On The Job Hunt – How You Can Help

Posted on June 3, 2010 by Jesse Luna

After the layoff, I’ve thought a lot of about the role of fear in my life. I’ve realized that if one only listens to fear, it covers up who we really are, our essential nature.

Part of living in fear may include an inability to ask for help. Fear tells us that we shouldn’t ask for help because it will make us vulnerable and show that we’re weak. Fear also tells us that asking for help will make us look selfish and feel stupid because we can’t do it all ourselves.

Fear tells us these things but we know they are not true. Most of the people I respect and admire are those who knew the power of asking for help and used it to build movements and achieve transformational change.

I’m looking for job opportunities and I’m asking for your help. I listed my job search areas below and some helpful bits of information that demonstrate my experience in each area. You can help by connecting me with possible opportunities, spreading the news, and by just saying hello and sending encouraging words. I’ve already received a great amount of support and I’m grateful.

Are you also on the job hunt?

If you’re on the job hunt as well, I encourage you to ask for help. If you have your target job areas posted publicly, go ahead and put a link to the page in the Comments below. This will help others reach out and connect you to opportunities and to spread the news.

My Job Search Areas

My personal mission statement is to empower people through technology education. This includes empowering individuals and small businesses.

I’m primarily looking in Ventura Country and Southern California, but will consider moving to the Bay Area or other locations if the salary & growth opportunities are there.

My LinkedIn is at: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jpluna
Visual CV: http://www.visualcv.com/jesseluna
My blog: http://www.jesseluna.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/jesseluna

I have three main search areas:

Technology Training/advocacy,
Online Marketing Manger, and
Community Manager

Details and experience in each area:

Technology Training/advocacy

I taught elementary and middle school for seven years in El Monte, Redwood City, and San Francisco (Mission District)
I was a “user advocate” and tech systems trainer for CDI for the first three years with the company, in addition to doing web design and programming.
I was a lecturer at Cal State Channel Islands for over a year, teaching Business students the ins and outs for Information systems management and teaching them to blog and build Web sites. I have an MBA and a Masters in Computer Information Systems.
In 2009, I created an online blogging class. The class was created using the WordPress platform.
I’ve also done volunteer Internet consulting work for non-profits (low-income law advocacy, alumni group, social justice groups, political campaigns, sustainability)

Online marketing manager

I’ve worked in this role for the past seven years. Includes online advertising (including Google AdWords), product marketing, email newsletter creation and delivery, SEO, e-commerce site design
I created and managed over 500 online promotions
Have also done a lot of offline activities such as print/signage design for marketing collateral and trade shows
I’m seeking a position that includes social media management.

Community Manager (in social media)

I introduced social media to my previous company and we took a stepwise approach to folding it into the business
I managed the company’s Twitter account (@cdi) and created a Facebook group for the company
I helped set up the company with a blogging infrastructure. We created our first group blog a year and a half ago and now the company has several people blogging. I trained everyone on how to use WordPress.com and WordPress.org sites.
I was an active part of #Eric campaign, an effort to save a young man’s life. More information is available on the Eric’s Law site and you can see my interview with What Gives on the campaign via my Visual CV page.

I appreciate your help and you can reach me via email at jesse [dot] luna [at] gmail [dot] com.

Photo Credit
Andries3 on Flickr – Creative Commons license

VCC Lights Up With Social Media – Three Questions With A CEO

Posted on March 28, 2010 by Jesse Luna

Visual Communications Company’s (VCC) has re-designed its site from the ground up. The new version is much more social media friendly. This kind of Web site transition is becoming very common for Business to Consumer (B2C) and online companies, but is still a new thing for brick and mortar Business to Business (B2B) companies. VCC manufacturers and sell LEDs and LED mounting devices.

I was interested in this site change from a designer’s point of view and also from a business perspective. This is a great example of a company with a broadening social media strategy.

[Disclosure: I work for one of VCC's distributors, Component Distirbutors, Inc. (@CDI). However, this is not a paid post.]

I asked VCC’s President, Andrew Zanelli, about the site changes.

1) Please describe the changes you made to the VCC site.

We made a ton of changes to the site. First, we wanted to improve the ability for a visitor to find the info they are looking for. We accomplished this by reorganizing the content in a way that is more intuitive to our users (engineers and purchasers). Additionally, we optimized every page for the search engines. This involved really getting a thorough understanding of the words that people us when describing our products. While we were already familiar with most, our analysis showed that engineers and others had some unique ways of describing the benefits our products provide. By adding their terminology to our site, we are now capturing a larger amount of traffic.

Additionally, we incorporated our blog into the vcclite.com domain. Previously, we had it hosted on a unique domain vccblog.com. This was due to the limitation of our host’s platform. This was a deal breaker and we moved our whole site to the WordPress platform. We use our blog to communicate not only general news about VCC, but also industry news and VCC design wins. Our stakeholders really like the stream of information that VCC provides.

Additionally, we added a wiki to the new site. The wiki is focused on VCC product FAQs and is a constantly being updated with written content and videos that describe common issues that are encountered when someone is new to our products. Now, a user doesn’t need to call in to find the answer to their question, or if they do, we can refer them to a video that describes the solution. One of the goals here is to help reduce the amount of service type calls that our sales and engineering teams field.

