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Dayton woman launches social media management co

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Need a social media guru for your small business? Taylor Hudson is your woman.

Taylor launched her company, Taylored Social, on July 1. Taylored Social is a small business social media management company, offering a full suite of services including social media monitoring, posting, content creation and consulting.

“We’re empowering small businesses to grow and leverage online communities,” she said.

Taylor face is familiar to many local entrepreneurs — a Dayton native, she tapped into the local startup scene early when she took a job at Nucleus Coshare at 19.

“I love how everyone treated me as an equal, even when I was in college,” she recalled. “If you’re engaged in the startup community, you’ve experienced that sense of support — you’re empowered, even if you don’t own a company.”

Last fall, Taylor accepted a full-time position at The University of Dayton. But she quickly realized that she preferred the odd but flexible hours of the startup world to the steadier pace of a 9-5. As she started voicing these feelings to friends, they encouraged her, and purchased an online course in entrepreneurship for her.

“It was a pivotal moment, to realize they believe in me, and they’re willing to invest in me,” she said.

In July, she returned to The Entrepreneurs Center part-time and launched her social media company.

“I love social media because it’s a platform to be creative and easily connect with individuals across the world,” she said. “Relationships and interactions don’t need to be bound by geography, social media makes connecting with others remotely quite easy.”

But Taylored Social is more than just social media — it’s about being social and connecting in real life to support fellow creatives & small business owners, she said.

To demonstrate this side of her work, Taylor organized a photoshoot event that pulled in multiple collaborators including The Brightside Music & Event Venue, Fusian, Home with Ashley, Breana Soliday Co., Kandice Stidham Photography & volunteer models. The participants donated their time and supplies to connect in person, then used the resulting images to cross promote each other’s skills across social media. 

“It was magic,” she described. “Remember to stay connected and supportive online and in person.”

When she’s not running her social media management company, Taylor can be found hanging with her two best guys, fiancé Alec and dog Blue; shopping local; or organizing events to benefit local charities.

Connect with her here.

SummitUp – The Bowman Connection

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David Bowman head shot

David Bowman

Facebook had just 100 million members around August of 2008. That is just a little less than the population of Mexico at the time, which would have put it at fourteenth in the world. The number of Facebook users has recently eclipsed  1 billion people, putting it at third in the world in terms of world population, just behind India. That is a massive amount of eyeballs looking to connect to something: entertainment, information, conversation, the list is endless. Since that explosion, everyone from major companies to small businesses have been trying to harness the power of this ever expanding opportunity to connect. It has become a source of innovative campaigns and beautiful disasters. It is a new frontier, and everyone is still looking for how to make it work for them.

David Bowman was one of those people. He had just come back to Dayton from seeing a presentation from Chris Brogan, and was discussing the experience with Sara McCatherine over lunch. The idea was to bring the top speakers from all over, at the edges of the fledgling explosion of social media, and bring them here. Thus the seeds of SummitUp were born. Through plenty of work and hustle, the first SummitUp in Dayton (2009) was brought to life. Every year it has been growing as social media grows, and this year is no different. David took some of his precious time in the final weeks before the Tuesday, October 16th event to answer a few questions about social media for us.

DMM: Your first degree was in political science. What attracted you to marketing from there? Did you see it as a natural extension, or did your interests change?

David Bowman: In college I was drawn to political science, as it was something that was inherently interesting to me.  I did well in Political Science classes, so decided to major in it, as I really had no idea what I wanted to do professionally.  I had considered becoming an attorney for a while, but ultimately the law did not appeal to me.  Instead I went to work in the business world, where I migrated into sales.  From there I came to discover the field of marketing and have never looked back.  Eventually I got my MBA with a concentration in Marketing, where I began to get a deeper understanding of the field.  In the end, Marketing and Political Science are both based in understanding needs and influencing human behavior.  The principles I learned in Political Science are directly applicable to my job, and probably give me a bit of a different perspective on things.

SummitUp Logo

Another year, another batch of wisdom.

