Get Social Media Know How! – #Entrefest

: Cover via Amazon

I spent today at Entrefest for small businesses and entrepreneurs in Coralville, IA. A client of mine, Doug Mitchell, came in voluntarily to stream the conference live, utilize twitter camp, and do other cool things to liven it up and show what power the Internet, or mores specifically, social media has. He actually gave two presentations at the conference which we recorded along with the keynote speaker, Rhonda Abrams of The Planning Shop.

While I was recording/streaming the feed for Doug’s presentations on SEO and social media I noticed two things. You either agree (accept) that social media is where we are going or you disagree (deny) that you don’t have to do it. There was one individual who has been in business for 10 years now and considers social media to be a waste of time. While this individual is set in his ways, the likely reason he feels this way is because he doesn’t know where to learn. Individuals of all ages use social media everyday for personal and business reasons and it’s not hard to learn.

To prove this I’ve Googled a number of social media websites with the word “tutorial” after it to see the results.

Twitter Tutorials:

4,660,000 results | Every site that came up on the first page was offered free tutorials in both video/audio and text format.

Facebook Tutorials:

10,600,000 results | Just as above, it was all free.

Tumblr Tutorials:

222,000 results | Sure, not as many as the above two but Tumblr is not used nearly as much and frankly, I think 222k resources is still plenty of material to consume.

LinkedIn Tutorials:

1,130,000 results | It’s amazing how many people don’t realize how much functionality has been built into LinkedIn. It’s usually seen as just a professional venue to connect but there is so much more you can do than just “connect.”

Friendfeed Tutorials:

284,000 results | Need I say more

I think you get the point now. There is so much free material out there and a lot of it is very good. Just search through Slideshare presentations or Youtube and you’ll get some awesome explanations on what these tools are and how to use them. This is the one thing that could keep you from growing your business. WHY? Simple. It’s not because social media is the answer to all your business needs, but it’s likely that in the coming months & years your target market will be using these tools, as will your competition and they will beat you to the punch.

Check out Doug’s presentations here or go to the Entrefest website: (Keep in mind, we set this up without any time to prepare and were really just flying by the seat of our pants so bear with us if the quality isn’t as good. Had some technical difficulties to say the least.)

This one is on Social Media Marketing. (That isn’t me in front of the camera)

This one is on SEO…not your typical SEO presentation.