Mom, What Do You Do At Work Anyway?

The kids have asked me that several times - what do you do at work anyway, Mom? I can hear the underlying question - what is so important that you have to leave? Or maybe that's my mommy guilt talking... Regardless, it's a good question - and I thought I should write down a few thoughts about my job and what it is I do all day.

I work as the Director of Marketing and Administration for a large local accounting firm. I am the only one within the firm to work on promoting the firm through advertising, public relations, social media, search engine optimization, events like trade shows and mixers, and posting educational articles on our website and three blogs. It is fairly common for firms our size to have one-person marketing departments, but I also only work 30 hours a week right now so it can be tough balancing everything.

It is also a challenge to make accounting interesting and personal, not too technical and cold. I have tried to add details about each accountant's personal life in our marketing materials - people want to hire people that they like, and I think it helps to show the accountants in "their natural habitat." We have had people stop in the middle of a presentation and comment on the accountant's bio, "Wow, you restore classic Corvettes? I used to do that with my dad too. That's awesome!" It creates a connection almost immediately.

Here is a sample of the projects I worked on last week, just to show a snapshot of my job:

• Reviewed a series of videos with client testimonials that we shot a few months ago. I had invited 8 clients to come to the office and we had set up a mini studio in our training room. We are adding the videos to our YouTube channel and our website. 
• Wrote a press release on a seminar we are presenting in our Salt Lake office; I sent the release to the Salt Lake media and Chamber of Commerce to promote the seminar for us. They posted the event to their calendar. 
• Purchased new photos for our fraud investigation blog. 
• Trained the new marketing intern on how to add our radio show podcast to the website. 
• Started planning for our booth at a tribal gaming trade show coming up in a few months. We are also trying to submit a topic so we can speak at the conference portion as well. 
• Started a Twitter account for the firm and sent our first two tweets. Woo hoo! Wonder how long each of these social media platforms will last before the next new thing comes out?  
• Confirmed our UNLV basketball group tickets and made sure everyone was still going.
• Helped format and "beatify" three proposals for new accounting clients. I get asked to do anything related to design or formatting documents. 
• Met with a business development officer at Wells Fargo bank to plan a mixer with our two companies and a law firm. We get a lot of referrals from bankers and lawyers so I encourage everyone to network with them a lot. 
• Researched the local College of Southern Nevada's marketing program to prepare for my first meeting with the CSN Advisory Board; I was recently asked to join and I'm pretty excited about it. 
• Researched recent fraud cases and posted a few of them to our blog about how companies can can prevent fraud. 

At the PBTK Booth at Preview Las Vegas - an annual business fair with the LV Metro Chamber

Because I have the "Administration" thrown in on my title too, I also wear a few other hats. I help with recruiting on college campuses, mainly coordinating student tours to our office, and interview schedules on campus. I also do new hire orientations, teaching the new employees our basic office policies, showing them our internal communication network, and hopefully encouraging them to help market the firm and bring in new business. There are a hundred other random admin things I end up doing - picking out carpet for the entire office and negotiating the price, planning office holiday parties and outings like our UNLV basketball game, conducting exit interviews when employees leave, and formally recognizing employee anniversaries. I know I am forgetting other things, but that is the general gist.

I enjoy my job because of my awesome schedule and for the variety, even though it is working with just one company now compared to when I was at a Public Relations firm and we had a all sorts of clients in different industries. But I treat each department and office like a separate client so it's sort of a similar feeling of controlled chaos. And it's paying the bills. So when the kid ask me why I have to go to work, I say so we can buy them food, clothes and treats. And for now, that seems to satisfy them. :)