close to 5 consecutive days. Then stayed steady at 200% up for at least 5 more days afterwards. Also, we had Twitter and Facebook posts of pics. Brand awareness exceeded expectations. Now My boards have taken on a life of their own and some days I go without pinning anything I get over a dozen pins or more even if I’m not on the services for multiple days on end.”

Wowza! Doesn’t sound like a sad woman who will never have any happiness to me.

Every day, I see a few more articles about how people are using Pinterest to grow their business, market their non-profit, or create brand awareness and I think it’s awesome.

Although I am currently a twitter user who uses twitter for its originally intended purpose, over the past couple of years, I used twitter (and other social media platforms) to grow my business. I am endlessly fascinated at the cleverness of people in business figuring out ways of using each new social media platform to their benefit.

Now, I will say that the young man who posted that Pinterest is for sad women is a college student and maybe isn’t old enough to know any better. But I sincerely hope he’s not a marketing student or maybe he needs to be paying more attention in class!