Thursday, Jan. 12, 2012

Dorien Morin: Getting Social

Dorien Morin-van Dam. Courtesy photo.

 

Dorien Morin-van Dam, born and raised in the Netherlands, decided to move to the United States when she was 18. For a time, she was an au pair in Boston and as fate would have it, met her husband, Paul Morin, at a bus stop there. Three days after deciding to tie the knot the two actually got married at the same bus stop. The couple was back and forth between Boston and Philadelphia several times in connection with Morin’s husband’s academic and business endeavors.

Twelve years ago, they arrived on the Grand Strand, a decision that Morin [her maiden name is listed last in the Netherlands] compares to picking a name from a hat. “We were living in an apartment in Philly with two children and a third on the way,” she says. “The housing market was very expensive there and I had visions or nightmares of myself standing on a ladder with three children surrounding me – fixing up an old Brownstone – and I said we just need to get out of the city.” They looked for locations from North Carolina to Florida, and found a house here that met with their criteria: Near the beach, close to an airport, and with a home office. The Morins now have four children, ranging in age from 6-15.

In 2010, she launched her own business, More In Media [moreinmedia.com], a social media consultancy focusing on local businesses with social media management, strategic planning and training, including monthly workshops at Horry-Georgetown Technical College’s Grand Strand Campus Conference and Business Center. “I help companies and individuals that want to do social media but don’t know where to start,” she says. Her motivation for this began when she was helping her husband’s consulting business with social media. “I was working on his blog and Twitter account, doing some of his Facebook and learning along the way.” She says she got serious about her own business in March 2010 and had her first client by May of the same year, which coincided with her youngest child entering kindergarten. “This is really my ‘after children career,’ even though my kids are not grown and gone,” she says.

Most of her clients are small businesses with anywhere from five to 10 employees. “A lot of bigger companies already have their own marketing departments and will hire their own social media managers,” she says. “I am doing (what) the companies that can’t really afford to hire an employee, but can afford to hire a consultant. Oftentimes I will be hired for a three-to-six month period, where I set up and manage and do in-house training for the person who will eventually take over.” She also does plenty of one-on-one training appointments to show small groups or individuals how to get started quickly. But she has an eye to long-term contracts, managing multiple social media platforms for multiple clients, enabling her more time to work from home. “I’m still looking for clients, creating and nurturing relationships, so hopefully soon that is going to be the case.”

Morin is an avid runner. “That’s what I do for fun,” she says. “I’ll get up at five o’clock on a Saturday morning and go run 18 miles.” She plans on competing in the next Myrtle Beach Marathon, making it her fourth full marathon here as well as 10 half-marathons to her credit. She and her husband [also a runner] went to Tampa, Fla. in December to participate in something called the Tough Mudder mud run. “The course is based on one designed by the British Special Forces. It’s a 12-mile race through fields and mud and a river – with about 28 to 30 obstacles. Some of the obstacles were crazy [like swimming through a shipping container filled with ice cubes], but we really had fun.” Family time includes frequent trips to the Barc Parc near Seagate Village. “We have two big labs,” she says.”

The color orange is a part of More In Media’s branding, and before anyone jumps to conclusions about a certain university, think again. “It has to do with the Netherlands. The Dutch flag is red, white and blue, but Queen Beatrix is from the House of Orange, so the Dutch have adopted orange as their national color. Even though I am also an American citizen, I really wanted to have that Dutch heritage in there somewhere, so I have taken orange as my color. Wooden shoes might not look as good.”

Know of a local with an interesting job or career that should be given the Working 4 A Living treatment? Contact Roger Yale at rgyale@gmail.com