One of my favourite quotes is, āonly a life lived for others is worth livingā by Albert Einstein. In life there are agents and talent, neither is superior to the other. While agents are able to promote others with ease, they are often unable to effectively promote their own talents. Likewise, those with talent rarely thrive unless they find a separate entity or individual to act as their representative.
Author: Danielle Geva
Resumes and CVs: When, if ever, is it appropriate to put your social network follower counts on a resume?
I canāt think of any situation where including your social network follower count on your resume would improve your odds of obtaining the position or project.
Your follower count does not indicate your influence online nor does it reflect your true reach and ability. Followers might be paid for, fake, or follow backs. You could mention the figure during an interview, but only if you are able to also share the following:
- Engagement per post ā how many clicks, RTs/res-hares, @replies/comments, and favourites/likes do you receive on average per post
- The tools you have used to grow and track you social network activity
- How have you successfully used your own account to support a client/employer (include measurable results such as number of clicks and sign ups or sales)
- How have you helped a client/employer achieve the same large following (include measurable results such as growth over time and engagement per post)
The focus should be on how your future client/employer will benefit from your skills and experience.
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Is social media ROI calculation even possible?
Much like any form of marketing there are aspects that can be measured and others that might require more guesswork. While the exact calculations may not be entirely accurate, avoid hiring any agency, consultant, or employee claiming that ROI measurement is impossible.
There are several KPIs that can be measured to evaluate the success of your campaign, and include engagement per post, reach, clicks and conversion. These can often be measured using free tools and depend on the goal of the campaign.
Sentiment and brand awareness may be pretty difficult to measure, but there are some paid tools out there that analyze online chatter and deliver a pretty good ballpark figure.
Lastly, it is important to note that social media is a long-term effort rather than a magical overnight solution. Therefore the success of each social media marketing initiative should be measured over time at specific time intervals.
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Social Media for Founders
Keeping up with social media can be overwhelming, especially once you start using it as a business tool. Gone are the days of chatting to random strangers and friends all night, you now have a company to run and promote.
There are three main activities that you shouldnāt neglect, these include: responding to feedback, joining the conversation and growing your network. The frequency and time spent on each one of the above tasks depends on your goals for both your personal and company brand. Below are some guidelines, which will hopefully help you spend your time more effectively.
You learn to improvise
Many moons ago, my friend turned to me and asked, “but what do you do when you are bored?” She was referring to the fact that I rarely called her or any of the other girls to chat. I don’t remember ever being bored as a kid, and the thought of picking up the phone for some small talk had never even entered my mind.
As a teen, my room was full of books, art work, and many little creations. I could spend hours upon hours alone cutting up old clothes, painting furniture and redecorating. Later on, most of my creations were online. Rather than learning how to code, I played around with illustrator, wrote pages and pages of (mostly private) blog type entries and figured out this social media thing.
Danielle Geva 