How lazy is this? I asked my friends and followers on Twitter and Facebook to share reasons for a company to hire me. Then I turned those replies into a Storify that I will share with prospective employers as a sort of interactive list of references.
Like most of my work, I didn’t choose this approach because it was easy, or to be different. I selected it because it makes sense. I plan to bring my social media skills to my next job, so it makes sense to use social media tools to demonstrate my abilities.
On the surface, this approach can appear shallow and lazy, but I’m relying on three factors to make it work:
Network: It took years to establish my network through hard work and an innate desire to help others.
Trust: I had to trust that the people I’ve worked with would (a) take the time to reply and (b) say nice things.
Talent: I understand the best way to engage an audience and then capture their responses in a way that made sense.
I have a full-time job right now, and that job is to market myself to companies that I know I could help.
Many newsroom staffers are uncomfortable with marketing themselves, but journalism is a uniquely public profession and today’s newsreaders habitually share articles with their friends, so a journalist’s work is constantly being marketed by the people, to the people. Whether they want to or not, journalists market themselves with every word they write, every photo they take and every relationship they build.
Here is my self-marketing. If you get to the end, please leave a comment. I want to know what you think. Is this really just lazy? Is it something you might consider doing when you look for your next job?
This blog was revived five days ago, and I’m horrible obsessed with its stats, so here is what I’ve learned by looking at the first four days of data from Google Analytics, Twitter and Facebook.
More than 2,000 people visited the blog, and 80% of you found yourself on this site after following a link shared on a social network. That means you brought people to this site. You tweeted an Almighty Link blog post to your Twitter followers more than 350 times, shared a post with your Facebook friends 40 times, liked those Facebook entries more than 200 times, and left 88 related comments on Facebook. I posted only three Facebook status updates on my personal profile, and four tweets, again from my personal account.
You are mobile.
More than half of you used a phone or tablet to read an Almighty Link blog post, and three out of five you who used a mobile device, used an iPhone. Another one in five used an iPad. Most of the remaining 20% used an Android gadget, and a handful used Blackberry or Windows Mobile phones or tablets. Five of you even used an iPod.
You are global.
You came to this site from six of the Earth’s seven continents. One-thousand, seven-hundred fifty of you are from the United States of America. Eight-eight were in Canada when you read a post, and 54 were in the United Kingdom. Italy and South Africa round out the top five countries. I assume that the one visitor from Guam is one of my relatives. Visitors came from each of the blue countries in the map below.
Visitors came from countries that are colored blue.
Roughly 80 of the Twitter accounts that shared a link to this blog are part of The Breaking News Network, a “hyperlocal news network” that uses automated systems to share links from hundreds of Twitter accounts. Here is a sample of the tweets sent through that system.
It’s time for this computer geek turned journalist to move on.
I started my news career in a dark cubicle outside of a West Covina newsroom 12 years ago, shoveling articles onto what was referred to as the “information highway.” After stints creating and managing online ads and in web development for the Los Angeles Newspaper Group, I found my way into newsrooms and evangelized for social media before exiting the industry last month as a business columnist.
I’m happy with my career so far. I feel that I’ve helped people. I’ve helped local businesses learn about their partners and competitors through my column. I’ve helped colleagues use their tools more easily creating widgets that improved those tools. I’ve helped advertisers reach their customers by creating and delivering their ads. I’ve helped fellow journalists and members of the local community use social media effectively by sharing what I’ve learned and organizing events where they could learn more.
I realize that my passion comes from building connections, and I plan to do more of that. I haven’t “landed” yet, but my goal is clear. I want to help people and/or companies make connections to reach their goals. To do that I must keep my options open, because there are so many professions that fit that bill:
Journalists connect news consumers to helpful information.
Public relations professionals connect organizations to the public.
Marketers connect products or services to people who can use them.
Managers connect team members to work as one collaborative unit.
Analysts connect data to actionable insights.
Developers connect users to the tasks they need to complete.
My decision wasn’t easy. When I joined the the Register in 2005, it was an exciting news and information organization trying to exceed online just as much as it had in print.
During my first eight years at the Register, I worked on advancing our digital efforts. I started as a slightly glorified web monkey, part of a team that got stories online and made sure the site’s many moving parts were updated throughout the day.
Freedom. It was a great time. There weren’t enough bosses to review everything that published online, and standards were still being set. I could experiment without fear of losing my job. I threw in some fancy CSS and JavaScript trickery. I did things like embed a tour of the Rose Parade (a Google Map that could be navigated with custom buttons) into an article. I made tables sortable. I never had to ask for permission.
Risk. The Register had forward-thinking people like Glenn Hall on staff. He headed up the business section, and had been watching my work. He asked if I would like to join the business team as editor of our technology coverage. He wanted to add my online skills to the leadership of the section. For that, I will always be grateful.
Strategy. Under Glenn’s leadership, I was challenged to develop a strategy for our online business coverage. The team executed that strategy, birthing many successful blogs, tweaking our content management system to its limits and asking journalists to use systems and write content that was not traditional newspaper fare.
Leadership. The web team lured me back to become leader of a four-person “Web Task Force” that worked on purely digital products. We helped editors beef up their online coverage, and we helped launch new online products.
Social. When I began experimenting with social media, before its worth could be proved, my bosses never asked me to stop. I created our first official Twitter account, @OCReggie, and led the team that manned that account. The Register supported me when I asked to throw the Social Media Day Orange County series of events. I led a small team that traveled to bureaus teaching journalists how to use Twitter and Facebook in their reporting. I developed a tentative social media strategy for our parent company, Freedom Communications, and that evolved into a formal project that sent me to our properties in Texas and North Carolina to help launch their social efforts.
Variety. Regardless of my official position, I always had my hand in a ridiculous amount of digital projects. I had input on our content management system, helped conduct live chats, coded part of our short-live iPad project and even helped with marketing and sales projects. There was no lack of digital work.
Shift. When our new owners took charge, they announced a strategy that would create quality products for paying subscribers. Many interpreted this as a print-centric approach. My friends asked if I would stay with the company, since I was a “digital” guy. I defended the new strategy. I wanted to boost the quality of our work, and I supported our focus on paying customers. It made good business sense. I shifted into a writing position that eventually turned into a 5-day-a-week column for the business section.
But … I didn’t see our digital efforts move forward. I was happy that we hired dozens of new journalists. I was excited about new weekly community papers. I couldn’t believe how thick our paper had gotten. But I didn’t see any real advancement for our online subscribers.
For the last year, I’ve written a column for a newspaper company, while not helping our digital readers. That’s why I left.
What’s next? Well, I’ve revived this old blog. Tomorrow, I’ll share my next move.
