Pat Ripley, presenter from e-commerce VT

Recently, I attended an advanced social media workshop presented by Pat Ripley, State Broadband Adviser and e-commerce liason to the VtSBDC. He provides workshops like this around the state to large and small communities helping Vermont businesses with their web presence, social media and media marketing efforts.

Pat shared both basics and best practices for small and large businesses to work with sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Hootsuite, Google + and more. Sitting in the audience are business people running retail businesses, service firms, small and large non-profits all seeking to learn and energize their social media activity. I’m here because I’m a self-admitted social media explorer. I tend to try out new services, be an early adopter and spread myself thin with less focus than maybe is helpful. I’m here to find more coherence in my business strategy.

So in the first 45 minutes, we’d received an overview of the social media universe, as well as a “Push style” versus “Pull Style” comparison. Pat’s mantra is it’s all about building and maintaining relationships whatever the media source. He shared data people trust advertising 14% of the time while personal recommendations and referrals garner something like 90% or more of the time.  People trust other people’s opinions.

For me this resonates with my belief of how I try to work with various social media sites. Rather than blindly voice updates about how cool and great your business is, it’s a lot more engaging, fun and real if you share information you actually find compelling which other’s might enjoy or find useful. It’s the cosmic bank, where sharing and giving is intrinsic to success. So it’s all about relationships and creating quality interactions, not quantity.

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