I’ve never been one for airline trouble. I’ve never been stuck on the tarmac, and I haven’t even been bumped from a plane. But I’m working on going oh-for-two when it comes to me versus New York City weather.
I was stuck in the city during Hurricane Sandy when I should have been in Chicago for the Meetings Technology Expo. I sat at home and talked to my new sales & tech manager on the phone as he demo’d our software alone at the show. Tomorrow, I’m supposed to fly to Las Vegas for our crowning achievement of the year: the Microsoft SharePoint Conference. Lucky for me, here’s what we have on the radar for the next 24 hours!
I have a ton of work to do once I arrive (late) in Sin City, and I’m hoping against hope that I don’t get delayed or canceled again. Cross your fingers for me.
I recently signed on with a luxury lifestyle designer representation agency to develop a social strategy. Their presence in the social sphere was lacking, and they were interested in making inroads and getting an edge on their competitors.
Social Strategy Proposal
While I was initially brought in to work on a specific client project as an unpaid intern, my focus quickly shifted to macro strategy for the agency as a whole. I offered to lay the foundation for their social media development and to create a detailed social strategy as a pro bono project. The execution of the strategy would be available for cost. I created three separate tiers with three separate price points:
Community management
Digital influencer outreach
PPC targeting for customers and co-branding opportunities
The company owners and managers are currently mulling the cost and benefits of such a strategy. It’s a bit outside the norm for their industry, and direct ROI can be difficult to measure. We’ll see what they decide to do.
Although I’ve been freelancing for the past year, I’m actually trying to get hired on with an agency or a start-up here in New York City. I recently applied for an agency strategist position with NYC Digital, the online outreach department of the City of New York. I would LOVE to work for the city, and I hope to hear back soon regarding my application.
In a related note, Mayor Mike Bloomberg recently announced an initiative to bring more tech start-ups to New York! This video showcases some of the existing talent and reminds would-be entrepreneurs why they should bring their operations to the Big Apple.
I’ve been meeting great people and having an absolute blast since I moved to New York two months ago. Finding the perfect job has been an uphill venture, but it’s building character and helping me to more specifically define who I am and what I want to be doing. I can’t wait to see what happens next!
I’ve been doing contract work and have enhanced my profile as a social strategist. I recently received a great review on LinkedIn from a former client, and more people seem to be taking notice. I can only hope that it all results in full-time job offer soon.
I applied recently with some great agencies, including the City of New York’s digital communications office. Let me tell you how much I would love to work for the city. I haven’t heard back yet, but I’m optimistic.
I’ve also been experimenting with personal branding sites. I have an About.me page, a Flavors.me profile, and a listing on BrandYourself.com. Some good traffic is coming my way.
Apartment hunting is going well. Some great places have gotten snatched up while I explored my options, but I’ve seen some really hip neighborhoods and met some cool people. My search has been narrowed down, but I seem to keep raising my budget in hopes of finding a good place. I think it’ll all work out.
This limbo period seems to be coming to an end. I’m happy about that, and I’m excited to see what waits on the other side.
Since arriving and getting (mostly) settled, I’ve been shaking hands and working on fun projects like a warrior.
Social Media Week – I volunteered for the whole week. I met some great people and assisted Click3X with their panel and party event.
FinLitTV – I’ve been talking with the founder and offering some good ideas on how they might approach certain clients with the greatest chance for success.
Urgent Genius – I collaborated with a team and strategized on several potentially viral concepts. The goal is to create content and see how far it can go in a week.
General job hunting – Networking and reading about agencies and start-ups who are looking for social media, strategy, public relations, or account management talent. I’ve become a master at researching firms and their staffs and translating their business goals into cover letter matieral.
I’ve been holding off on some of the more touristy, time-consuming activities here in New York in order to devote enough resources to landing that coveted job. I’m still extremely optimistic!
If you’ve ever traveled internationally or to some big American cities, you no doubt have experienced that growing feeling of dread as you watch your smart-phone’s battery life wane away shortly after lunch. With so much left to do in the day, how will you survive with a dead phone?!
I recently relocated from the suburbs of Dallas to the grandeur that is New York City, and I quickly discovered that my old smart-phone habits would no longer cut it in the hustle and bustle of Manhattan. Being new in town, a dead phone could potentially be a huge inconvenience as I tried to navigate to local work spaces, metro lines, and pubs, not to mention home!
So I’ve learned a few tricks to keep the battery on my smart-phone charged with enough juice to get me around the city, and I’m sharing them with you. In order of convenience, here they are:
Fully charge your phone before you leave your hotel or apartment.
