I’m looking for a social media / SEO assistant to help me with my clients and maybe some personal projects.
- This is an entry-level position, but you should have some training and/or extensive personal experience with social media. It’s perfect for someone who is just starting out as a social media manager or SEO freelancer.
- You will not be expected to do any strategy, long-form content (i.e., blog posts), extensive creative work, coding, or much actual social media engagement (mostly publishing, but that may change over time).
- You will be expected to:
- Be highly organized and have excruciating attention to detail.
- Follow instructions well.
- Be a grammar fanatic. I’m not concerned about an occasional missing comma or dangling participle, but one misuse of its/it’s, your/you’re, or there/their/they’re, and you’re on notice. Two, and we’re done.
- Have (or learn) some basic social graphics skills, e.g., make a quotation image or a meme correctly.
- You have to be willing to get your hat a little gray. I will never ask you to do anything illegal, but much of what I do is designed to manipulate the search engine’s algorithms. The end results are ethical, but the tactics may be “ethically ambiguous”. If you’re morally opposed to Twitter auto-DMs, automated link-building, or sock puppetry, this isn’t for you.
- I’m willing to pay for your learning curve, but not for your education. You may occasionally be tasked with using a tool or site you haven’t used before. I understand that will take you longer than someone who already has experience with it. But if you need to go watch a how-to video before you get started, that’s on you. That’s part of being a contractor, not an employee.
- I’m looking for 10-15 hours a week (choose your own hours), for at least 2-3 months. We’ll see beyond that.
- You need to be available for an evening Skype call once a week, probably on Mondays around 10pm Central. I’ll have sent you the plan for the week by then and we can go over any questions.
If you’re still interested, here’s how to apply. I do understand that there’s a lot to this application process, but please understand, this is pretty much the entire hiring process. There won’t be another round or two of interviews — I’m going to pick from those who successfully complete this process and have one call to finalize the arrangement. I’ve hired dozens of contractors, and I’ve found that resumes are basically useless and interviews aren’t much better. I need to know if you can do the work. I ran through this myself so I know what’s reasonable — it took me about 22 minutes. I figure it should take you around 30. If you think this is too much time to invest, or you don’t know how to do some of the tasks, that’s OK — we’re just not a match. Good luck!
- Read all of these instructions first.
- Start a stopwatch.
- Create a page somewhere online that is publicly accessible, but there is no readily obvious way to navigate to it, i.e., you have to know the URL, but don’t need a password.
- Read this page.
- Create 3 original tweets (other than the title) and one Facebook post that would be appropriate for a physician sharing this curated story. You don’t have to post them — just write the content.
- Create two social media images using an appropriate public domain or Creative Commons image and caption/overlay text to promote that same story. The two images should be basically the same image, one appropriately sized for Twitter and the other for Pinterest.
- Send me a LinkedIn invitation with a personalized message.
- Record a brief video in which you a) introduce yourself, b) tell the Van Halen brown M&Ms story in your own words, and c) tell me why you’re the perfect person for this job.
- Post the video to YouTube as “Unlisted” visibility.
- Identify a mutual friend you’d be willing to use as a reference. This is not an absolute requirement, but it’s a huge plus.
- Post all of the above to the page you created in step 3.
- List your social media profiles and any portfolio or writing samples.
- Stop the stopwatch and record the time on your application page.
- Send me the link via private message on a social media site.
- You should be able to figure out everything above, but if you’re not sure about something, try to just use your best judgment and explain/clarify in your application.