Note: I aim to post quarterly career updates. This update covers Q2 2010.

I’ve owed this blog a quarterly update for over five weeks now. Needless to say, it’s been a busy few months full of exciting growth at Bulbstorm.

Since April, Bulbstorm has more than doubled in size. Fortunately, much of the hiring has been in areas to which I’ve contributed out of necessity rather than skill.

In theory, I’ll soon focus more on my role as Marketing Director and less on sales, product management, and client execution. Passing the baton has come slowly, but it is coming. Here’s what I’ve been up to:

Media relations: Third-party coverage has been critical to uncovering new business opportunities. Since April, we’ve secured coverage in Inside Facebook, Social Times, PR Week, Jay Baer’s Convince & Convert, CPG Branding, and more. (Check out my Social Times post: 4 Reasons Marketers Should Add Badges to Social Apps.)

Sales support: As interest in our flagship Facebook application grew in Q2, I found myself on the phone – a lot. We needed somewhere to drive prospects seeking more info. So, I scripted and recorded a five-minute demo of our app. If you’re still not sure what we do, the Idea Challenges video demo is a rough but comprehensive intro.

Client execution: Tornados and El Monterey – with a combined 250,000 Facebook fans – are still top priorities for Bulbstorm. They continue to drive serious growth and engagement on Facebook to emerge as leaders in the consumer goods industry. We’ve also added a number of new clients including Intel, which seeks consumer feedback on a new product in the Intel Phone of Tomorrow Challenge.

Oh, and Bulbstorm is not done growing. We’re still looking for talented, management-level teammates in marketing (and elsewhere). If you or someone you know is up for the challenge, please let me know!

So, that’s a quick rundown on the ins and outs of my career in Q2. Be on the lookout for my Q3 update sometime around Christmas!

This post is not about social media, copywriting or life in a startup. It’s about gardening. (Apologies in advance to my legions of dedicated readers.)

My garden (and my Bulbstorm polo shirt) was recently featured on Channel 12′s Valley Dish with Tram Mai. If you have a passion for gardening or if you have 148 seconds to kill, check out the video below!

By the way, you can see more gardening pics on Facebook. These albums cover my pumpkin-ravaged first attempt in May 2009 and my more organized and fruitful second attempt in March 2010.

So you wanna work in social media? You’re not alone. Bulbstorm is hiring for multiple positions right now and it ain’t easy.

A lot of decent, smart people want to work in social media. But few can prove in a resume or interview that they can actually do it. It’s one thing to play with the tools. It’s quite another to apply them in a business setting.

Even employers are still trying to get it right. Last summer, Best Buy was ridiculed for requiring Sr. Manager of Emerging Media Marketing candidates to possess one year active blogging experience, 250 followers on Twitter, and an MBA.

So, how do you force your way into an industry that hardly existed five years ago and continues to evolve? Here are a few tips:

1. Create an online brand. What’s your personal passion? Maybe it’s concert photography or fantasy artwork or ASU football. Build a brand around that topic – or around yourself – and market it like an actual business.
2. Start your own blog. You have to go deeper than 140 characters. Prove that you can think critically and organize and articulate thoughts in posts unfiltered (and unedited) by your boss. Your blog doesn’t have to be about social media, but it has to be your own.
3. Start your own blog (Pt. II). Get intimate with your blog’s backend. (Oy!) Play with different WordPress themes and plug-ins. Ditch the wysiwyg and write posts in html. Install Google Analytics and get familiar with the tool’s features. It’ll all pay off.
4. Drive traffic. Use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. to drive eyeballs to your content. Don’t forget social bookmarking and niche communities. Familiarize yourself with SEO and/or PPC. Then use your Google Analytics to assess what’s working and what’s not.
5. Go viral, or at least try. No budget? No problem. There are plenty of free tools out there. Customize a Facebook gifting app. Create a Twitter hashtag. Edit your own Downfall parody or Photoshop something silly.
6. Keep learning. Your college degree is not enough. Neither is your current job. Read white papers and case studies and attend webinars and live events. You’ll need to dive deeper than 200-word blog posts to keep pace in a constantly changing industry.
7. And finally, get real. Do not – repeat do not – apply for a social media job without social media experience. And please note that I didn’t say paid experience. Don’t ignore your professional experience. Just supplement it with your personal work in social media.

