Social Media Club | Columbia If you get it, share it

Mandi Engram is the director of marketing for the Midlands Authority for Conventions, Sports and Tourism, which oversees the Columbia Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Columbia Regional Sports Council and the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center. Her job is to market the Columbia region as a destination for conventions and meetings, sports events and leisure travel. She is a current member of the Leadership Columbia class of 2009, serving as marketing co-chair for the class project.

She serves as marketing director for Columbia Opportunity Resource (COR), as chairperson of the PR and Marketing Committee of the Midlands Advisory Board for Healthy Learners, as co-chair of the Columbia Talent Magnet Project promotional campaign and as philanthropy and co-social chair of the Alpha Delta Pi Columbia Alumnae Association. She is also a member of Social Media Club Columbia, the Public Relations Society of America, the American Advertising Federation of the Midlands and Destination Marketing Association International.

Inspired by the series from *Danny Brown, here’s Mandi and “Five Questions about Social Media.”

How do you define social media?

Social media is user generated content and conversations online.

Which social media tools or applications do you use, and why these in particular?

Personally: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, (and I still have a MySpace that I don’t use because I have a hard time letting things go).

Professionally: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Blogs, (and still hanging on to the MySpace pages for now).

I use Facebook to connect with old friends and network with ones. Facebook is great for promoting events and generating awareness for your brand. There are a number of ways you can use Facebook to get people excited and get them talking about your brand. Even contests can be very effective if done correctly.

I use Twitter for networking with industry peers and experts and to learn and share information. It’s the easiest way I’ve found to get an answer to a difficult question quickly. Twitter is a good place to share information, interact with your customers, get quick feedback, and in some instances, interact with media and have your content “retweeted” to their audiences. Twitter is for engaging, interacting and sharing.

I’ve had a profile on LinkedIn for a long time now, but until recently saw little value in it. LinkedIn is geared toward business networking and job searching. Some of the improvements made to LinkedIn are that you can set up groups and company profiles, engage in discussion boards, post news items and change your status, among other things. Members of groups can choose to get daily or weekly digests of activities by email and also get updates on their network of contacts by email.

I’ve found that blogs are great for posting news and content that you wouldn’t necessarily take the time to post on your website, and allow you to post helpful information that your customers find value in and show more of your personality. They also help improve search engine optimization. You can also set them up to automatically feed posts into Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, although, you do need to use those networks as more than just glorified news feeds.

YouTube is an easy way to get people to listen to what you have to say. People are a lot more likely to watch a video than they are to read a long article. It can serve an educational purpose or give people an inside view of your business or expertise. You can favorite other videos, create playlists and embed them into many of your social media profiles or post links to them. Videos can range from expensive, professionally created commercials or promos to simple, self-recorded video and photo slideshows. You really never know when your next YouTube video is going to become a hit. For an example, our “How to Tie a Bow Tie” instructional video has become the most popular online and on YouTube, approaching almost 400,000 views.

With increasingly busy schedules, where do you find time for social media?

Luckily, it’s my job to know and use social media effectively. I’m in and out of multiple social media accounts updating content throughout the day (and night).

What advice would you give to local businesses wishing to effectively embrace social media?

Set up a personal profile on a couple of the social media networks if you don’t have one already and see how people are using them. Use them consistently and integrate them into your daily routine. Decide one or two you’re comfortable with where you see your target audience engaging and set up a profile for your business. Your profile doesn’t have to be beautiful to be effective, but if you don’t know how to do something without having pixilated, fuzzy images, either look up instructions on how to do it the right way or hire an expert. Stick with networks that have a solid user bases, especially if you aren’t familiar with social media. Go where people might be looking for you. If there’s something you don’t know how to do, Google it. Chances are you’ll find a tutorial that tells you the answer to your question with step by step instructions. To build your business network, start with those closest to you and ask them to become fans. If you have money to spend on advertising your page, there are some inexpensive ways you can target specific demographics on sites like Facebook. If you hire someone to set up your social media profiles, you still need to be the one engaging in the conversation, listening to feedback from your customers and answering their questions. I encourage you to get other employees or volunteers involved as well. The more people interacting and posting information about your organization or company, the more likely other people are to notice and the less likely they are to tune you out. If you decide to set up a social media profile for your business, use it!

Where do you see the future of social media?

If I knew the answer to that question, I’d be on a luxury vacation on my private island right now! Social media is constantly evolving and changing and continues to surprise me, and I don’t think it’s going anywhere anytime soon.

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