How Theo Paphitis, Entrepreneur/Dragon, uses social media
May 18, 2012 By Bob Barker Leave a Comment
Theo Paphitis is a well known serial entrepreneur as well as being a Dragon on the BBC series Dragons Den. In this interview with Hanna Power on behalf of the Digital Youth Academy he talks about his own discovery and use of social media for himself and his businesses.
Reluctant to get started Theo recalls getting started on Twitter during a drunken evening with the other Dragons during which he sent his first tweet. When he woke up in the morning he had 20,000 followers. This began to show him the power of social media.
He does his own tweeting @theopaphitis which revolves around #sbs where he gets small businesses to send him their business details in 140 character’s and he picks the best 6 to share with his now 250,000 strong twitter followers.
Having done it himself and realizing the potential, Theo now has social media people for each of his businesses and feels it would be negligent of a business not to have people using social media to promote their business. “it’s a no brainer”.
You can find the Digital Youth Academy at www.digitalyouthacademy.com or @digitalyouthac, Theo as above or at www.theopaphitis.com and Hanna @hannahipower
How Penny Power, social media evangelist, uses social media
May 11, 2012 By Bob Barker Leave a Comment
Penny Power is one of the leading lights in the UK (perhaps globally) in helping educate, inspire and get businesses adopting social media. Penny is a founder of Penny Power Ltd, the Digital Youth Academy, Frontier (Digital and Social Business Coaching), and Ecademy (SME Social Networking community) and on the video she explains what each does.
Penny has to really motivate herself to use the social platforms as she is not naturally interested in the technology in itself, but with the ipad, the mobile web and all the social platforms linked to work together productively, she can use the time between all her meetings/speaking and advising, to Tweet, share and contribute, across a range of the core platforms including: Facebook, Linkedin, Youtube and blogs.
To get her blogging done (8 per month on average, plus many comments on others) she makes an appointment with herself and suggests that this is great tip to use when learning or just using social media. She also feels she is more of a columnist in a newspaper (if you imagine the online world as a newspaper) focusing on certain topics she is known for.
Penny also sees mastering the digital world as well as social media as a vital skill set in todays economy to make an individual productive in everything they are trying to achieve. Through mastering both technologies, blogging for 10 years, and genuinely engaging people online, Penny has been able to build a global brand and significant social capital which she leverages with Government, big business and small business to achieve her aims. She strongly believes everyone should be building their own social capital and that firms should help staff do this to build their network beyond the company they work for.
Her top tips for going social are to firstly remove yourself from the technology and then work out what your voice is (a singer doesn’t start by working our how to use the microphone they decide what song they are going to sing), your motivation/objective/cause and that will help you get through the big learning curve of having to master the technology. If you can simply master Tweeting and blogging (and perhaps Youtube also in time) you’ll be on your way.
Penny can be reached at @pennypower or at www.pennypower.co.uk If you want a Digital Youth to work with your business go to the link here.
How Sangeeta Haindl, of Serendipity PR, uses social media
April 27, 2012 By Bob Barker Leave a Comment
Sangeeta Haindl of Serendipity PR talks about how social media helps her to connect globally, raise her brand profile and be relevant not only to her audience professionally but also to her young son.
Sangeeta is a keen user of Twitter, serving her network with good, relevant information but is also keen on getting into conversations online which she feels should be like good dinner party conversations. She calls her Twitter followers her “twitter family” which is a really nice way of putting it.
Sangeeta is constantly online during the day, but starts with reading the daily newspaper online and tweeting from great content she finds there and ends with Tweeting on a iphone whilst watching TV.
Sangeeta feels that social media for her has enabled her to connect with people on a global basis, and that this naturally creates Serendipity both from a people/connections and a job perspective.
Her tips for going social are:
- Know your audience – who are you trying to reach?
- Know your messages – what are you trying to say?
- Know your competition – so you can help define yourself better and be creative in your delivery of content.
You can find Sangeeta at @SangeetaHaindl
