The awesome Ginny Sutton and Emily Matthews at the Texas Self Storage Association recently asked me to share my thoughts about social media marketing at their annual conference in Fort Worth. For fun I made a video of the “unboxing” of the thank you gift they gave me for donating my time as a speaker. You can check out the video by clicking here.
It’s a little off topic for this blog, but since I created this handy social media reference, I thought I’d share it with you. You are smart, so you’ll probably get plenty out of it even if you didn’t see my presentation.
Here’s the “Cut and Paste” Copy…
There’s no way to cover everything you might want to know about Social Media in 60 minutes. So, for you awesome people who want to dig deeper, here is a list of resources that will make you smarter about social media than the average self storage operator (or marketer).
Recommended Blogs
www.socialmediaexaminer.com – A guide to the Social Media Jungle.
www.chrisbrogan.com – Chris Brogan is a consultant to big companies, showing them how to sell more stuff using social media. He writes interesting stuff just about every day.
Pro tip, start with his “best of” posts: http://www.chrisbrogan.com/best-of/
http://www.lewishowes.com/category/linkedin/ – Lewis Howes shares his advanced tips on using LinkedIn.
www.remarkablogger.com – Michael Martine shares his ideas for using a blog to help you get found online, build your reputation, and generate leads.
www.marismith.com – Mari eats, sleeps, and dreams about how to use Facebook for marketing. And she’s nice, too.
Kenny’s Bookmark Collection
Here is my collection of blogs and sites I bookmarked while preparing to talk to you about social media marketing. A little jumbled, but there are some good nuggets in there! http://www.delicious.com/kmpratt/TXSSA
Free E-Books and Other Discussions Longer Than a Blog Post
Social Media For Business (Ebook) – John Jantz, the creator of Duct Tape Marketing gives his take on how small businesses can use social media.
How To Start A Business Blog (Ebook)– Michael Martine, the brains behind remarkablogger.com, has put together a great guide to help you think through a blogging strategy for your business.
Self Storage Guide to Twitter (Ebook) – I love twitter and I wrote an e-book specifically about how I’m using it in my self-storage business – by Kenny Pratt.
Books
Social Media 101
UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging.
Get Seen: Online Video Secrets to Building Your Business
There are tons of others, I just haven’t read them all.
Conferences
Social Media Success Summit is a virtual conference put on by the team at Social Media Examiner. It’s virtual, meaning you participate via webinar and a LinkedIn group a few times a week over the course of a month or so. The most expensive thing on this list (assuming they do it again in 2011), but if you want to jump start your learning about how businesses are using social media it’s a great resource. I thought it was worth every penny.
Here’s the link to the 2010 Conference page to give you an idea of what was covered:
Social Media Success Summit 2010
Outsourcing Content Creation
www.elance.com – The ultimate destination for outsourcing stuff.
Note from Kenny Pratt…
Yes, I own and have read everything I am recommending (I even wrote some of it!). Not every page and idea will be relevant to your business, but hey, you have to start somewhere!
