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Peter Dycus Joins Infuz as Director of Production

Last week brought another new face to the Infuz team. Peter Dycus joins us after nearly four years at Coolfire as our Director of Production. Between his time as Director of Interactive at Coolfire and a couple of Project Management and Account Service roles at Zipatoni, he’s worked with some major brands and just about everyone in town. Think that’s an exaggeration? Take a walk downtown with Peter during lunch time and marvel at his inability to take more than 3 steps without saying hello to someone that he’s worked with or worked for.

Peter’s pedigree comes with some strong convictions about how projects should be managed, and he hit the ground running. There’s a new energy in the office this week thanks to his leadership. We’re digging his fresh perspectives on old problems and how he’s challenging the ways “we’ve always done things.”

First Erica, now Peter, and we’re not done yet. We’re still on the lookout for fresh talent to join us.

In Defense of the Boring Tweet

Last night, or rather quite early this morning, I did something I’m not particularly proud of. I put out a Boring Tweet. I’m not saying everything else I tweet is golden, but most of the time I try to consider my audience and make sure that at least some subset of my followers will care about what I have to say before I tweet it out. Last night? Not so much:

You know the type. Those tweets about waiting in a doctor’s office, eating a bologna sandwich for lunch..again, or in, my case, that I was up past my bed time for no good reason. They’re usually about being bored and almost always boring. They’re the sort of tweets that make Twitter infamous and seemingly useless to your mom or to the brand manager who doesn’t understand “the power of social media”. It’s bad for business and we poke fun when other people do it, so why do we do it?

I pondered this as I finally drifted off to sleep and woke up to my answer: solidarity.

Within minutes of my tweet I had responses from a couple of timey-wimey Australian friends who were more than halfway through their Tuesdays. I had a “right there with you” retweet from a friend. The next morning, as I was skimming my Twitter feed and chiding myself for getting a mere 5 hours of sleep, I read tweets from other friends who were feeling the exact same thing, hundreds of miles away.

Suddenly, I felt better about the whole thing, boring tweet and all. I wasn’t the only one who stayed up late and regretted it the next morning. I had friends literally across the world that were happy to keep me company. That boring tweet, and the “boring tweets” that followed linked us all together for a moment. And it was a good thing.

I doubt I’ll turn into someone who regularly says good night to the Twitterverse before going to bed, but the next time I’m bored and waiting, or lamenting my disappointing lunch choice, I just might reach out and tell the world.

Infuz Welcomes Erica Smith to the Team

Fact: There's at least one tiara on her desk at all times. There’s a new sound in our office this week and it’s not the sound of a tweeting bird, as we might have expected. It’s the sound of Erica Smith’s infectious laugh. Seriously. If you only know her online, and haven’t seen her at one of the many social meet-ups around town, you might not know how great her laugh is.

Erica has joined us after spending more than five years at the St. Louis Post Dispatch working for their design, multimedia and social media departments. She was instrumental in building STLToday.com’s social presence and with a personal STLi rank holding steady in the low 30s, she’s at the top of our office leaderboard.

We’re thrilled to have her on our side now, acting as our new “Curator in Chief”. What exactly does that mean? Well…we can’t tell you that just yet. Rest assured that we’re keeping Erica plenty busy and putting all her social media and newsroom savvy to work. And if you ask her how her transition is going, don’t put too much stock in any complaints about her new commute. It may be nearly triple what it was when she worked at the Post, but she still has one of those enviable commutes downtown residents share.

Welcome, Erica. We can’t wait for all the great things we’ll do together.

A Day in the Life of: Digital Engagement Specialist

It’s a challenge to explain to people what a Digital Engagement Specialist does with her time. I haven’t quite perfected my elevator pitch and it usually ends up sounding like “I play around on Twitter and Facebook all day.” It’s not exactly the wrong impression. I spend my day cultivating relationships online for several of our brands, and I do most of my work in real time. This is what my day generally looks like:

First Thing: Call up my calendar for the day and fill in all the gaps with the things I need to get done between moderating and curating. I pour myself a BIG cup of coffee (the first of many), turn on some music and get to work.

Morning: I start with a light skim of what I missed to make sure there isn’t anything critical that needs to be addressed immediately. I’m not the first line of defense, but I’m often the first pair of eyes in the morning, so this is an important step. Once I’m certain there’s nothing super-pressing, I dive deeper and get to the heart of my job. I check in with communities on Facebook and Twitter, saying hey to folks, looking through links and pictures for opportunities to share new content with people. Reaching out to people through the voice of our brands is the highlight of my day. I know how great I feel when a brand I care about “notices” me, and I love that I get to do that for someone else. I could easily spend all day hanging out with our online communities, so I’m careful to watch my time and make sure I don’t fall down too many rabbit holes. I am mostly successful …mostly. I squeeze in anything else I need to accomplish and meetings I need to attend where I can.

Lunch: Usually lunch passes me right by and it’s not until one of my coworkers checks in that I remember to eat. I can’t leave right away, though. Several studies have shown a spike in online interaction early afternoon, when people are getting back from lunch. Since we want our messages to be seen by the largest audience possible, I’ve got a few things to tweet before I take a break.

Afternoon: Here’s where things get crazy for me. By lunch time my browser is full of articles I want to share, so I spend some time sorting through them. Not everyone’s lucky enough to have a job like this, so I take pride in being able to brighten people’s days with just the right story or funny link. I also take this time to write a blog post, do some peer editing, follow up with coworkers on the status of related projects, work on content calendars or finish up something I was supposed to complete earlier in the day but couldn’t because of those rabbit holes. It’s all got to get done, after all, and there are still communities to interact with. Even when my dance card is full all afternoon, I check in often enough to make sure we’re not missing anything. It’s my job, after all.

Last Thing: Before I head out in the evening, I queue up any content that needs to be manually loaded, make sure everything’s set for the day and do one last pass on Facebook and Twitter. Facebook gets really active once people get off work, so it’s tempting to stick around just to watch the fireworks.

I’d like to say my day ends there, but after work I turn into someone else’s target audience, engaging with brands from the other side. And since I’m online anyway, there’s no harm checking in, is there?

Infuz Intern Class of 2011

It wouldn’t be summer at a marketing agency without a group of fresh-faced college students underfoot and filling the few empty chairs in status meetings.  This summer, with interns working in nearly every facet of our business, we have the makings of a complete agency.  Emily Ulrich and Katie Thacher are hard at work with our Account Services Team.  Katie Marshall, Billy Fraiser and Zack Kasperski have joined our Creative Team.  Katie and Billy are focused on design, with Zack doing copywriting.   Rounding out the group is David Oster, who is focusing on mobile applications with our Development Team.

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