Hiring a Social Media Manager has been top of mind for us in recent months, especially as many of our clients have begun requesting consulting services for social networking. As we begin to brainstorm what that role might look like and who we’d like to fill it, I have been reading up on typical characteristics, responsibilities, and skillsets involved or recommended for this position.

I came across this article, titled ‘12 Steps to Hiring a Social Media Manager‘ by Maria Ogneva, which mentions several characteristics that were things I sort of inherently knew but had never articulated with as much clarity as Maria did.

For example, Maria writes, “#7. Risk tolerance, ability to fail fast: The fast-changing landscape of social technology also necessitates more and faster course-correction. It’s absolutely crucial to commit to social media programs and stay with them long enough to evaluate their success or failure. However, it’s just as important to remain flexible and nimble, allowing to course-correct. Your social media leader must be comfortable with constant change and failing fast, because the faster you fail, the faster you learn and move on to something that works.”

Read the full article here.

If you have any other thoughts or suggestions to help us in this learning process, please share!

Courtesy of LifeHacker.

The Mountain from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo.

Terje wrote on his Vimeo page: “This was filmed between 4th and 11th April 2011. I had the pleasure of visiting El Teide. Spain´s highest mountain @(3718m) is one of the best places in the world to photograph the stars and is also the location of Teide Observatories, considered to be one of the world´s best observatories.”

And, “The goal was to capture the beautiful Milky Way galaxy along with one of the most amazing mountains I know El Teide. I have to say this was one of the most exhausting trips I have done. There was a lot of hiking at high altitudes and probably less than 10 hours of sleep in total for the whole week. Having been here 10-11 times before I had a long list of must-see locations I wanted to capture for this movie, but I am still not 100% used to carrying around so much gear required for time-lapse movies.”

Read it all on Vimeo.

I am not much of a gardener myself, though a few weeks ago I planted some lettuce, tomato, and cucumber in the old shop sink we had in our studio. My goal is really to not kill the plants…if by doing that I happen to grow something, that will be fabulous.

Anyway, that to say, researching for this next issue I’m beginning to see how fundamentally life-giving gardening (creating, growing, cultivating) can be…and this video brought that to life.

Since we publish the zine quarterly, we’ve identified four broad themes to apply those questions to: Defending Human Rights (Fall), Economic Empowerment (Winter), Improving Public Health (Spring), and Cultivating Community Development (Summer).

There are innumerable issues that fall within each of those themes and dozens of organizations doing inspiring, much-needed work. Our goal is to highlight a handful of those organizations in order to equip our readership with enough information to understand ‘the need’, while also providing clear engagement opportunities.

Bittersweet Creative is committed to creating opportunities for creative professionals to use their skills, gifts, experience to contribute to meaningful work. So, we see the zine as one way that we can engage in our community and support initiatives and individuals doing awesome, necessary things.

Read all about it (and SUBSCRIBE!) at Bittersweetzine.com

I try to understand a few key things in the first ten minutes of conversations with potential clients: 1. The fundamental need (type of project, scope of work), 2. Catalysts for change (why now? what do you have currently and why are you dissatisfied?), and 3. The driving hope (what are you hoping the completion of this project will accomplish for you/your brand or organization?).

I think within that initial conversation, there’s an art in striking the balance between communicating competence and confidence, and asking good (also read: FEW) questions that get you to a place of understanding. Without that understanding, how can you be sure you can deliver? I see proposals as our opportunity to internalize a clients’ need and articulate a creative vision.

Along the lines of good question-asking, Charlie Rose is quite possibly, in my completely worthless opinion, the Best Interviewer Ever. This interview with Jamie Dimon (also brilliant…and CEO of JPMorgan Chase) is one of my new favorites:

So much of what drives us is a very basic love for what we do. We are extremely grateful for the opportunity to use our skills and experience for meaningful work. We are gearing up to hire a couple more team members in the coming months and are continually grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with fantastic clients on interesting projects.

We recently published the third issue of the Bittersweet zine, launched a new site for it, moved into new studio space, hosted a screenprinting workshop and two film screenings, sponsored a community conference on urban gardening, and completed a number of projects for clients.

Few projects in the works:

• We’re very excited to soon launch a site for Sudan Sunrise, a non-profit partnering with Sudanese to build schools in the spirit of reconciliation
• Designing a booklet for Malaria No More’s Champion’s Breakfast
• Designing/developing a site for The Fordham Institute’s reports on the state of state educational standards
• Branding and designing/developing a site for the Association of American Publishers
• Branding, designing books, producing a short-film, and designing/developing a site for the American Enterprise Institute

We’re excited to participate as a vendor (Bittersweet Goods) in the Capital Funk Hip-Hop show on April 16th (GWU Lisner Auditorium, 12-9pm), the Open Studios for our building (52 O St Artist Studios, NW)  May 7-8, and DreamYear weekend with Ben Arment June 3-5 at Ebenezers in DC.

Will leave you with this stellar quite by Frederick Buechner, one of my favorite writers, “We have only one life, and the choice of how we are going to live it must be our own choice, not one we let the world make for us.”

Using soft, bright colors, we sought to communicate warmth, encouragement, and hope. We find their commitment to research, awareness, and support truly inspiring and are tremendously grateful to have had the opportunity to use our skills and experience to partner with them.

Visit their site

Fundamentally, everything Bittersweet is driven by two core convictions: We want to tell stories of hope, joy, and selfless service amidst even the most extreme poverty, corruption, disease, and devastation. And we want to create opportunities for like-minded creative professionals to use their skills and experience for meaningful work.

The Creative Group is the financial engine, while the zine and the product line are ways we can use our skills and experience to share inspiring stories and engage in the global economic empowerment movement/mechanism. The Creative Group is an outpouring of our skills and experience, while the Zine and Goods are an outpouring of our hearts.

We love what we do and want it to matter. With that, the driving question of Bittersweet Goods is: Is it possible to buy things we love while also contributing to economic empowerment for people working in difficult circumstances? Can we curate goods that do good?

And so, this is the beginning of a grand experiment.