So after posting a few informational blogs, I figured I’d interrupt the normal flow and talk a little more personally so you can get to know me a little better. As I mentioned in some of my other introductory posts, this blogging thing is really a learning process and a tool for me to compile everything I learn. Now I want to try to give some insight as to why I am taking my life in this direction.
(me, all bundled up trying to stave off the cold – the background is Tallinn, Estonia – view of the old town)
First, a little history (everyone’s favorite subject, I know). Through a tumultuous series of events, the company I used to work for disbanded. It was quite dramatic, especially given the fact that it was a family business and my Father was the (co)owner. He brought me on to start his online sales division fresh out of college. I was in that typical catch 22 situation of having no real job experience and no one wanting to hire me – but to get that necessary experience, I would need a job. I started off selling about 10 products per week on eBay and by the end we had a fully functional website, amazon store, and eBay store offering 2500+ products selling tens of thousands of dollars worth of merchandise weekly. We were selling home improvement products such as faucets, light fixtures, ceiling fans, sinks, door hardware, cabinet hardware, and generally stuff most people don’t think twice about. I learned all there was to know about the products and what customers required and put all that knowledge into practice online, working to make it easy to use out site and convert visitors to sales. I’ll talk more about that in the future if anyone is interested (or even if you’re not!)
The year our company disbanded, internet sales were up 15% and I was becoming ever more confident in the future of eCommerce. I was so swamped daily, bombarded with calls, making sales, dealing with angry people, talking with vendors, working with our team etc. that I never really adopted a real social networking or social marketing strategy to our site. We primarily used Google Adwords and paid exorbitant amounts of money to eBay. I am starting to learn about some of the potential I missed out on and that is kind of sad to think about. I know one day I’ll be back in a position to take advantage of all the skills I’m learning through this blog so not all is lost.
So yeah, life is strange right? After the company disbanded I moved to China for a year to study Mandarin Chinese and travel the world – I’ve got tons of stories and photos from all over the place and I guess I’m not done yet – I’m not ready for a regular job. Well so in China I met a Finnish girl and we started dating – not really assuming we had much of a future. Given the flexibility of my employment status right now (aka unemployed haha), I decided to head over to Finland and see a bit of Europe while I was at it. After arriving I decided maybe I would get a job in Finland for awhile since my girlfriend is finishing up a master’s degree and needs to be here right now. I can tell you, it’s VERY hard to get a sales job in a country where you don’t speak the native language (even though just about everybody here speaks English). The Finnish language believe it or not, is HARDER than Chinese – take it from someone who tried to learn both. Anyways, I decided after a lot of searching, I would rather devote my time to working on myself and my skill sets. I decided to stay here for awhile and start up a blog (see my posts on Starting a WordPress.org blog), aimed at learning everything I can about what’s going on in cyberspace or whatever term they use to describe it these days…web 2.0 blah blah.
I’ll stop this here – but I wanted to put this out there because since searching around online for information on Social Media Marketing, I’ve found so much that even though we’re talking about a Social topic, I don’t feel like the people I am reading seem like a real person (generally – there are many exceptions). I want to dispel the mystery surrounding me, and say Hi! I’m Nick (yeah yeah professionally Nicholas but whatever), nice to meet you! Please read my blog and please comment, subscribe, tweet, share whatever – I want to meet and talk with some other real people about my newfound obsession with Social Media!
P.S. each blog post I’ll share a new picture that I think looks cool – you may or may not, but let me know – I actually have a bit of a photography hobby but the only camera have is a shit point and shoot…oh well – at least it’s really small.