How have you liked your teaching experience so far at the School of Advertising Art (SAA) ? What are some of the things the students are teaching you?

Teaching at SAA has been amazing.  It is one thing to believe you understand something.  It is something else entirely to have to understand something well enough to explain it to others in a way that is clear and compelling.  I am so fortunate to have been given the opportunity to teach Marketing at SAA.  It is making me a better practitioner of my craft and the energy, creativity, and curiosity of my students is inspiring.

DMM: What is the biggest challenge to creating an event like this, where you will have a significant cross section of new users and seasoned veterans looking for something to take away?

DB: SummitUp is challenging in that we want the event to be appealing to early adopters of technology who demand complexity and bleeding edge information while at the same time delivering content that is accessible to newcomers too.  Compounding things is that fact that the event is a collaborative volunteer effort with a focus on keeping prices low so that we can attract and educate the largest number of people possible.  The goal of the event is not to maximize profits, but rather to maximize the potential of those who attend.  We do our best to attract exceptionally talented speakers and presenters to the event, often at a fraction of their typical speaking fee or for free.  We then pass these savings on to attendees in the form of very affordable ticket prices.  Ultimately, the event has an incredible team of volunteers who work very hard to make sure that those who invest the time and money to attend get value from coming to the event.

DMM: What do you think is the biggest hurdle people have to understanding the value and potential of social media?

DB: People get lost in the incredible amount noise and dizzying pace of change.  Author Clay Shirky describes media as the “connective tissue” that holds us all together, which is a great way to think of it.  Social media is simply about people communicating with one another, and all media is now social.  If people keep things in the perspective of finding ways to use communication to build real and lasting relationships, social media is fairly simple to understand.

DMM: What brands are the best story tellers in the social media realms?

DB: Starbucks, Zappos, Amazon, and Southwest Airlines are some great examples of national brands that are using social media successfully and in very different ways.  Locally, brands like Dorothy Lane Market, Olive, and Dayton Children’s are all great examples.

DMM: What do you see brands or people doing on social media that frustrates you?

DB: Not listening, participating, or considering the opportunity to use social media as more than just a push marketing tool.

DMM: How do you see social media platforms evolving over the next five years?

DB: More mobility, more video, more speed, more content, more noise, more people, more, more, more.  Hopefully, what brands choose is to more carefully integrate social media with marketing strategy.  A recent Duke University Study cites that over 16% of organizations describe their social media efforts as “not at all integrated” with their overall business strategy.  This is something that must and will change, as brands begin to understand the real value that strategic integration can deliver.

DMM: Will social media become more integrated into the media department, or is this a new entity?

DB: They will become one in the same.  Traditional media is still alive and well, but it is becoming ever more social.  As best practices are established and technology matures, social media will become the tradition.  Anytime you have disruptive technology changes it takes a while for people to make sense of it all.  Eventually people begin to figure it out and then shift their focus to execution.  This is currently happening right before our eyes.  It is an exciting time to be a marketing professional.

Books full of storiesDMM: Social media professionals are still wrestling with how to prove the value to CEO’s, CIO’s, and other C-suite people. Are there certain numbers that offer more proof of value than others? It is ROI, or something else out there?

DB: It is ROI but that has to be framed in the context of customer equity.  Social media has the ability to strengthen relationships.  The ROI is less about the platforms and technologies and more about the actions and responses created through them.  Ideally, marketing professionals are moving toward an integrated approach to marketing.  This is more akin to systems thinking as opposed to trying to compartmentalize things.  The revolution in technology requires a paradigm shift.  It is no longer only about impressions or mass attention.  Now it is about connections, loyalty, and long term brand equity that can only come from focused, ongoing communication.

DMM: Are there any social media platforms out there that you can see emerging as a major player over the next few years?

DB: Certainly Pinterest has already shaken thing up in the last year.  Google+ will continue to evolve and grow, particularly as Google continues to integrate it with organic search.  There are countless other projects and platforms emerging to solve niche problems and connect niche audiences.  I will not pretend to have a crystal ball, but I can tell you that we will likely be talking about a whole new mix of tools by this time next year.

