• Name: Thomas Key
• Date of Birth: May 20th, 1988
• Favorite Quote: “Make your own place among the stars!” – by your’s truly
• 2nd Favorite Quote: “Grab fate by the Throat!” – Beethoven
• Favorite Title: Self pronounced Jack of all Trades
• Internet Aliases: TikiCoder (T.KeyCoder…get it?), Goshujin-sama (Yup, I’m a “Master” now), Doc (Science/Med student years…It stuck with me), a few meaningless others.

I usually hate doing “me in a nutshell” segments…just look at my Google + and Facebook…but I guess I kind of have to here.

“Make your own place among the stars!” A Carpe Diem phrase that says it all. I’ve started from the bottom and worked my way up so many times that it’s nice to finally stay at a constant for once. I like to work hard and play hard but you can usually find me behind a computer somewhere. I’ve held a lot of job titles and wore many more hats for anything from Social Media Content Specialist to Freelance Website Designer to Computer Engineer and everything in between. More on the jobs I’ve done can be found in the “Resume” tab, tools that I have experience using and recommend are in the “Tools Used” tab, and examples are in the “Projects” tab. If you’d like to know more then you are welcome to add me on Google + or Facebook below.

Google +Facebook

You can also send me an email in the “Contact” tab.

I’ve built out and customized thousands of sites in the past few years; professional grade, E commerce, online games, personal hosting,  and blog sites. I do it for a living as well as for fun. There isn’t a day that goes by that you won’t find my nose in some point of the website design process.

Infographic Samples:

View Full Sized Life Infographic HERE

The Game of Life after 55 - TikiCoder

You can contact me via email form below or add me to Google + via “About” page.

Jobs and Experience

Trident Marketing

Social Media Content Specialist · Feb 2011 to present

The job entails using online factors in social media to further the notoriety and prestige of the products Trident Marketing represents

• Team Lead/Project Coordinator
  March 2012 to present

  Manage and coordinate team in strategies while meeting overall deadlines and quotas.

• Prospecting/Research
  Jan 2012 to present

  Find and research opportunities in the web. Create, manage and maintain resulting lists and information.

• Website and Graphics Design
  Apr 2011 to present

  Create and maintain websites. Manage on site SEO factors in both wordpress and html based platforms. Create Infographics as well as coordinate and portray the information listed in a reader friendly manor.

• SEO and Internet Marketing
  Feb 2011 to present

  Working in a collective effort to improve the rankings of Trident’s Web based portals and products

• DSAT Installations Speciallist
  Aug 2010 to Feb 2011

  Assist with interactions between Customers, Technicians, and Installation Companies in Trident’s “DIRECTV customer service” branch.

Moore County Board of Elections

Election Day Judge · Mar 2010 to present · Vass, North Carolina

Assist with polling operations and insure rules and regulations–in accordance with federal law–are upheld during election days

Freelance Graphics Designer

Website Design, Graphics Design, WordPress theme troubleshooting, Game Design · June 2005 to present

I’ve assisted with all aspects of the job. I’m even helping to design and test a couple Facebook and iPhone apps as well as online browser games.

CNA – Certified Nurses Assistant

Home Care and Hospice, Facility CNA, Rehab Aide, Orderly, Personal Assistant · July 2006 to February 2010

Being a CNA was a means to an end for me. I wanted and was accepted to go to medical school but didn’t have the resources to get there so I started working. While working my interests changed and I gradually went more and more into my actual passion, computers.

Metal Fabrication/Auto Body Repair

Shop worker/Apprentice, Metal Fabricator · On and off  2010 and the summers previous

In Lynchburg, VA–where I grew up–things were done a bit different. If the owner thought you could learn the job then they would hire you on as an apprentice/helper role until you did. I worked in the Auto Repair shop that a friend of the family owned for several summers and then transitioned into a sander/painter/metal fabricator as time went on. After I left Lynchburg I had no intention of continuing the job but following a job loss in 2010 I picked the craft back up when it was needed.

Education

College

Sandhills Community College

High School

Union Pines High School – Class of 2006 · Diploma

Pinckney Academy – Class of 2006 · CNA License

The tools of the Trade USED and ABUSED for SEO, SEM, Social Media, and Graphics work.

As it says in my about and resume section; I work in SEO/SEM/Social Media/Graphics. That being said, I couldn’t do my work without a few tools. Below are the tools I use and the reason I use one over the other or multiple tools if something hasn’t filled all my needs. If you believe you have a tool that is better then please drop me a line on the “Contact” page.

