SMB Maine #2 Recap

Engaging speakers, free goodies and delicious bagels. This is how EVERY morning should start! SMB Maine had its second installment this Friday (9/18) at MPX in Portland. This month’s topic was “Creating Trust and Communities Online.”

Kicking off a morning of great presentations was Fred Abaroa, Marketing Imagineer from Costa Vida Mexican Grill.  Fred explained how getting people to “Know” you, “Like” you, “Trust” you and “Buy” you is essential to building trust and personality, and he showed some convincing stats as to why an online personality is worth building!

Fred believes that people should recognize your name and that you should “Have an answer” for all possible questions for your industry and services. Solution based conversation is essential for trust. Do not become one of the “7 Deadly Creatures;” The Sucker, The Puker, The Topper, The Whiner, Narcissus, The Vulture and Mr. Halitosis.

Alex Steed, the second presenter, is a communication consultant for nonprofit organizations and advocacy groups. Alex explained that data mining is a means to an end, and took a neutral stance as to whether this is a “good” or “bad” thing.

Alex may be the first person to ever bring up Michel Foucault in a discussion of social media.   He used a model of power defined by information – those in trouble give confessions to others, the confessed to come up with a diagnosis, and from that diagnosis there comes a prescription (did I tell you this all happened at 8:30 in the morning?)

He demonstrated this principle in practice by revealing his “obsession” with discovering information (mostly personal!) about people in need of non-profit services.  He told a crazy criminal story about a man and a woman in a Bonnie & Clyde-esque misadventure stealing items from cars and confessing it with no short amount of drama online.  Alex was able to follow the whole thing because these real names of these people were revealed in the paper, and a few searches later he was able to find their social media profiles.

Some may call this stalking, but to a Social Marketing guru, this is client research!

Our final speaker, Franklin McMahon delivered practical tips on making your social networking profiles work effectively for your personal brand. Making your personal profile pictures look as professional as possible will benefit you.  So will making your audience the stars, interviewing people who inspire you and positioning yourself as an expert are all great tips for trust and transparency. Franklin also adds that winning over people in the middle or “on the fence” is key to succeeding in marketing your personal brand – those who love you or hate you have already made up their minds.

After the speakers delivered their valuable content, we raffled off a few copies of Chris Brogan and Julien Smith’s “Trust Agents,” fired off some flying monkey and gave away free tickets to two upcoming social media events “Social Media FTW” and “The Big Conference.” Congratulations to the winners and a big Thank You to all attendees! We hope to see you at next month’s SMB Maine!

Check back here next week and we will have video and each presenters slides on our archive page.

Please contact us if you would like to see a particular topic covered at Social Media Breakfast Maine, would like to sponsor, donate an item to our raffle or be on our mailing list to hear about other upcoming breakfasts!

Thank you,
Kyle