I was recently asked to speak on a panel for WISE, a leading voice and resource for professional women in the business of sports and events! The networking event took place on March 23rd at Roe here in SF and the topic was Social Media and the latest trends and information. The two other panelists were Katie Zacarian, an account executive at Facebook, and Rick Farman, Co-Founder and Partner of Superfly Productions, a marketing agency for Fortune 500 Corporations and prime force in the creation of the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival. The moderator, Kerry Lange SVP Operations and Managing Director of Ammo Marketing did an incredible job and was an honor to be a part of this discussion.

My main purpose was to talk about how ABCey Events has effectively utilized social media to help grow our business and to spread the word about the events we’re working on. Here’s a brief recap:

When the economy took a turn for the worse in late 2008, I must admit that I was a little nervous. Companies were firing people, let alone having lavish events. So, we took to Social Media to save the day instead of making grueling cold calls. Our objective was to really grow our online presence and visibility utilizing the 3 essential networks- Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In. Aside from the fact that it is an easy way to connect with old friends, for small business, social media allows you to build your brand, connect with potential new colleagues and customers, share your expertise, and learn. The fact that it is practically free makes it exponentially better.

Facebook is a great place to connect with people and informally share updates but can also be an essential business tool. Make new friends in networks that your company might be targeting and directly connect with them. Don’t just add them to your list of friends. Take a look at what they are doing and comment – get involved! Kevin Kelly of Wired Magazine wrote an article titled “1000 True Fans” and basically talks about maintaining direct contact with your fans. You don’t need a million fans or followers. You need quality ones and you need to actually interact with them.

A common question is how do you know what to post about and what should you post on? My answer for that would be to know your target audience and to discuss engaging topics such as news or trends in your industry. Think about the law of attraction and test it out. We started posting about technology this past year in hopes of gaining more tech clients and it’s working out pretty well for us! Show that you are an expert in your field and write about topics you are passionate about- others just might be too. Also, try to pose your posts as questions so that they will illicit a response.

One of our favorite sources to gather ideas for posts is Alltop.com, Guy Kawasaki’s online magazine rack which gives you all the most popular headlines from topics around the web. The Alltop directory is very useful (which reminds me of the origins of Yahoo! – a directory of websites) in finding the best blogs on a particular topic, which is a harder problem than I imagined. You can also create your own personal Alltop, called MyAlltop. Delicious is also great to use for social bookmarking.

Twitter can be thought of like a conversation which you can join or leave any time. The most important thing you can do is again, Interact! You can post interesting articles, news, and trends here as well but really take advantage of  this tool to get involved with your community and possible leads. Check out the Twellow Directory and search for people by area of expertise, profession or other attribute listed in personal profiles. Find the people that matter to you and engage them. Tell them you like their recent blog post, or that you like what they are doing. People love compliments- I know I do! All of a sudden, you’ll be having a dialog with Craig Newmark from Craigslist about his favorite sushi joint in the city and now you’re on the radar!

Update your blog frequently. We use WordPress, but there are tons of other good ones that you can get started on and fully customize yourself. Make sure your blog is hosted on your website and not an independent page, as this will help build content for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) purposes. Try to post 4-5 times a week so that you can gain a readership and following. Remember, consistency is key! Use the inspiration that you gather from your daily posts to elaborate upon and formulate blog topics. Try something fun and different to keep people coming back and create a theme for your blog. We started a weekly “TV on Tuesday” with video clips from around the web. As we are targeting the tech industry and hope to gain more social media projects to promote the events we do, ours is “Setting the Standard for the Event Industry and Empowering Entrepreneurs Through the Use of Forward Thinking Technology.”

Linked In is a fantastic site and you can really build a solid professional network on there. You can do a search by company to find out who the best contacts are that you are you trying to reach out to. I also have a bunch of PDF’s on our company, services and event specs up there on an application called Box.net where you can store and share your content. There are a wealth of
groups on Linked In, so join them and get involved in the discussions going on. You can post your own discussion and comment on ones that you are interested in. We post our blog to various groups on there as can tell through our analytics that we’re getting quite a bit of traffic directly from the site.

In terms of branding, make sure everything is consistent across your networks. Use your company colors and have a designer help you to create some templates for your newsletters or Twitter page. Be sure to also use a real picture of yourself- not one of you drunk or your half-naked Burningman shot! A company logo is not as good as a picture of yourself either; people need to associate a face with a brand. Facebook and other social networking sites are meant for people to share but keep it professional and modify your settings.

For promoting events for others, post information or event flier to all your networks. Share on facebook and create an event group. Post on Twitter and direct your posts to people that might be interested in attending. Write a blog about it beforehand to gain interest early on. Invite people to the event on facebook and get people talking about it. Create a forum where people can get involved and ask questions. Once the event is over, highlight it in your next newsletter. Post the photo album for the event on your website and create an album on your facebook fan page or event page. Recap the event on your blog and ask people to give feedback. Wash, rinse, repeat!

We’ll leave you now with that and just a few Social Media lessons and book recommendations from Mashable.com, our very favorite social media blog covering cool new websites and social networks!

Lesson #1- You Need to Build Trust: Trust Agents By Chris Brogan and Julien Smith

Lesson #2- Turn the Bullhorn Around: The Whuffie Factor by Tara Hunt

Lesson # 3- Learn the Pillars of Social Media Success: Six Pixels of Separation by Mitch Joe

Lesson # 4- Work Your Face Off: Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuck

Lesson # 5- Get Smart About the Tools: The New Community Rules by Tamar Weinberg