Meet Steve Horton, one of StrataBlue’s Social Media Account Managers:
I am a Social Media Account Manager, and I’ve been with StrataBlue for nearly six months.
I’m responsible for social media advertising as well as social media content creation, management and curation. I work with multiple clients, including law firms, restaurants, staffing companies and financial services organizations. Basically, I help clients get the word out across the digital landscape, help promote the service or product they offer, and do it in a streamlined, cost effective way. It really helps take a lot of work off the plate of a marketing person or department at a client’s business, who would otherwise be spending all their time on digital marketing and no time for his or her other duties. Contrary to popular belief, social media isn’t something that can be done by someone’s minimum-wage assistant. To navigate these treacherous, ever-changing waters, you need a professional, and that’s where me and the other Account Managers come in.
We did a whole series of social media ads for different verticals for a client that involved multiple graphics, ads, ad sets and campaigns over months. We integrated pay-per-click campaigns, Facebook campaigns, Twitter campaigns and LinkedIn campaigns, all in an effort to capture specific leads for a client. Our initial efforts brought in a lot of form submissions, e-mails and phone calls, and we continued to refine our targeting and ad spend over time, all in an effort to reach exactly the type of customer our client wanted.
The name of the game with these kinds of campaigns is exploration. A/B testing, campaign goals, keywords and target audiences all have to be tested, re-tested and refined again and again until you squeeze the most possible return on investment. I’m glad to say we’re continuing to succeed in this regard.
I love coming up with new and creative ideas to promote a company in ways that the client never would have thought. I want to continually justify their reasoning for hiring StrataBlue, and though cold, hard figures are a good way to measure that success, the creativity that I like to put to work is another way.
Whether it’s targeting a specific, untapped audience, coming up with a new social header graphic, or just planning out our social media activities week to week, there’s a lot of room to thrive with a client at StrataBlue if you’re creative. And that, to me, is the most fun part of the job.
I write comic books that have been published by major comics publishers. The one I’m most proud of, by far, is called Amala’s Blade, from Oregon-based publisher Dark Horse Comics. It’s in the “steampunk” genre and stars Amala, the greatest swordfighter in the world … just ask her. The artist is named Michael Dialynas and lives in Athens, Greece. He brings a real European style to the art, and I love it. I’ve also done two short stories for DC Comics, and would love to do more with them someday. My next project is looking for a publisher, and it’s about the employees at a magic record store in 1992.
I’m also a gamer — specifically, card games. I play in high-level tournaments with friends on a regular basis.
I like distance running. I’m up to 8 miles on the treadmill, working toward the 13.1 that constitutes a half marathon – though Suzanne McGill, profiled here last month, beat me to it.
And I love spending time with my loud and energetic family, even though I am the total opposite. That’s right – all three of my kids are exactly like their mother. Indoor voices, please!
The power I would most want is not to get tired involuntarily. As I head closer to my 40s, I’m going to wish for that power more and more often. I’ve been off caffeine for a couple years, for the most part, but I can still hear it calling. Just when I thought I was out, it pulls me right back in…