All of these efforts are feeding into our vision of vcclite.com turning into an online community for our stakeholders. Not a community like a Facebook, although we do have a fan page on FB, but rather a community of super high quality information being shared about VCC and our efforts.

2) Was the change more about addressing problems with the previous site or about seeking new opportunities? Or both?

The world of sales and marketing is changing very quickly. While no one can really agree on how quickly we are moving away from traditional media, I am convinced that it behooves VCC to be on the leading edge of new ideas and technologies that will help drive leads to our salespeople. An optimized website, a fine-tuned PPC campaign, SEO… these are all things that help potential customers find VCC. More and more people are simply using Google to search for product information. By aligning our efforts with the tools of the future we are getting a serious head-start over our competitors and at the same time saving money that would otherwise be wasted on traditional efforts that are incredibly difficult to assign a true value to. We are not totally abandoning traditional media. In fact, we still have a strong print campaign. It works hand-in-hand with our new efforts. Partners like Hearst Media Electronics Group have really embraced online marketing and have figured out how to blend the two together for a comprehensive approach. VCC loves to participate in its programs.

3) Where do you see the site and VCC going next?

Next generation for VCC is to make our site more interactive. The wiki will help this. Additionally effort will also be made in the social media space. We have some unique ideas here that I prefer not to share yet. Otherwise, our laser beam focus will remain on lead-gen and brand awareness.

Feeling The Twitter Freeze

Posted on February 28, 2010 by Jesse Luna

Twitter has been giving my @jesseluna account the cold shoulder, not displaying tweets from others for over 8 hours. It’s 9:09AM Pacific Time and the last tweet update was at 35 minutes after midnight.

Apparently I’m not the only as The Next Web reports that many accounts have been affected. TheTwitter blog has not posted any information on this freeze out yet.

I can see Replies and tweets that use hashtags that I follow but that’s it. The Next Web also points out that you can see updated tweets using the Twitter Lists feature.

Hopefully Twitter can patch things up soon. Until this gets resolved, I’ll focus on conversing (not just reading posts or retweeting) then probably head over to Facebook to see what’s going on in the world.

Did your account freeze up? Did you jump to another social networking site? If so, which one?

Top 10 Predictions for 2010

Posted on December 31, 2009 by Jesse Luna

2009 was full of twists and turns. Big deals, big plays, and big hearts, on all fronts. These are my predictions for 2010.

1) Users learn to own their stuff
As we continue to see companies like Twitter and Facebook grow like crazy and start monetizing at every step, we’re going to realize that they are growing because of OUR content. Are you leveraging your own content, whether for business use, charity, or for you own personal purposes?

2) Twitter will become the number one news service
Users will organize to be the first to cover global news and be able to bubble that information up so that emergency, government, and traditional news outlets can jump on the news faster.

3) Augmented Reality marketing is going to be HUGE
Augmented Reality is a relatively new technology for displaying image content and tools in a live context. For example, Yelp, a restaurant/hotel rating site, allows you to use your smart phone to look through its camera and see an overlay of ratings information tied to your current location. The video below has an example of me using Yelp in my small town of Santa Paula, CA.

4) CEO’s from Fortune 500 companies will start to get fired for not having a strong social media strategy.
We saw this in 1997 when some slow executives decided to “wait out” this whole Internet thing.

5) Spiritual networks will become prominent and widespread
There are many folks who don’t prescribe to a particular religion but are extremely spiritual. These networks will do things like support the ill, be activist for social causes, and push for legislation (whether progressive or conservative). Take a look at spiritjump.org (@spiritjump on Twitter) as an example of it’s potential.

6) In the boxing world, Manny Pacquiao will beat Floyd Mayweather in a close split decision.

7) In politics, Immigration Reform takes center stage and the associated hoopla makes health care reform look like a cake walk. By the end of it, tens of thousands of awesome and deserving students will be on the road to conditional permanent residency.

8) The top 5 “TV” shows will be primarily seen via computer screens.

9) Video bloggers from different disciplines are going to crush it in 2010 and people will be talking about movie deals, instead of book deals.

10) One or more of my videos will hit one million views on YouTube and I’ll get a cameo role on someone’s rock video.

JOB ALERT: Social Media Manager at VCC

Posted on December 17, 2009 by Jesse Luna

Visual Communications Company (VCC) has an opening for a Social Media Manager.

I’ve been working with folks from VCC for many years via my Web development and marketing role at Component Distributors, Inc. (CDI). VCC is a great company to work with. They’re fun, energetic, and smack in the middle of the LED solutions revolution.

Please forward this post if you know of a good candidate!

View or Download – Social media manager job description (PDF).

Related Link:
* VCC Opto Blog

[Video Tutorial] How to Post Blips to your Twitter Feed

Posted on November 25, 2009 by Jesse Luna

I love using Blip.fm to listen to and share music with my Twitter and Blip friends. Over the next day, I’ll be using Blip.fm to post Gratitude related songs to help promote Tweetsgiving, a charity event that is seeking to raise over $100,000. You can visit their Web site and follow along by using the “#tweetsgiving” hashmark on Twitter and by giving thanks for something in your life.

Yesterday I was asked how to automatically post Blips to Twitter so I created this quick video tutorial. Enjoy, subscribe to my YouTube channel, and follow this blog for more video tutorials.