Saturday, April 21, 2012

What's Up Alumni Lyndsay?!

Happy Saturday morning to you all! I am so use to waking up early, that even my weekends result in me being an early riser! Oh well, I'll just get my day started quicker and have more time to do what I need to do! So it's been a few weeks since my last post and lots of happened in my crazy alumni life! I am officially just a little over a month into my job and I'm starting to feel much more comfortable around my co-workers and I'm really starting to learn more about the job! It's unpredictable in the marketing world, which I sort of like. I have many plans floating around, but when you talk to your co-workers and bounce ideas around, it makes it all go together much easier! I'll present an idea around the office or just sent out a quick email like, "Hey guys, what do you think about this?" and then we'd just go back and forth exchanging ideas to make the current idea a little more stronger or they would throw out to me a completely different concept. Either way, it makes my job a lot of fun because I spend numerous hours doing research and really trying to see what would work!


My biggest struggle in this would have to be the fact that we deal with many European companies. A lot of the things we do or have in American are completely different from over there. For example, my promotion I ran for the month of May, was for Earth Day. Earth Day is considered to be 100% American, even though European countries are very "green." However, I still stuck with my idea and the feedback the salespeople received from the customers was that they really liked the idea, so of course, I have to give myself a pat on the back. I guess the point is and I've learned this in my Marketing classes at Berkeley College, that you HAVE to be different and you HAVE to see what works and what doesn't work. Maybe my idea was cheesy, or maybe it was frowned upon, but I stuck it out and quite frankly, we haven't seen anyone else in our industry do something like this, so I take it as a big ole' success for me!


Since we will be closing out on the month next week, I'll start to get my numbers together for how many orders and Earth Day promo items went out, and we'll measure how well it went! For my first promo being ran, I am happy and I feel that if I wasn't happy with what I had done, I wouldn't be as excited as I am about it now! You have to try in order to be able to learn.


So like I said, Earth Day is coming up this Sunday, April 22! We should be treating everyday like Earth Day, but we do take one special day of the year to celebrate this. In my town, we have whats called Beautification Day in which town residents clean up the side of the roads, local parks, etc. and leave their bags of garbage out on the roads for the town to come pick up. We then all join the township down at a local park for a free lunch and some goodies. It's really a great thing for the township and it encourages people to help clean up our roads and town! If you have a free minute in your day, go outside, pick up some garbage, and help keep the environment clean!


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I also want to share what my current project at work has been. I've been filming and editing an introduction video for my company. We decided we wanted to make an introduction video so that when customers come to our website, they can get a better understanding of what we are all about. This is also going to be the perfect way for me to lead into our social media. We are going to be starting a Facebook page, a twitter account, LinkedIn page, YouTube account, and a blog. The video will serve as our first post everywhere and be able to kick us off with a nice introduction. I took the lead on this project because even though I'm not a pro editor, I knew that as I went along with it, I would be learning new things and I will work on it even if it meant taking it home to work on. I have successfully got the majority of the edits done, and so far the feedback has been that they all really like it!


I actually picked up my editing skills from Berkeley and I have the professors to thank for that. I know we all dread when the professor assigns a project and you want nothing to do with it. Well, bottom line is, you begin to explore different aspects of your creativity, at least I know I did. I was assigned a project within the first few quarters of starting Berkeley and one of my classmates was heavily involved in video editing, etc., so it was suggested to our group that we use this classmates skills and make a video. Just by watching the process and getting a few pointers here and there, I was able to pick up the very basics of video editing. Since moving forward, I thought it would be pretty cool to be able to do something like this on my own, so I picked up an editing software package, and just started to play around with videos, one which I did for a local real estate team. And now that I'm working on this bigger project for my job, I am learning even more and finding tricks that I didn't know when I first started out!


This project at work has definitely been a lot of fun and I can't wait till I hit that final button "Make Movie," and show everyone the end result!

There's no need to ever doubt yourself and if you're a quick learner, I'd take advantage of the skills the people around you have because I did, and I couldn't be happier with what I've been given the opportunity to learn!

Happy Weekend.....I hope everyone has a very nice weekend & hey, maybe I'll even post the video when it's all said and done! As long as it's ok with my boss of course!

OH, MY FELLOW GRADUATES, SEE YOU NEXT WEEK! WE ARE FINALLY GETTING UP ON STAGE IN OUR CAP & GOWNS AND GRADUATING! BIG SMILES AND SEE YA THERE!

Thursday, April 5, 2012

April Has Arrived!

Where has the time gone? It's a great month especially for Berkeley graduates, including myself, who will be walking on April 27th! Only a few weeks away and it will be here before we know it!

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It will feel very rewarding to finally walk up onto the stage in front of all our fellow classmates, knowing that we made it this far and are obtaining our degrees! Congratulations to everyone! It's very well deserved and a great time to celebrate!!

Aside from that excitement, I have a lot of fun things going on at my new job! I survived my first sales meeting the other day, which I can't even begin to explain the nervousness I was experiencing. I knew I had so much to talk about, but being that it was my first month on the job, there was a lot of reports that needed to be generated and I had NO clue on what to expect! Luckily, the person training me got me through it and my boss said that I did a great job, which feels good. Sometimes supervisors just say thank you and you never really get feedback. I work with a great group of people, so I am constantly getting feedback about potential ideas and other things that are going on in Lyndsay's Marketing land! LOL!

For April, I decided to arrange an Earth Day promotion, which was different and unique for my company, since it's never been done before. The thing with trying new promos is that you can see if it works or not. My biggest challenge will be that we deal with a lot of European companies and other companies overseas, so Earth Day is more of an American thing. It doesn't hurt to promote it overseas, because from what I heard, they are very big on being environmentally friendly. It might open some eyes with this promo, which would be really cool to see! I'll have to record my success with that and share once the promo ends at the end of April! I am definitely really excited to see the results, but nervous all at the same time. I'll be bummed if it turns out to be a total flop, but good to know that the idea was liked!!

So keep in mind, Earth Day is April 22! Do something to make a difference in the world. Turn off the lights when leaving the room, shut down your computer when it's not in use, and remember to reduce, reuse, and recycle!

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Well, that is my update for now! I hope everyone has a very happy holiday weekend! I luckily get a 4-day weekend, so if you do too, ENJOY IT while it lasts! It's going to be beautiful, so we are truly lucky!

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