Last week was a good week for me on my quest for social media greatness. I say good because it was not great. I say it was not great because, well I did not produce anything worthwhile. You see, if I were a salesman, you would measure my productivity not in how many people I visit, or how how nice my proposals look; you would measure me by sales I closed. In the world of social media marketing, that performance metric becomes leads or people who are interested in my product or service. If someone fills out a contact form on my website, that is a lead. If someone calls up the office and says they saw us online, that is a lead. If someone sends me a DM on Twitter about our services, that is a lead. You get the idea. So for any week to be considered great in my eyes, I need me some good old fashioned leads. I didn’t get that done, ergo, just a good week.

What I am starting to learn is that a job in social media is not an 8-5 gig. Social media, if you read the title, is a lifestyle. If you are going to be any good at it, it must begin to weave its way into your life. And so it has for me. I have over the past couple of months met some really awesome people, some of them able to help me in my career, but mostly just great folks who I genuinely enjoy hanging out with. The past week, I attended the Tampa Bay Lightning’s Social Suite night and man, was that fun. I was with many of those people who I would never have known without making this less of a job and more of my life. I gotta tell ya, I had the time of my life. It helps that we won, of course, but even if we hadn’t, it was still amazing.

I had a cool moment that I don’t think had happened before. I met a fellow by the name of Nate Brown in person (go follow him @nbrown10; Nate, you owe me $10 now) and he recognized me by my Twitter handle, @SMNoob (note gratuitous plug). It was cool because it was kind of a confirmation for me that people actually might read something I write from time to time. Back to my main point, I go to Lightning games all of the time. To incorporate my career choice into it makes it a lifestyle. I feel like that mentality, the thought everywhere I go of how can I share this, should I be taking pictures for the blog right now, does this event have any benefit to my companies; and that sort of thing is going to go a long way for me. Check out my Social Suite gallery below.

Now before I go further, I must set something straight. I am a Christian man. I very strongly believe in God. While I love being successful and doing the things I think will help me be successful, it is now and will always be God who will be the reason for my success. All of the hockey games, classes, and conferences are meaningless if I try to do it without Him. I have the easy part, I just believe. I don’t know or care how He does it, I just know that He does it. Side quest over.

In other SMNoob related news, I am launching the new CFCS website! It was supposed to be today but the host has yet to call me as of this writing, so maybe tomorrow but soon. It is built using the same theme as this site so it may look familiar to you but it has way different content. I am excited to have a functional, easy to edit site to work with. That will be a great change of pace. In addition, I have been green lighted to rebuild the Sayyah’s Cleaning site in WordPress! My heart cheers. And if that wasn’t enough to do, there is a new company emerging over here that I will also be beginning a web campaign for as soon as my email addresses go live. That means, a total of 6 email addresses, 5 Twitter accounts, 4 websites, 3 french hens, 2 turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree. Which brings me all the way back to my original point, how in the world would I manage all of that if I didn’t make social media my lifestyle?