Hey, It's Megan

It’s an analog to do list kind of day…

I just made a new hire and I couldn’t be more excited…Meet Julia!

She’s a recent New Orleans transplant (originally from Cambridge, MA) who loves social media, fashion, pilates and cooking. She’s got a degree in psychology, an amazing attitude and enjoys exploring the city.

You can follow her on Twitter @JuliaBallard

Hiring an Assistant - Part 4: My favorite Interview

I like interviewing people - I really really do. It’s the only way to ask all the questions I want without being nosy or overstepping boundaries (for the most part).

Interviewing people for the extremely prestigious position of my new assistant was not only interesting, it was HILARIOUS.

I interviewed a painter who had trouble getting motivated to paint, someone who talked about composting more than their social media skillset and one girl who seemed more qualified to be my boss than vice versa. I even had someone do a monologue (that deserves it’s own post and will be part 4).

Pauline Willeford of Venturable really summed things up nicely in her blog.

Mistakes happen in any entry level position; there’s a learning curve and lots of new things to absorb. I’m prepared for that and am ready train and work with this new hire very closely. Laziness, however, is pretty unforgivable in my book.

So I picked my 11 favorite applicants out of 33 submissions and asked they submit three things: a sample blog entry, three example tweets that they’ve written and three personal references. Easy, right?

Only five people actually responded with the information in a timely manner; so they all got interviews.

We’ll discuss those interviews more in part 3…

I need help. Good, affordable help with impeccable spelling and a great attitude. So I decided to use WorkNola to find my perfect assistant. I did get some really great applicants but I also got things like this:

“My name is [name respectfully edited out] and I am looking for an opportunity. The opportunity that I am looking for is one that is going to allow me to become successful. The opportunity that I am looking for is one that is going to allow me to help you become more successful. That is why I am writing you to express my interest in a position within your company.”

I also got some surprising applicants that ranged from bank tellers to law students to someone with a PhD.

More to come as this debacle unfolds…

I really love Freshbooks’ customer service

I’ve been reading a lot about pros and cons of social media automation lately, which, if you are unfamiliar basically means that you schedule updates like tweets, facebook posts and/or blog posts in advance and have them automatically post at a certain time on a certain day.

This is of course a time-saving method but can remove a lot of the personalization and real-time nowness from what is intended to be a social conversation. After all, how can you have a conversation if you’re not even there?

On the other hand, small businesses and brands who are self-managing social media are busy! But they also want a consistent presence…what is the answer here?

To automate or not to automate?

Excited to announce that starting next Friday, I’ll be a weekly contributor to New Orleans’ tech/startup news site, Silicon Bayou News!

The column will be called “Conversations with Megan” and I’ll be posting mostly “how to” social media stuff will tidbits and tweets that I will pull from actual crowdsourcing scenarios - some of which I hope you’re going to be a part of…so stay tuned - I hope you love it!

Last Friday I hosted my first ever seminar  - Social Media and Your Nonprofit…and it went great!

(twitpic by @cshultz)

My slides can be found here: http://slidesha.re/qnFvY5

My favorite thing on twitter tonight…

Of course, Facebook. After I just spent a couple of hours customizing settings for the 20 fan pages I’m an admin of…

Frustrated by the limited number of contacts I could add to my Freshbooks account for the $20/month fee and determined not to upgrade, I’ve been looking for other options.

And no, I will not consider using dusty old archaic stupid Quickbooks.

So I started playing around on the ThriveApp trial as suggested by @pwillefo.

It’s pretty amazing and intuitive as well as affordable - if you don’t care about your billing system having ACCOUNTING FUNCTIONALITY.

So I went ahead and upgraded Freshbooks to the unlimited $30/month since it does have really great reporting features that make end of the year accounting a lot easier. Not to mention it’s really easy to use and reliable.

Is anyone using anything else they’d recommend?

I’ve been a huge fan of Google Reader, especially since I’ve been using it on Flipboard for iPad, but don’t love the web interface. So today I put the question out to Twitter and here are the responses I got:

What are your thoughts?

I’ve been reading a lot of about Square, a company founded by the co-founder of Twitter, that allows anyone to accept credit card payments via mobile device. 

The plugin looks like this:
 

And the setup is pretty quick and straightforward yet seemingly secure. 

Tons of small businesses are constantly missing out on sales because they aren’t able to accept credit cards and many people are still unfamiliar with or don’t want to go through the hassle of paypal; I think this is going to be a really great solution but am going to try it out myself before recommending it to clients. Stay tuned!

I’m the type of person who likes to finish what I’ve started - so I’m a little disappointed in myself for quitting 15 coffee shops in 15 days, only a few days in. However, I’ve learned that it’s not really practical to run a growing business out of random coffee shops - especially if you have low tolerance for people talking loudly, random internet failures, bad music and babies. 

5 months in to starting my own company, I’m not quite ready for an office, but I did decide to rent a desk at Launch Pad, which, if you are unfamiliar is a creative coworking space on Magazine St. in New Orleans. 

I’ve been here for a week now and have been SO much more productive, not to mention how cool it is to have other creatives around to get feedback from and access to conference rooms so that I can look super profesh when meeting with new clients. 

Stop by and seem me - Suite 401!!!

Today I’m at Sound Cafe in the Marigny. I had an amazing hummus and cucumber salad but I forgot to take a picture of it because I was so excited to eat it. The vibe is pretty laid back here and the space is super cute.

There’s even this little nook in the wall that I’m not sure what it’s for but I REALLY want to climb in it. 

I love working from the Marigny because it feels like no one who lives here has anything to do all day. It’s also generally quiet except for today because apparently kids are out of school. Kids should never be out of school. Ever.