Graphics Design

I’ll start off with the Graphics side of my work. Doing Infographics, ads, placements, or customizing web pages all come with their own challenges. The tools of the trade in this case are:

• Adobe Master Suite – Nothing better for comprehensive coverage! Photoshop, Illustrator, and Flash are my go to’s.
• Sqirlz Water Reflections – Couple trick pony but makes what it does do, SO much easier than doing it yourself in a gif editor!
• Honorable mentions go to GIMP and IrfanView. While they are never my first choice, they do get things done in a pinch and they are free.

Web Design

It’s a fine line away from Graphics Design but uses a Completely different set of tools. Some of the tools I use are starting to get a bad rep because beginners are able to jump into the graphics/web design world and produce decent works that looks very similar to other sites. Just remember that experience and knowledge can not be copied.

• Adobe Master Suite – There is a reason I went for the full package. Anything else and you would find your toolbox half full. Dreamweaver and Muse are a must have.
• Coda – Mac users only, sorry. Coda is a all in one coding assistant with a built in ftp client and an awesome project manager.
• Notepad++ is the PC alternative. It’s free but I guess you get what you pay for.
• WordPress – Yes I know, very basic and default but you are thinking too much like a PRO…Remember that a lot of my clients are little mom and pop stores that have no knowledge in SEO or web design or are just wanting a small blog to rant on. They want something that simply works. I’ve taught 85 year old computer illiterate people how to use their nice sites and even how to add posts and products with little to no problems. If you want to make it better/more difficult, then you can always add Thesis Themes to it. I use WordPress for my personal blogs and…*looks around*…this portfolio site. Rank them or not, they are cheap, easy, look good, and save you time for other (if not more important) sites.

SEO / SEM / Social Media

The tactics and methodologies are so similar yet so different for these that you may as well include them all together. Experience is a must to even know what you are looking for and a mentor doesn’t hurt either. Note that the bigger name Metrics collectors do cost money and are not necessary for smaller campaigns. Leave those tools to the big boys. (some offer limited trials and such though!)

• Plugins – SEO Site Tools, Mozbar, SEO for Chrome, Rapportive, and Scraper can be invaluable! Metrics from all that matters, in depth page and domain analysis at a click of a button, guest blogging and prospecting tools made easy by Google Chrome and users like you [and me ^_^]
• Websites like Merge Words and URL Opener – Cut you time in half doing tedious tasks!
• Google Docs – I probably couldn’t get through a week of work without it. Nevermind the amount of free Cloud storage space but the fact that I don’t have to lug all my projects around with me but can instead upload them and access when needed and share large files in an instant makes it a huge must!
• Webmaster Tools (Google and Bing) – They are free…why not have both? With Google killing the valuable data being sent to you Bing can help fill the gap on keyword research.
• SEO Moz – (Open Site Explorer)Probably one of the first Metrics collectors that comes to mind when I think of researching a site. The others would be…
• Majestic SEO and Alexa Data – Good thing there are plugins that pull the most generic data from them all into one, huh?
• Raven Tools – Very nice boss to employee setup for link campaigns and a more than decent keyword research function.
• Ahrefs – Just started using this one not too long ago but it has a very nice back link checker that narrows down to which day the link was found to what links are lost and when. Helpful to say the least.
• Excel – That’s right. Good OLD fashioned excel. Take it or leave it for Google Docs but sooner or later you are going to need it back. Especially if you are using metrics tools as they export to and import from CSV files.
• Resource blogs – SEO Moz blog, Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land, and a plethora of other SEO/SEM professional’s blogs. (Including Mr. Cutts if you’re smart) Without these you are walking blind through a mine field. Research the information yourself but these blogs can help find out what direction the internet is moving in. Your boss probably reads and gets ideas from these. That should tell you something.
• YouTube – Yep, I said it. Watch youtube all freaking day! Or at least you could if you didn’t have things–like work to do. In all seriousness though, YouTube has all kinds of interviews, research, and conferences on tap for you 24/7. Use it. Abuse it! Love it. If not then you could…
• Attend Conferences and Meet-ups - Hopefully your work already has something set up for you to join in on. If not, then find out if there are some near you. You don’t always have to pay but the information you get can usually be attributed to how much you pay. Not to mention the meet-ups near me offer free beer! ^_^

Ok, so so far everything from the internet to other humans are tools to be used and abused by you and I. Eh, I guess I could have done worse to them, like calling them out on the internet…oh wait…lol. I’m not telling you to go to a hundred SEO Pros and bug them until they make a few hate blogs about you, buuuuuut, it probably doesn’t hurt to get what you can before that point. I pick the mind of all my colleagues on a daily basis. Sometimes, it is even mutually beneficent! Then again, when you are trying to take over the internet, knowledge truly is power.