Embark on a journey with Jennifer Radke, CEO of the National Institute for Social Media, as she delves into her unique path from entrepreneurship inspiration to leading an organization. Discover how personal experiences shape professional growth, the value of team empowerment, and the art of balancing life’s stress with work demands. Expect insights on mergers, certifications, and the evolving landscape of social media strategy.
Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.<
- Entrepreneurial inspiration from family roots
- Balancing personal and professional challenges
- Leveraging team empowerment and leadership
- Navigating mergers and acquisitions successfully
- Fostering collaboration in digital marketing
Resources:
Connect with Jennifer Radke:
Connect with our hosts:
Quotables:
- 21:29 – I feel like, yeah, having the right environment for people to start thinking about the self-improvement and process improvement of the organization that will then ultimately help them. And then everyone else who’s involved or associated with the company or the organization is huge. And I always come back to habits and creating triggers around something like if something happened, let that trigger you to then say, I wanna learn more about this, or I think we can use it in this way. Or just say something that way you can start just like, Celeste, is it Celeste? Yep. I said something about it. Yeah, I would like to do that. Now you have a full internship program, it’s amazing. It’s just the that little spark. And I’m wondering like, what was that trigger for her? And if that can be kind of harnessed and then be put into can we attach that trigger to something we already do and now, you know, there’s a whole Yeah. You know, a whole environment for that to continuously happen.
- 18:43 – Yeah, that’s always a good question and a thought that the leadership should be doing. And most of us, especially entrepreneurs, if we’re small businesses, right? We’re so busy pushing the business forward that we don’t necessarily spend a lot of time doing that, right? I’m fortunate to be in a space that highlights and focuses in on professional development. So you would think that it would be inherent to me, right? Like a secondary nature just to say, Hey, we’re gonna push you outside your comfort zone today and learn something new. But it’s not because we just get into our routines and we get into the need to grow the business or to serve our clients or whatever the case may be. And so for me, what I recommend now and what we do now is really try to at least quarterly sit down and talk about, hey, what is something you want to learn? What is something you wish you could do more of? What is something you don’t wanna do?
- 43:53 – Most people do think we are an agency. They look past the fact that we are an institute and go straight to social media. You know it all. So here I’m gonna call you and I want you to do my social. That’s usually the request, right? They have a marketing need, a social media management need, or they’re hiring for positions. All of those I refer out to our community of certified strategists. So I gather some information from, the folks that are looking, what are they looking for, what are the skills that they need? And then I go to my community of social strategists are certified agencies if there’s appropriate, right. And I’ll make those recommendations or referrals through that process. We also have a job board on our website that is there for our community of strategists who might be looking. But it is a nice resource for an agency who’s hiring or a company who wants to bring someone in full-time.
- 29:50 – What do women in Minnesota do for work? I had traveled about 80% of the time for the last four years within my organization, and I didn’t feel like it was well connected to my community. And so I got introduced to the National Institute for Social Media through a friend and a real estate agent of mine who had gone to a business networking international or BNI meeting. And he met the founder, Eric Mills, and Eric was looking for someone to do business development, help build relationships between the institute and colleges and universities. And of course my friend thought of me and I was like, yeah, sure, I could do that while I figure out what I wanna do next. And so I did. So I chatted with Eric, I, I chatted with the investors that he had, and if I’m honest, I wasn’t a hundred percent sold right away, right?
- 45:50 – So a few years ago on our website, we did have a directory where all of the certified strategists could fill in a profile. And if they were looking for work, full-time, part-time contracts, stuff like that, what their areas of expertise were, we actually took that off recently. And part of it was because if the strategists weren’t updating it properly and often enough, and so people would not feel like they were getting the right service, right? Because they’d go on, they’d email and it was an old email or something like that. And so we’ve taken that off for now, but the conversation has come back, right? Like how do we create a place where we can not only showcase the amazing work that our strategists are doing, but also have and facilitate collaboration, facilitate work opportunities? And what that looks like going forward is yet to come. It might be another form of directory. Right now we do have some closed groups. So once somebody is certified, there are closed groups where that collaboration is happening behind the scenes. And if I get a request, I’ll put it in the closed group, right? So I have a request from somebody outside, I’ll put it in the group, and then those who are interested and available can respond and I can make some educated introductions. But we are thinking about how to make that front-facing. But I wanna make sure it’s a good experience for everybody involved, and that takes a little bit more planning this time than what we had before.