Influencer Profile: Rodney Hess

September 19th, 2010 by Will Scott

This is the first of what I hope will become a regular series in which you, our readers, get to know a little more about the most important thing at Search Infleunce, our team members.

Rodney Hess is on our Account Management team, supporting Paula Keller and maintaining customer relationships and strategy for his own group of customers. Additionally, Rodney is the guy who is leading the charge to get our other teammates (you know who you are) to blog more. In fact, due to Rodney’s efforts, a brand-new team member Sara Soriano penned her first post in her first week on the job (way to go Sara)!

Rodney is a fine fellow, quick-witted and very involved. In addition to his support of our clients, Rodney is a videographer, occasionally helps with video projects in-house, a husband and a very strong contributor to our team.

I asked Rodney to do the first of these profiles for a couple reasons. In addition to being our blogging cheerleader / whip-cracker, he is one of our most prolific bloggers. And, in support of his cheerleading efforts he has produced a series of composite images which are hilarious and I needed an excuse to blog about them. So without further ado, Rodney in his own words (and images):

So, Rodney, what do you do around here?

My official title is Account Associate but I like to think of myself as a budding account whiz and blogger extraordinaire.

What excites you about coming to work each day?

I’m a laid back guy and I dig the similar vibe of the office. Nobody takes themselves too seriously, which allows me to make a fool of myself on a weekly basis through these pics.

What do you think are your greatest contributions?

To the office? I’m always willing to help anyone out and thrive on being a “go-to” guy. To the human race? I am an incredibly considerate person and I show it. I also have a never-ending thirst for knowledge and love sharing it with people. Perhaps that’s why I enjoy being the blog guy so much. I suppose the two answers are one in the same.

What would you like to do more of?

In a perfect world I would sit around, write blog posts and edit videos all day. I also thrive in a collaborative environment and I love brainstorming, which is probably why I enjoy SEO so much.

What are you some kind of wise guy?

I prefer the term “Goodfella,” thank you very much.

Say Hello to My Little Blog

Do you feel like your efforts to motivate your colleagues to blog are working?

They were at first. When I initially started I got a few bites, mainly from the newbies. Now I think I’m doing it for my own amusement, which is fine with me. If I can make myself laugh, I’ve succeeded. Being a married man I’ve gotten used to it by now.

I'll Get You My Pretty... And Your Little Blog Too

What do you think we as an organization could do to get greater buy-in from the team to blog?

The simplest answer: if you want a greater buy-in, you have to “buy them.” If it isn’t in the job description, people are less inclined to volunteer. However, if there is some sort of gain- say, blog with the most comments gets a prize- they may be more inclined. It sounds kind of childish, but it works. B.F. Skinner, reinforcement, all that jazz.

I’d like to take this opportunity to publicly thank Rodney for all his hard work on the blog, both blogging and motivating his fellows to put it all out there.

We are exceptionally fortunate to have such a strong and conscientious team at Search Influence and I will take the opportunity to eventually profile every one of them.

And finally, I want to be clear, the images associated with this post are 100% a product of Rodney’s immense creativity. We’re very happy to have it on loan for as long as we do.

Connect with Rodney:

• Rodney Hess on Twitter
• Rodney Hess on LinkedIn