We’re really excited to share this excerpt and case study of ABCey Events from The Facebook Era (2nd Edition) by Clara Shih,  NY Times Best Seller and texbook for the Global Entrepreneurial Marketing course at Stanford and Social Media course at Harvard Business School…

My company, ABCey Events, is a premier event planning company serving the San Francisco Bay Area. We have produced events for clients including Adobe, the WWDC (Apple Developer’s Conference), Accenture, Tesla, Michael Moore, Razorfish and Charles Schwab. Every day, we leverage connections across social networks to provide highly targeted direct promotion for clients.

When I first started my business in 2007, all of my sales leads began with a phone call. Finding leads involved calling blindly until I uncovered an opportunity. My introduction to social media was born out of my dissatisfaction with traditional sales methods.

At the time, companies were downsizing, not throwing lavish events. Here I was with limited resources myself, trying to convince others to spend their money. I needed a way to keep my business alive during the economic downturn and I needed an effective yet somewhat less outwardly aggressive strategy.

I decided to grow my presence and visibility utilizing the three key social networks: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Through the Social Web, my network has expanded exponentially with each new friend or follower, requiring little traditional marketing work and at no cost! Social media networking has since become our #1 business tool and source of the majority of our leads.

We use our blog to draw in and maintain followers. Blog articles are short, smart, and edgy. We have just a few lines to grab the readers’ attention and to show that we are savvy of popular culture and the clear experts in event planning.  The blog leads the reader to our social media sites. Facebook is a repository for everything about our company, from event pictures to the live comment feed. We use Twitter as an interaction tool. We respond even more than we post to show that we are a real time resource for potential clients.  LinkedIn also helps us reach out to professional clientele.

But, success in our industry does not come solely from behind a keyboard. Active fieldwork (i.e., attending networking events, or arranging face-to face meetings) is vital to our social media campaigns. Together, we can make a powerful human connection with clients and distinguish ourselves from everyone else.

Amanda Cey is www.facebook.com/abceyevents and www.twitter.com/abceyevents