1. Welcome to the Big Wide Social Media Stage
Right now you’re waiting in the wings, looking out toward a stage that’s ready and waiting for you to step onto it and perform!
You’re about to embark on a very personal journey, one that will transport your business to a new world—a world of possibility with a willing and engaged audience who are soon to become your online cheerleaders. They will advocate your brand and influence others to follow and buy-in to your products and services. Yes, it’s the wonderful world of social media, and your brand is about to become its next success story.
Anyone with a little know-how can create a presence through social media, but taking that presence to the next level and making it work for your company and brand requires a little more effort. To increase visibility, connections, and revenue on a long-term basis, you need to understand your target audience, the trends that engage those within it, and the social media platforms they use. This book is all about using this knowledge to the max, and that’s why it’s about to become your new best friend.
More than just a companion, in fact, it’ll be your personal manager, taking you by the hand and maximizing your online presence. With exclusive tips and tricks, it will help set you apart from the competition and ensure that you quickly achieve a large and loyal fan base that works to promote your brand globally around the clock.
A Shift in Worlds That Works for You
Advertising is shifting from the real to the virtual world at a frightening but exhilarating speed—a speed that opens up a world of never-before-imagined opportunity for the small business. This book shows you why it’s easier than ever to compete with the big boys; you no longer have to outspend them, but instead you can outsmart them by developing viral videos, tweets, and posts that your fans will latch on to and that will blow your competitors out of the water.
Social media means outsmarting rather than outspending.
It All Starts with Personality
Your unique brand personality is key to making a successful and immediate impact. Knowing what you are “all about” in the real world is the starting point to projecting your business successfully in the virtual world of social media. So be sure you have a clear and concise mission statement that you can easily explain in 140 characters or less. We talk more about your brand personality in Chapter 2, “The Changing Social Landscape of Communication,” and provide some tips to ensure that your message says all it possibly can about the strength of your brand, making its personality shine and giving it real and immediate social media oomph.
A Sneak Peek at What’s to Come
But let’s start by taking a look at some of the social media entrepreneurs who are featured in this book. They’ll share their success secrets with you and reveal how they shaped and developed the online personas that have won them and their businesses the power to reach millions worldwide. All of them have a simple message to share, and all of them have used the advice featured within this book to turn their individual brands into online superstars.
Lori McNee
For more than 25 years, Lori McNee has lived with her family in the beautiful Rocky Mountains of central Idaho. A native of California and raised in the Southwest, Lori cultivated her interest in art and wildlife during her childhood. Today, Lori is an internationally recognized professional artist and art-marketing expert whose broad spectrum of artwork includes still life, landscape, and nature paintings.
Along with her fine arts business, Lori also juggles a professional blogging, writing, and public-speaking career. She freely shares valuable fine art advice as well as art business and social media guidance on her popular blog, FineArtTips.com. Lori ranks as one of the “Most Influential Artists” on Twitter and among “The Top 100 Most Powerful Women on Twitter.” She is a television hostess for Plum TV and has been featured in magazines, books, and blogs, including The Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, Southwest Art Magazine, Wildscapes Magazine, American Art Collector, Money Dummy Blog, Artists Network, Art Bistro, and Art Talk Magazine. She has been named among the “Top 10 Up and Coming Women Bloggers” and “Twitter’s Top 75 Badass Women.” In addition, Lori is on the Board of Advisors for Plein Air Magazine.
Choosing to work in a business she was passionate about was only the starting point for the success of Lori’s brand. Taking the business from dream to mainstream came about by clever social media implementation using the tips and tricks we share with you throughout this book.
Jessica Northey
Jessica Northey describes herself as “taking over country music radio one tweet at a time.” She has found a unique way of using social media to launch new artists onto radio. She shares her secrets with us later in the book, including her optimization techniques, which are now being implemented at top radio stations across the nation and in training programs that span a variety of businesses (everything, in fact, from real estate to the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism).
With a personal network of more than 160,000 followers and a second-order influence of over 4 million (more about the importance of this later in the book), Jessica is ranked in the top 500 most influential people on Twitter and, according to Fast Company Magazine, is one of the 150 most influential people in social media today.
Danny Devriendt
A successful blogger and an avid user of social media, Danny is one of the leading authorities on digital media and the predictive web in Europe. He is a European representative in Porter Novelli’s Global Digital Council and heads up Porter Novelli’s social media efforts in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. He is based at @PNBR5, a social media lab at the very core of Porter Novelli, Brussels, from where he coordinates its cross-border digital activities.
Danny studied Educational Sciences and Agogics, the social science relating to the promotion of personal, social, and cultural welfare. His healthy passion for people, Schrödinger’s cat, quantum mechanics, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy make him an unorthodox, out-of-the-box thinker.
Danny was a journalist for eight years and one of the first Belgian journalists to cover the Internet. His portfolio included several Belgian newspapers and various publications of the Roularta Media Group. He was a freelancer for the Meridian News service in the United Kingdom and was the cofounder/chief editor of Le Grand Boulevard, a stylish monthly news magazine. He also worked for Belgian National Radio and in local television.
A passionate presenter, Danny speaks regularly on the integrated use of digital media, web 3.0, augmented reality, predictive web, crowdsourcing and metrics, and conversation management. He has conducted media and digital media training sessions and seminars for brands and organizations all over the world. In addition, his vision for digital and social media is voiced daily through his Twitter channel, @dannydevriendt; his personal blog, www.heliade.net; and many online forums.
The Whole Social Media World’s a Stage
These brief introductions hopefully encourage you to read on and discover more; after all, they are testimony to the breadth of expertise you’ll find within this book. All of the featured entrepreneurs have built an exceptionally effective online presence through recognizing and promoting their individual passions and talents. They quickly learned the value of spreading their message by word of mouse rather than word of mouth. As a result of their dedication to self-promotion through social media, their success seems certain to continue to grow. They view social media as a global stage to be performed on daily and see their followers as an audience with whom they can interact and share. You need to adopt this vision, too, if you are to conquer social media and become its next big success story.
Ensure your message is spread by word of mouse as well as word of mouth, and you’ll be on your way to social media success.
Perhaps the best way to paint a picture of the global media stage is to show it as a series of multilevel performance platforms. These platforms represent different aspects of social media, and each has its part to play in creating your business or brand persona.
In Part II, “Social Media Networking Basics,” we introduce each of the platforms so that you can determine which is best for your brand.
Whether you decide to start with just one platform or to jump onto all of them at once, remember to take your dreams with you on the journey; allow yourself to virtually “strut your stuff” by embracing your passions and becoming an expert on the subjects that interest you most. Share and connect with others in a way that reflects your brand personality and lets it truly shine.
Your journey starts now, so fasten your seat belt and read on.