So I have been working in my new marketing career for a year but in some ways it feels like it has really only been since about February.  A lot of the first 8 months was spent doing research but not really marketing.  Then in the winter I started posting on social media for the brands and it has been an interesting, rewarding experience.  One of the things that I’ve had to learn is the difference between my hobby activities and professional.  As a hobbyist my inclination is to always produce more content even if it isn’t perfect but still make it solid, readable.  I’m very proud of my blog but if I waited till everything was perfectly edited then I would never post anything.  You can’t build a community like that.

As a hobbyist you also have limited windows to jump on opportunities and so you go for it.  Like if someone wants to do a collaboration with me they don’t have months of planning to get it out.  No most of the time it is a couple of weeks and we get the videos out.  If I waited to research and plan everything then it wouldn’t happen and they’d move on to someone else.  Right now on my facebook page I am posting a giveaway for a Target Beauty box and I have 319 entries which given my small fry status I think is pretty good.  (Still 3 more days to enter http://gvwy.io/kk65w9 and if you haven’t followed me on facebook please do).

In my career I initially took this same approach into marketing.  Diving into a giveaway without a ton of planning but figuring we ‘just needed to get things going’.  It did work pretty well and we got a fair amount of tweets and followers for the products, which I am proud of.  However, we also had all these contacts that we didn’t know what to do with.  As a hobbyist I would email them and send them to my blog but it isn’t that simple with a business.  All that kind of content has to be screened, approved, and made consistent with a thousand other factors.

It can be a little frustrating when I have an idea I know would work and want to pump it out but I have to keep pursuing it little bit by little bit.  My inclination is to just give it a shot like I would in my content but that would be a mess for a large company.  Still you see the tug of war I play?

So what I’ve had to do is continually remind myself to ‘slow down and make perfect’.  At first I thought if I put in 40 hours (maybe more) even though I’m being paid for 30 it would look great for me, but I actually found it didn’t.  On certain projects it does but I found it creates too much on my side and it is better if I take my time and make it the best.  More content is not the solution.  Even in project like gathering and researching Mommy bloggers, getting a list of a thousand content creators isn’t very helpful.  What they need is 20 or so carefully researched.  It’s just a slower pace than I would do on my own.

Not sure if that makes sense but the interesting thing as I have forced myself to slow down I have learned a lot. It reminds me of when I was a little girl my Mom making me slow down and measure a goose poster I had to draw.  I hated her for it at the time but it was a good drawing in the end and I learned way more than if I were to rush.  With the content being pretty strong it makes my coworkers happier because I am in a sense wading through the less good stuff first and only showing them the cream of the crop (not that it can’t always be better).

Anyway, it’s just a change in how things are done from a hobbyist to a professional.  One of many such changes I am sure I will be absorbing in the next few years of this new career.  The cool thing is I think it has made my content better right along with the work content and so in reality it is a win-win.

I think these videos turned out very nicely. (Although still far from perfect!).

Also check out the movie blog because I feel like several of my posts have been very strong especially a recent spoiler filled review I did of Inside Out.

https://54disneyreviews.wordpress.com/

Like the saying goes you live and learn.  In the meantime I am working to ‘slow down and make perfect’

Thank you for all your support all these years with my less than perfect content and helping me to grow and improve.  Thank you so much!!!