Social Media has become the King of Marketing.

So What Should I be doing as a Leader?

I left the corporate world a year ago as a 38 year executive career. I prided myself that I was pretty up to speed on social media, and certainly ahead of the curve with my peers. I had a Facebook account for years, used LinkedIn; I even had Twitter and Instagram accounts (even though I never used them).

I started my own business and started to seek advice from a lot of people. I was advised by a close friend to hire a social media expert to help me launch my speaking, coaching and consulting career. I also had several friends who said it was a waste of time and money. They were especially focused on the money when I told them what I was going to spend. But I was certain of one thing, I knew I did not know how to effectively use social media to launch my business, and the worse thing that could happen was I was going to waste a few thousand dollars.

After the first 90 days, I was 100% certain I had done the right thing… and I was also frustrated because I realized I had missed out on hundreds of opportunities while I was still in the corporate world. There were so many ideas that I could have leveraged in my corporate jobs, but I didn’t even know they existed at that time.

I truly had no idea now each of the big 4 platforms worked, Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin and Twitter. I did not know what a Linkedin or Facebook Group was or how to use them. I did not know how to build my network or which network was important to me. I did not understand Twitter at all and was unclear on how to “tweet” and who to follow and should I even try to build a following. Most importantly, I didn’t understand how I could effectively use social media to build influence, create connections, and see real-world business implications.

I realized that if I was missing this information, so was basically everyone in my network, even the most influential of leaders among us.

I have now partnered with Christina Hager, President of Ovations Digital, to develop a 2 to 3 hour discussion and workshop to help Executive teams, leadership teams, and Boards for both for or non-profit organizations learn how Social Media can increase their influence, and lead to real business results for their organizations.

In our program, we first take a deep dive into each platform, explaining them in detail. We use lots of examples for each platform to show how they work in the real world.

We explain all this new terminology and help you, “Speak Social.” You will understand and use things like #hashtags, @ signs and finally understand what “views” “likes,” and “engagement” means.

This is not simply about having a presence on social media: this is about driving business results with clear strategies and metrics.

We show you how to join each platform, help you with your posts, and get started.

If you have platforms already established, we can show you how to get a significant multiplier effect across each platform to drive more “likes” and engagement by understanding and leveraging the “Social Media Circle of Life.” We will give you insights on what is the best content to develop and how to get the maximum scale from each piece. We provide insights on the use of photos and videos to increase clicks. We will show you how to establish your YouTube channel to store and share you content for maximum leverage.

And will we give you ideas on how to manage all this content.

Christina’s role is the social media expert and I play the role of the provacator and will push you to be uncomfortable and think about real-world applications for social media for your organization. If you are not very uncomfortable in the first 30 minutes I will be shocked.

Let me give you a few examples.

Do you or your team use social media today to send out key messages to your network? New Product launches, important achievements, key information you know your consumers can use?

Do you know how to build your network?

Do you know which platform is right for you?

Do you use LinkedIn groups to target your messages?

Do you use Facebook groups to share information with members of your organization?

If you don’t have a strategy and plan for these platforms then you are behind and your competitors might be ready to rush past you. And when that happens and they get first mover advantage, it’s really hard to catch them.

I feel so strongly about this that I believe very soon when leaders are looking to fill key positions in the organization they will ask about a candidates social media following. If two candidates are very similar in skills but one has a large social media following they will get the job because they have reach and influence.

The candidate with a large social media following can quickly and effectively support the organizations strategy by leveraging their social media network.

At the end of this presentation you will have new ideas and questions and will be wanting to change your existing marketing to include a heavy dose of social media marketing.

If you are interested contact us at: wstrickland7@gmail.comor Christina@OvationsDigital.com