If you followed the steps above, you should have enough for a few bullets on a resume and a few talking points in an interview. Maybe you can join our team at Bulbstorm. Good luck!

So, what should hiring managers expect from a social media applicant? Two-hundred Twitter followers? An MBA? Let me know in the comments!

Note: I aim to post quarterly career updates. This update covers Q1 2010.

As a gardener, I know it takes months to enjoy the fruits of one’s labor. You work the earth. You sow seeds. You water and weed and water and weed. And, eventually, you harvest.

At Bulbstorm, the first quarter of 2010 was a lot like gardening. We launched our most scalable product yet, created new marketing programs and content, and systematized business processes to prepare for a bountiful 2010.

The payoff came earlier than expected as a pair of influential blogs brought us new attention in early April. First, our work was recognized by influential blogger Jay Baer, who said our latest app is “better than anything else I’ve seen on Facebook.” And, one week later, our app received top billing in Inside Facebook. Wow!

Here’s how I contributed to our collective success in Q1:

• Product management: I oversaw the development and launch of our biggest, most scalable product yet. Our Idea Challenges app extends Bulbstorm’s idea platform into Facebook. Take a test drive in our $1,000 healthcare idea challenge!
• Marketing: When I came aboard in October, we had no marketing collateral and no B2B web presence. In the first quarter, we launched our blog, sent our first e-eblast and completely overhauled our homepage. See the before and after below.
• Project coordination: In addition to leading projects for four different client brands, I spent considerable time “systemicizing”. That meant streamlining task lists, documenting processes, and generally making projects easier – and more profitable – to execute.

Growth is definitely the key word for the second quarter. In the marketing department alone, we’re looking to add one or two talented, management-level teammates.

One is probably a numbers person with experience recommending, implementing and monitoring analytics and reporting tools. The other is probably a social media and Web 2.0 hotshot with a technical background and a finger on the web’s pulse well beyond Twitter and Facebook.

Sound like someone you know? Drop me a line! We’re going to need a few more hands tending to the Bulbstorm garden in the quarters to come.

My introduction to Rework came in a Facebook status update. “I insist that you read REWORK, from the founders of 37signals,” my teammate Dwight Knowlton wrote. “I’m a third of the way in and inspired.”

He nailed it.

I’ll admit that I wasn’t feeling Rework at first. I like my business books to be nice and meaty like, say, Built to Last. Rework is definitely not a 10 on the Inc. rigor rating.

But Rework is filled with bite-sized morsels of business wisdom – particularly for someone working in a tech startup like Bulbstorm. And it left me properly inspired to post my first blog entry in nearly three months!

Now, on with the morsels:

• On lean product design: “Constantly look for things to remove, simplify, and streamline. Be a curator. Stick to what’s truly essential.”
• On productivity: “Those taps on the shoulder and little impromptu get-togethers may seem harmless, but they’re actually corrosive to productivity. Interruption is not collaboration, it’s just interruption.”
• On meetings: “Invite as few people as possible, always have a clear agenda, [and] end with a solution and make someone responsible for implementing it.”
• On constraints: “Constraints are advantages in disguise. Limited resources force you to make due with what you’ve got. There’s no room for waste. And that forces you to be creative.”
• On getting to market: “Put off anything you don’t need for launch. If you really think about it, there’s a whole lot you don’t need on day one.”

I read from a daily meditations book every morning. Nothing too meaty. Just 100-or-so words from the author plus 40-or-so words of my own scribbled at the bottom of each page.

That’s how I think one should read Rework. It’s not a rigorous examination of the ins and outs of business. It’s more of a daily meditation book for entrepreneurs and startup employees. It provokes enough thought to push buttons without overwhelming the already-taxed mind.

Read one passage every morning and spend five minutes reflecting. Perhaps, like my teammate Dwight, you’ll be inspired too.

So, what’s your favorite business book? I’m looking for a new read, and ready for you to sway my choice!