Deborah Finestone
Social Media Strategist and Founder, Finestone Marketing Solutions
Deborah Finestone spoke about her journey from being a journalist to starting her social media marketing company. She talked about her group training program, which is to help small business owners and non-profits who are not in a position to hire an expensive marketing agency. She says that quite often such organizations assign the social media marketing role to a young employee thinking that he or she has been active on personal social media and is comfortable with the various platforms. Being an active social media user doesn’t mean that the person is also good at marketing strategies. As an example, one has to know the expectations from the social media marketing efforts – brand awareness, coming across as an expert, providing information, becoming likeable to the target market by sharing personal stories, etc. She suggested thinking about what the target market likes and creating content accordingly. Then analyze what types of posts are gaining traction and then consistently engage with your followers.