About Andy Boyer
About me:
Over the last 20 years or so, I’ve wandered down a windy path that always seemed to touch the worlds of technology, marketing, sports and entrepreneurship.
I started my career working for minor league baseball teams and ski resorts, before making the natural transition to the world of tech and online marketing. From 1996-2002 I was part of an inspiring team at RealNetworks, when the whole idea of audio and video on the internet was still kind of a dream. (Yes, there was life before YouTube.)
After that, I spent a number of years in freelance marketing consulting roles for Microsoft and a host of tech startups such as Imagekind, Movaya and GotVoice. I did a fair amount of philanthropy based marketing, helping professional athletes raise money for their favorite charities. I also decided to go back to school, and received my MBA from the University of Washington.
In 2007, I joined a little 2 person shop called Spring Creek Group as a Principal. In the next 3 years, we grew the company to 35 community managers and social media analysts. SCG was sold to IPGMediabrands in 2011.
In the summer of 2010, I jumped from Spring Creek Group to start a new company in the social media space, Social3i. Our goal was to build a social media services firm that could identify needs and build products that would make life easier for social media marketing managers and agencies at smaller companies.
Thus in late 2011, Social3i spun off a new software company called Relaborate, with a product now in beta being used by more than 250 companies. We are always looking for the next round of investors to take us to the next level.
I started teaching at the University of Washington Foster School of Business in January 2012, teaching Entrepreneurial Marketing (Here is the Marketing 555 Class Blog) and Social Media for Managers (ENTRE 528) in the TMMBA Program. I’ll be teaching MKTG 555 again in the Fall of 2012 and Winter of 2013. If you have a startup and would like to be involved in the class, please let me know.
Volunteer wise, I serve on the Board of the Northwest Entrepreneur Network, and the Communications Committee of the Seattle Parks Foundation.
About this Blog:
About 6 or 7 years ago, I was doing some freelance marketing consulting and decided to Google myself. I was shocked and dismayed when I discovered that I was losing the Google war to another person named Andy Boyer. However, this Andy Boyer lived in a town far away and was in an entirely different industry. It’s safe to say that if I made a pitch to a potential client, and they went to Google me, that potential client would have been terribly confused by the result of his or her search.
Now I’m no SEO whiz, but I know how to use Google well enough to figure out that buying the url AndyBoyer.com was going to be a pretty good start. The problem is, I’m a fairly private guy, and most of the time I’d rather be out playing soccer than writing blog posts. So, what was I going to do to make this blog worth reading?
I like to treat this blog as a way for me to talk about things with people I don’t get to see in person, in the same way I’d talk with you if we were sitting in Dad Watson’s. You’ll get a little Marketing talk, but this site isn’t for me to promote a book or social media consulting opportunities. You’re going to see a lot of stuff I care about – sports, business, Seattle, technology, politics and some photos of friends and family. But you’re not going to get “Top 10 ways to use Twitter” or anything like that.
I try to get something up here a few times a week. But if you think you need more, you can check out my shorter form channels on Twitter and Facebook. And if you want more good articles on social media and marketing, check out the Social3i or Relaborate blogs, where some teams of smart marketing people put up some really good content.