Sam Barlien

l lead a community ecosystem of 200,000 members, 13 team members, and 45 sponsors, helping grow revenue from $350k in 2023 to $4.5m in 2025.

• I launched and manage the educational arm of the community achieving $1m in revenue in it's first 12 months, and over 1000 students, with an average purchase price of $1200.
• I manage the newsletter ecosystem, increasing readership from 30k to 200k in 1 year while maintaining a 35% open rate and $4k per weekly newsletter
• I account manage 45 sponsors with a total spend of $2m, ensuring an NPS of 52 from our primary event PlatformCon.
• I launched the company Ambassador programme, managing 60 ambassadors, and achieving over 450 organic ambassador submissions in the first 30 days.

As Head of Content Marketing, I expanded my role beyond social media to contain the entire content department during a challenging period in company history. I was able to quickly cut inefficiencies, and deliver increased output and a higher impact on revenue despite lower budgets.

As Head of Content Marketing, I am fully responsible for:

• a Social Media network of 10 profiles across 3 channels with over 95,000 followers and 500k monthly iminpressions (a 5x increase 1 year)
• 3 company newsletters with a total reach of over 200,000 (a 263% increase in 1 year)
• An affiliated community of over 20,000 tech professionals, with over 3000 monthly messages.
• 4 company websites and their respective content strategy of whitepapers, thought leadership, news, and product blogs
• Helping to organise an industry #1 event with over 35,000 digital attendees, and over 700,000-lifetime views on legacy content.

I led the social media efforts of a growing startup with 4 brands, and 14 social media channels in the highly technical and pioneering Platform Engineering space.

I quickly identified key issues, and consolidated the company social media ecosystem, alongside updating and improving the social media strategy to remove ineffective, and inefficient processes while adding new advanced strategies like employee advocacy.

In the 1st year, I increased:

• Total weekly Impressions by 5.6x from 33k to 215k
• Total Followers from 55,000 to 90,000 incl +127% on the primary company page
• Employee Posts from 0 to 32+ per week
• Employee Engagement from 0 to 660 engagement per week.

In the first months, I correctly predicted an incoming risk and successfully rebalanced Humanitec social media away from 90% Twitter / 10% Linkedin to almost 90% LinkedIn / 10% Twitter. This kept us safe as Twitter turbulence decreased lead gen, reach, and the overall value of the platform for us.

Over the last 9 years, I have helped optimize social media channels, drive digital marketing strategy, run digital ad campaigns, and sell and market products for dozens of small businesses and clients. Here are three (of many) examples:

• At Shape Your Body and Formositas.cz, I optimized their social media presences while developing and managing Facebook advertsing strategy for educating customers and selling their key products in the space of aesthetic medicine. Using Facebook Ads, we sold their signature project with an ROI of 17x as a multi funnel ad strategy acquiring sales at an extremely low cost.
• At TBA21–Academy, a leading contemporary art and environmentalist organization, I developed a long-term digital growth strategy and managed daily communication across platforms. In one year, I grew social media followers by 135% (from 4,000 to 9,500) and doubled average engagement. I expanded the brand from Instagram-only to an integrated presence across Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, and created a full internal content pipeline, including hands-on video editing and digital media production.
• At fine dining restaurant Gallery 44, I built the social media and digital marketing strategy from scratch. Using Tripadvisor for the first time, I achieved the ranking of #1 restaurant in Prague within 3 months, ensuring and almost 95% occupancy rate.

I led global social media at the world's largest HR and recruiting corporation, the Adecco Group.

• I developed and executed social media strategy and content strategy for corporate channels, including daily maintenance and management (copywriting, graphic design, analytics etc) of Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, alongside supporting in SEO, overall digital strategy
• I lead governance of global social media, including creation of guidelines, strategy documents, business unit and branch level consultation, leading of global organic campaigns, and the supervision of a global social media network of over 100+ local channels and 8 million+ followers
• I developed and supervise the global Social Listening strategy

I led all digital marketing for an electronic music group, and label.

• I developed and executed branding and content strategy for the music group's online presence, alongside content creation and organisation (e.g. photo and video shoots)
• I expanded brand from Facebook to multi-platform presence, while growing the Facebook following from 700k to 1m followers, and Instragram from 0-60k
• I decreased Online Advertising spend by 80%, while increasing results by 7x
• I developed Youtube, SEO and Youtube advertising strategy