Questions for Your Consultant: Career Longevity
Starting today I’m offering a miniseries on Social Media questions that you should ask your consultant. This is a spin off from a post that originally appeared on Open Forum and one that I decided to expand on. Today’s question asks How long have you been working on the Internet and at Social Media?
This question is an interesting one to answer, primarily because the Internet is so young and social media is barely out of its infancy. When I look at this question, I break it down into two different segments: My experience on the Internet, and my experience on Social Media. I’ll answer these two separately in this post.
Internet Longevity
I first entered the Internet back in the Fall of 1994 on dialup that my parents had installed. I was all of about eight years old at the time and primarily used the web at the time to watch videos, learn off Microsoft Encarta and just see what was on Yahooligans (the Yahoo! for kids at the time). As years progressed, I found myself blogging, gaming, programming and a little bit of everything. I maintained a blog over at Xanga for a bit in my early high school days and had a Wordpress blog at Qian Dynasty Productions that I recently shut down to completely move over here.
My understanding of the Internet is relatively cut and dry. There are the websites I visit daily, and then there are the websites that I go to for understanding internet culture (think 4chan, Cheezeburger Network, et al among many many others). I’m a heavy user of Google, email as well as an Internet connection and probably would go nuts if I was disconnected for more than a few days at a time.
Social Media Longevity
I made my first foray into Social Media in the Fall of 2005 when a friend from high school sent me an invite to Facebook back when they were testing out high school students on beta. I was quite addicted immediately and found all the functions quite interesting to play around. This is back when Facebook was intuitive and relatively simple to use. I created groups, events and other things to stay abreast of what my friends were doing and get my friends involved. My first experience in creating a group that led to something bigger was a group targeted at creating alternative events for students at SCU.
Social Media as a business model didn’t hit the web until about 2008, and did not really become a part of my life until 2009, when I was working at the marketing/communications office at Santa Clara University. I remember it was Mid-May and the communications director walked out of her office and proclaimed that she wanted to bring the University onto Facebook. I volunteered to be part of the job and it was probably one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. In the time since, I’ve worked for various clients such as Chad Greer’s District 9 Campaign for San Jose City Council, Ark Collective (a backpack company) and some local establishments here. I’ve learned how the Facebook Page platform works, how Twitter functions as well as how to take measurable statistics from Social Media and judge a good return on investment.
So that’s my consultancy history as well as my Internet history. Come back tomorrow as I talk about case studies and how I’ve managed those. If you have any questions, send me a tweet or comment below.
