I am really excited to tell you guys that I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing Mirna Bard this week. Mirna is a successful Internet marketing expert living in Orange County. Recently, Mirna has been nominated for the Orange County Women in Business award. Besides helping businesses develop Social Media strategies she’s also busy teaching, mentoring, coaching and being an entrepreneur. A truly successful business woman. I hope you enjoy the interview. I would also like to recommend you to follow her on Twitter and check out her blog, both of which I learn from on a daily basis.
For the readers who haven’t heard of you and your work, can you tell them a little bit about yourself, where you come from and what you do for a living?
I graduated with a bachelor degree in communications with an advertising emphasis as well as a master degree in business with emphasis on management. I have been in the marketing and advertising world since 1996, working on strategies for top brands (Taco Bell, Hilton Hotels, Kawasaki, Toshiba, etc.). Thus, I have always been in the media and project management role responsible for creating 12-month strategic plans for companies with multi-million dollar budgets.
Currently, I am a web consultant for c-level executives and a successful entrepreneurs who want to be the innovators in their industry and are looking for the proper guidance and direction on integrating the social web into their entire business strategy and not just marketing. With my hype-free corporate training and consulting, I dive into the entire business and don’t only focus on the “marketing” aspect of the social web. It’s important to me to show businesses that they can use the web and social media platforms to streamline their entire business processes. My main focus with organizations lies on integration and strategy. Even though I’m based in Southern California I accept clients from all over the world.
I am also an Instructor at University of California, Irvine where I lecture on social media strategy and hope to have a book on the same topic published by the end of 2010.
How did you get started in Social Media? What caused you to try it and invest the time to make it work for you?
Because of my experience in putting together strategies and marketing/advertising plans for so many years, being online and integrating the social web came very natural to me; it was common sense. And, I knew if I didn’t learn as much as I can, I would fall behind in my field. I have an extremely strong intuition, and I am a visionary. I knew the Internet was going to be powerful on so many levels even before they coined the term social media. I immediately saw the potential, had an open mind, rolled up my sleeves and got to work.
It took approximately 2 ½ years of research and experimentation with the social web (social media, SEO, etc.) before I was comfortable enough to launch my business and take my first client in 2007. By then, it had become a very strong passion and something I was meant to do because integrating it in business is so effortless for me, but it’s also where many businesses struggle.
What many people don’t know about me is that I was placing ads on the Internet before most businesses even knew the Internet was even a possibility (I am aging myself, but it is true :).
I remember working with clients who were testing Intranet platforms for their organizations as well as brands that just wanted to dive on the Internet with banner advertising. My first experience on the Internet was through a company called DoubleClick. They were probably the innovators in offering banner advertising on the Internet, and part of my role was to purchase these banners based on the number of impressions clients received. So, I was there from the very start of businesses using Internet and look how far we have come now.
We see many people become “famous” through Social Media but we also often see businesses and individuals fail. What are some of the mistakes you see people make when embracing SM? And what advice would you give them?
Businesses are failing for many reasons (See my post on Top 50 Social Media Mistakes Made by Small Businesses). However, the very top mistakes being made are actually business mistakes more than just social media mistakes. Most businesses are looking for quick results no matter what they are doing, so they neglect taking the time to research, learn, plan, experiment, and invest in the experts to steer them in the right direction.
It is easy to reach out to the wrong people and follow a hype when you are just looking for quick fix. This is how many businesses miss the point of social media because following hype seems so much more appealing than planning and thinking long-term. So many times I ask businesses why they want to use social media or why they jumped on a site like Facebook, and probably eight times out of 10, they tell me because everyone else is doing it or they can’t even answer my question because they don’t know why.
Social media should come last in any business. Putting the cart before the horse does not yield results. Believe it or not, truly embracing social media is not even about marketing, promoting, or using social media tools like Facebook and Twitter. It is about your business branding, your passion, your genius, your customer service, your employees, your customers, etc. It is about learning how to use social media as a tool to support and benefit every single part of your business and having the proper resources to do that.
Many CEOs and people in general have trouble seeing the ROI of Social Media and are therefore reluctant to use it. How would you recommend young professionals to convince their managers that Social Media can in fact pay off?
Education is the the only thing that sells CEOs on using the social web. It is not about feeding them hype. It takes the right professional who has done the homework and the proper research – case studies, showing them what competition is doing, stats, directing them to the right measurement tools.
One of the main ways I have been able to convince CEOs to use social media is by encouraging them to survey their customers to find out if they want to connect with the company on social media sites. They open their mind to it once they see that is what their customers want. This may come as a surprise, but I have talked to a lot of CEOs and people out of using social media because I knew they were not ready for it. When a company does have the right resources and is not prepared for what is to come, the ROI is definitely not going to be there. They end up killing time and wasting dollars instead of leveraging it. The key in this case is to take a few steps back and get them ready for it.
As a passionate reader of your blog I know that you are an avid reader of books. In your opinion, what are some of the Social Media must reads?
A lot of what I blog about comes from my years of experience in working with so many businesses. My time is becoming very limited, so I am not reading as much as I would like to anymore and probably have not read a lot of the social media books out there.
However, the one book that really caught my attention is “Groundswell” by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. I know that UC Irvine uses it in one of their social media classes as well. Also, every single Seth Godin book applies to social media, even if he is not directly discussing social media. I have read all his books and recommend all of them.
I hope my book will be the next one I recommend :)!
What are some of the websites you visit often to stay in the loop of all things Social Media (besides the most obvious ones such as Mashable)?
I don’t have particular websites that I visit often because of my limited time. Since the social web is so huge, I often know what topic I want to learn more about and then jump on Google or another search engine to research it or even have one of my assistants do it for me. I feel if it is popular enough, the search engines will find it and maybe it does lead me to sites like Mashable, Social Media Today, Search Engine Land or others. Many people on Twitter also tweet information that sometimes catches my interest.
And last but not least, what advice would you give young professionals that are trying to make Social Media work for them? What’s the best way, in your opinion, to establish an online persona?
Establishing an online persona is really about branding and figuring out what you want first, then focusing and taking action. There is nothing that can help any professional to establish an online persona faster than a blog. Blogging enables you to share your experiences, thoughts, ideas, stories, and passion. It allows you to brand yourself and sets you apart from everyone else.
In addition, authenticity, keeping an open-mind, and a willingness to learn, experiment and share is what is going to help young professionals succeed with social media. It is about being yourself and not being who people want you to be. A copy-cat or doing something just because everyone else is doing it will not get you far as a professional.
Thank you Mirna for taking the time to do this interview. :)
Don’t forget to check out Mirna’s blog and her Twitter.
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Great advice. Both of you definitely seem like people I should be watching and listing to!
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