.: My, Look At The Time... :.

Funny, my new job has forced me to look at "me" online and here is my blog...almost an entire year later....

So, I'm here alone this late at night at my new place of employment, Sprout Social. I've so much to write about my new jobber...just tonight, I've told my story about starting up with Sprout Social multiple, multiple times. What's one more time?

My beginnings with Sprout Social starts, where a lot of my stories start - lindy hop. As most know, I've been running the swing dance event at Fizz Bar and Grill for the last few years. Since the very start, I didn't use the typical routes for advertising the dance event. No flyers, No ads. I do not think I've spent a cent on promotion. Wait. There was the shipping cost of the free business cards. All of my promoting has been online. In the beginning, it was relying on an old friend called windyhop.org (remember them ;)) Just update the calender, write an article for an event, or start up a thread in the forums on WH.

Then this facebook thing comes along. I create a group for Swing Dancing at Fizz and then a fan page.

Then this Twitter thing shows up. After having @nuprinz for a bit, I give starting up @SwingAtFizz a whirl . Outside of the incredible word of mouth from Fizz's reputation all these years, these three social media aspects are the only forms of promotion I've used.

Most dancers at Fizz might not remember a time where we were ecstatic to break even or have 20+ dancers visit us. I have to look back at this time and laugh while getting my foot stomped on in a 100+ dancer crowd this past Monday.

Well,after a while, our venue, Fizz Bar and Grill...well, come to think of it I don't recall who approached who but this past September was the beginnings of a lovely relationship with me taking the reins as the Fizz's social media manager. This opened a whole other world of online social media to me. Foursquare became a force to be reckoned with, as was Yelp.

At the beginning of this year, I was struggling to keep my personal, Swing Dancing at Fizz and Fizz Bar and Grill various accounts in order. Then comes along my blues dancin' knight with an ever-present iPhone, Sam...

Tessa, he tells me, check out this site...it should help you out. He sends me a link to www.sproutsocial.com.

I use Sprout Social over the next few months to not only juggle the posts and tweets between my 3 accounts (Actually, you can make that 4 if you add the yearly WCLX event of which I was also policing.) but to also to monitor my new foursquare and yelp accounts. And lo, the have various searches that help me find other tweeters that have interests in lindy hop and/or beer gardens! Amazing! Among so many other incredible features..but that's another story...

But Sprout Social was (and still is) in beta. Considering I'd beta tested Windyhop a couple of times I had no problem whatsoever to point out what I did and did not like about the site. Soon, I'd gotten a tweet from @Justyn asking if we could meet to discuss how I use the site. I ended up meeting the entire starting crew over beers at Fizz.

A couple of more months go by and I get an email from Justyn asking if I could do what I do for the Fizz accounts but for Sprout Social. Just a few hours a week to start...

And here I am, alone in the Sprout Social office, finishing up the start of a Sprout Social fan page.... We go live in a few days and I'm totally on board. Sheesh, look at the time indeed! More later!