All I Need to Know About Social Media I Learned from Jason Alba

Okay, so maybe that’s not true. But I did learn a lot last night… including that my mother has some decent marketing chops without even realizing it. But I’ll save that for later.

So Tuesday (Sept 22) night was socStardom4 at Johns Hopkins’ Montgomery County Campus in Rockville, Maryland. (If you don’t know about socStardom, it’s a series of events co-sponsored by JHU Montgomery County Campus and Network Solutions with a huge helping hand with marketing from series “co-chair” Mayra Ruiz.)

Last night’s guest was Jason Alba, founder of Jibber Jobber, a personal relationship manager for your career, and author of I’m on Linked In – Now What? and I’m on Facebook – Now What?. The focus of his talk was how to use social media to grow your business.

So why should we listen to him about this? Because that’s exactly how he grew his business into the household name it is today. (Okay, maybe it’s not a household name yet, but that’s his goal, and he’s well on his way to achieving it. He even told us a story about that last night. But you had to be there…)

So what did I learn about social media – and general marketing and relationship management — last night? Well, here are the highlights:

Managing social media: Social media can take over your life. Don’t let it. Some suggestions if you’re short on time:
Twitter: Put one tip a day on twitter. That’s it.
Blogging: Spend ¼ of your time writing your blog posts and the remainder developing relationships with other bloggers in your space.
Linked In: Use the two-minute strategy. Anytime you go on, only stay there for two minutes. (Oh, and if you’re not living in the LinkedIn Answers space, you need to do so. According to Jason, “LinkedIn Answers is the bomb!”)

Twitter: There are two important ratios you need to master: business to personal and value add to selling. If you’re only “selling stuff” all the time, people will stop listening. (I wonder if Jason would consider my tweet last night about my new ring turning my finger green a valuable “personal” tweet…)

Relationship management: Know people’s birthdays. Know their interests. And find reasons to stay in touch. One of Jason’s suggestions? “There is nothing like cutting out a magazine article and sending it in the mail.” (Remember earlier when I mentioned my mom? She does this. All the time. To me and my sister. So yes, apparently she’s doing a great job of marketing herself to us.)

2 Sins of Bloggers: 1) leaving out the “checkbox” in the comment area that allows people to follow a thread of conversation; and 2) not giving readers the ability to sign up to get your posts via email. (Hmmm… Shashi, does NetSol offer that on this blog?)

Email Signatures and Business Cards: Be creative. Be different. (Jason’s business card is pink and says “Pink Slip” on the back. He’s in the job space and helps job seekers. It’s actually clever.)

So there was a lot more I could write about, but I think I have to keep it short. Interested in more “words of wisdom” from Jason? Go to Twitter and search on #socStardom. You’ll see my tweets (@rferrier) along with others from last night’s guests.

Oh, and one last thing, two book recommendations — other than his — from Jason last night: Brag! The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn by Peggy Klaus and Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi and Tahl Raz. (Jason said the latter changed the way he thinks about relationships.)

Guest post from Robin Ferrier. Robin Ferrier is the Communications Manager for Johns Hopkins University Montgomery County. As the Communications Manager, she oversees media relations, community outreach, marketing, publications, and special events, and manages the Campus’ web presence, including the web site and its presence in the social media realm. Robin also engages in limited legislative affairs activities and works on partnership development and business development efforts for the Campus.

Robin is the President of the Capital Communicators Group, an organization of more than 1,000 public relations, public affairs, and communications professionals in the D.C. metro area. She is also co-chair of the Tech Council of Maryland’s Marketing Committee, a Leadership Montgomery graduate, and one of the founders of the socStardom series of social media events.

Prior to joining Johns Hopkins, Robin worked in Corporate Communications for Choice Hotels and also handled public relations and marketing for a national non-profit scientific organization, a small public relations firm, and a literary agency.