This sounds like a no-brainer, right? Most of us charge our phones at night, but we unplug them upon waking and leave them on the table while we shower and get ready. That 5 or 10 percent that you lose in the morning can be crucial toward the end of the day. Be sure to leave your phone plugged in, or plug it in a half-hour before you leave to top off the battery.
Keep a charging cable with you.
This should also be a given if you’re going out to work in a cafe or work space. If you’re on your computer, plug your phone in and give the battery some love. Another option is to have the USB outlet plug with you, as well. If you’re sitting at a bar or restaurant, you never know where a random outlet will be. Keep your eyes open, and you might spot a good location to plug that phone in.
Leave your geo-location service off, or use the network-based service.
Keeping your GPS locator on is a sure-fire way to drain your battery with a quickness. Turn that puppy off unless you’re using it to find something on Yelp or Foursquare. Even better, ditch the built-in GPS altogether and just use the network-based locator. It works just as well if you’re walking around city blocks and need to find that pub with the great happy hour. If you’re not actively using it, turn it off completely.
Change your app settings to update less frequently.
Some apps like Facebook or your news service auto-update in the background. This constant stream of data wastes battery life on updates you’re not even using at the moment. Most of these apps have the option to change the frequency with which they update. Do you really need to know what one Republican candidate said about another in real time? I hope not. Change those settings to update every 6 hours or even every 12 hours if you don’t absolutely need to keep the info up to date.
Turn off data completely.
There are a plethora of reasons why your smart-phone transfers data throughout the day. All these little data transactions add up in the form of wasted battery life. If your phone has a button to turn off the 3G or 4G mobile data, consider leaving it off until you need to use it. This simple act can lengthen your battery life by several hours! If you don’t have a button for it, you can probably create a shortcut on your home screen to conveniently open the appropriate folder in your settings.
Get a backup battery or a charging case.
These are the only two options which cost extra money, but they ensure that you’ll never run out of precious juice. An extra battery for your phone can easily be your saving grace if you’ve been playing Words With Friends all day. Another option is a charging case. These fancy devices not only protect your phone from unexpected bumps and drops, but they also provide essential battery power when you really need it. Just charge the case up before you leave and it keeps your smart-phone powered up and working all day long.
So there you have it. Follow these easy tips and you’ll enjoy continued battery life during your travels or the sudden culture shock of moving from a small town to a big city. Good luck!
I was really excited this week for a potential job in New York. Based on the description and my skills and the interviews with five members of the marketing team, I thought I was a great fit.
But I received an email today telling me that I’m not. They were impressed, but they would like to see me in a different position. The problem is that they don’t currently have that perfect position available.
So I’m back to the drawing board. They’re a great company and some great people. I’d be stoked to work with them if anything comes available in the future, but I’m not holding my breath.
I was VERY excited about the prospect of moving to the city. I’ll get there, but it looks like I’ll still be here in Texas when my birthday rolls around at the end of this month. Oh well. There’s always 33!
I recorded a couple videos this week. One of them is a résumé introduction video. It’s bad and I’ll probably re-record it once I get a device that shoots better video than my webcam. It’s posted on my Facebook Social Media Résumé. There’s also a short intro video that’s attached to the QR code on my physical résumé.
I interviewed with a New York tech firm specializing in health care.
I had a second interview with the aforementioned firm.
I procured the entire West Wing series for my viewing pleasure.
I suspended my CrossFit membership for financial reasons.
The interviews went extremely well, and I presented some new outreach ideas which hadn’t previously been considered by the marketing team. I wanted to send a thank-you note to the five or so people with whom I spoke, but even a rush-delivered card would have arrived next week, and I didn’t wish to wait that long. So I called up a florist in SoHo and told them about my predicament. Since I didn’t want to deliver flowers, they selected a small desk trinket which could be paired with a personalized note. So I sent that. I’m not sure how many people send gifts as a post-interview thank-you, but I hope it was well-received.
If all goes well, I may be moving to the big city before the month is over. This means I’ll be in New York for my birthday on the 29th. I’m grossly unprepared to move, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I know approximately five people in the city, two of whom I was with in college, one is a colleague I met online, one is a friend of a friend I partied with in Paris, and the last is a bartender who served me several beers on my last trip in November. Quite a network, I know. If I’m offered the job, I’ll likely pack a couple bags, leave my car here, and get on a jet plane.
In professional news, I completed the web event and contest project I was working on over the holidays, and now I’m just left with the tasks of migrating the community to the main site and writing a case study to present the data. I learned a lot from this experience, and it was neat to work with a client that wasn’t a brick and mortar location with things like store traffic to worry about.
So with any luck, these are the last few entries I will be writing from Texas. Once in the Big Apple, I’ll likely start a new series to document my experiences. I’ll also likely never call it “the Big Apple” ever again.
