Did Facebook Land Me A Job?

by | Feb 17, 2016 | Internet, Marketing

In early January as I ramped up my first real job search in 15+ years, I tried to think of ways to stand out in what was a very noisy, competitive space – job seekers. I had landed my previous job a little bit unconventionally, so I tried to think unconventionally again. Back then there was no social media except for MySpace. Now we have a lot of options. Would Social Media land me a gig somewhere? Did Facebook land me a job? Read on.

Certainly this blog has taken on a slightly different tone since I’ve been in the job market. I switched the home page to be more a personal profile which linked to my portfolio and I set the actual blog posts to be a mere left side navigation choice on desktops and a menu choice in mobile. And I blogged again. It felt good, man. I will keep trying.

A lot of job seekers use their blog as their portfolio and write about their experience, though. That’s almost the norm now. So I needed to do more – and I took to Facebook.

I wondered what would happen if I created a Facebook Business page dedicated to me – my personal brand! So I did it. I put up a profile pic of me looking all business-like and posted a couple of items about some of my experience and set off on my adventure – with all links pointing to my website.

You can’t just do that, though, you also have to get traffic there. Not wanting to promote it on my personal Facebook page (I mean, that would be almost embarrassing), I decided to buy some Facebook ads and target them specifically to companies who I’d been interviewing with or companies that I thought would be cool to work for. I also set an age target at people over 30, since it seemed most HR people I talked to were over 30 years old. Geographically, I focused on Massachusetts only.

I set my targets, set my budget, generated a few images in Photoshop, wrote a few different pieces of ad copy and BAM. Turned it on.

By the way, if you’re NOT testing different ad copy or images in your Facebook ads, shame on you. Booooo.

Immediately my ads were not delivering, so clearly I wasn’t aggressive enough with budget. I bumped it up a little and started to see some action in the form of clicks. Okay, good.

Now, I bought Facebook ads six ways to Sunday for my former employee. Did a ton of them. But I’d never done one for just myself, so I didn’t really know what to consider “success” here. And I still don’t, really.

did facebook get me a job

This is the image that generated the most engagement. Ugh.

As I watched over the first few days, one image and one set of ad copy stood out over the rest. Of course, the image I liked the least was generating the most clicks. Wouldn’t you know it?

And even though the ad COPY itself was text about my overall Digital Marketing experience, it was a rip-off of an annoying and very recognizable social meme that generated the interest from the audience.

This is another sign that personal opinions mean very little when putting together ads. Testing different creative is crucial. Data rules. I felt like I had much better ads creatively that I preferred to use, but this one won out and eventually I moved it exclusively to this image.

So what happened? Did it work? Did I get hired from a Facebook ad? Well, no I didn’t. I’m slightly bummed that I don’t have an awesome story to tell about how I got my latest gig. It was slightly unconventional how it happened, but that’s a story for another time.

did facebook land me a job

21 clicks. I’m not disappointed.

I did get an unsolicited email from a large digital agency in Boston wanting me to interview with them. They were on my target list for those ads, too. I never got to ask them if they found me via the ad, because I got hired as I was trying to set this up. I may never know.

While I was pleased that I was able to generate 21 clicks to my website from companies I had actually targeted over a 3-or-so week period, I pretty much got my current gig in the way I never really thought happened anymore – I applied cold with a resume into their online employment system. The slightly unconventional part came later.

All that said, it was a very interesting experience, which in the end only cost me about $70 bucks. Not a bad experiment.

Be A Versatile Marketer

by | Dec 22, 2015 | Internet, Marketing

When I was in my 20’s, I had a girlfriend who did graphic design for a small interactive shop in Boston. During that time, I discovered and began tinkering around with Adobe Photoshop software, never thinking I’d ever use it to be a versatile marketer down the road. I never had aims to be a graphic designer (and still don’t), but as the internet started to take hold during this era, I knew right away that being able to manipulate imagery on a computer would be a good thing to have in my back pocket.

be a versatile marketer

OK, I’m not THIS old. But it wasn’t that far off from this.

So I tinkered and fooled around with it and got fairly proficient and comfortable. Back then, there were no articles online like this one from HubSpot that could help you in a pinch. Since then in some way, shape or form, I’ve used it in every professional job I’ve had, none moreso than in my last job at a bootstrapped retailer, where I ran a team of five in the Marketing and E-Commerce department.

There was only one graphic designer on staff and his plate was always pretty full. I had another very talented person on my team for a while who was also proficient, so between the 3 of us, it worked out well. Then that person left and I decided the headcount should be replaced with a person who had more technical SEO experience, which very much turned out to be the correct move with paid seo tools.

With that said, though, we were down a person who could get around Photoshop. So more of the onus fell on me. When this happened, my general approach was to set aside 30 minutes or so each Monday to plan out email marketing and then work on graphics that night at home. That generally worked pretty well. Of course, I still utilized our graphic designer, but in a somewhat low-budget, low headcount environment it was necessary for me to handle things like quick email graphics or, more importantly, time-sensitive social graphics. Here’s some samples:

[easymedia-gallery med=”2110″ filter=”1″]

The quick moral of the story? Don’t have tunnel vision about your skill set. Ever. You may be very good at fishing, but if it’s the only thing you’re good at, you’ll only eat fish forever. Teach yourself some new stuff, stay educated – and always carry more than a single hammer on your belt. Versatility has helped me in countless ways through the years, both personally and professionally. Especially professionally.

My core strengths are Digital Marketing where we build up your website’s backlink profile with Freshlinks, Content and Social Media, but in today’s day and age, I’ve made damn sure I know my way around platforms and software like Google Analytics, Final Cut Pro, Magento, Amazon Seller Central, WordPress and so much more. Knowing some basic HTML has also been a huge tool.

A Swiss Army tool is going to get used and if you’re the one holding the tool, then you are more valued and you can also serve as a valuable mentor to others. There is NO way you’ll lose by broadening your skills and knowing a little about a lot.

Now would you please enjoy some Deer Tick?