David has once again helped to organize an amazing event, bringing talents like Todd Henry, Rohit Bhargava, and Tim Schigel as keynote speakers, and a diverse group of other professionals to run a wide range of breakout sessions. SummitUp tickets are available by phone only, so call and make sure that you have yours. This is going to be a great opportunity to learn about the basics, meet and connect with new people, or refresh and recharge your batteries with new insights. We look forward to connecting with you this Tuesday!

 

SummitUp, A #Socialmedia Confab

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In the 1920’s, radio broadcasters were looking for more. They knew they had a great way to deliver information into the homes of everyone in the country, but how to get sponsors to buy into it? Radio up to that point had been informational; mainly news and politics delivered in factual and dry terms; nothing really compelling to listen to. Advertisers were not seeing much of a return from the money they were investing, and were leery about investing more. Broadcasters needed to create something that would attract a different audience; an audience that was around the house all day, and was going to make the decisions on what household goods to buy. They decided that fresh content should be mainly about families, and how they lived their lives. They wanted this content to appeal to the housewife, as if they were looking into another person’s house without leaving their own. This new content attracted sponsors in the early 1930’s like Proctor and Gamble, who used these shows to help promote their soaps like Oxydol. Thus was born the “soap opera”, turning what once was used to just a platform for delivering information into a money maker. The Golden Age of Radio boomed, and the soap opera, and eventually the sit com and variety show, boomed with it.

Now, being eighty years removed from radio soaps, marketers are all facing the same questions in a new realm that once simply provided information, or a way to connect, and a few small advertisements. How do we get more Facebook “Likes”? What do we need to do to get more Twitter followers? What makes something that is visually compelling on Pinterest, so we can pin it and tweet about it? And how do we get all of these people we are interacting with to go somewhere to buy our product? On top of that, how do we measure all of this so when people in the C-suite start asking questions, we have good answers for them? We are all asking these questions, some of us longer than others. As we all wander, searching for the same answers, we have a few intrepid people that have found some of the edges of this new realm, and brought back new and exciting information to share. The marketing community of Dayton has helped to organize some of these people at Sinclair Community College on October 16th, 2012, for SummitUp, a full day marketing communications, public relations, and digital information conference.

This event is a major undertaking, involving the efforts of not only many of the top talents in the area, but a small army of volunteers. David Bowman, Chief Marketing Strategist for The Ohlmann Group and one of the organizers of SummitUp, states they want it appeal “to early adopters of technology who demand complexity and bleeding edge information while at the same time delivering content that is accessible to newcomers too.” The speaking talent this year is top notch, with major keynote speakers, local brilliant talent, and opportunities to meet all of the top marketing and communication talent in the area. On top of that, the volunteers help to make the event as affordable as possible to the widest number of people, so more people can experience it. “Ultimately, the event has an incredible team of volunteers who work very hard to make sure that those who invest the time and money to attend get value from coming to the event.”, affirms Bowman.

The day begins at 7 AM at breakfast. It is going to be a full day, and you are going to need all the energy you can get. The first keynote speaker of the day will be Todd Henry, creator of the website and podcast The Accidental Creative, as well as the writer of the highly praised book The Accidental Creative, How to be Brilliant on a Moment’s Notice. He is an expert on how to build an environment that encourages the generation of creative ideas. His podcast interviews some of the top creative minds across a wide variety of industries, and offers insights about everything from generating ideas quickly to getting over the dreaded creator’s block.

After his speech, every attendee will be able to attend multiple breakout sessions. There are twelve sessions total, given by some of the best business and social media thinkers in southwest Ohio and Indiana. Each of the sessions is offered twice in back-to-back time frames, so everyone will have a chance to see six of the speakers. Eight of the sessions will happen before lunch, and the final four sessions will happen after lunch. These breakout sessions are designed to give every attendee the greatest chance to bring the right information back to help the social media and communication strategies of your company.

Lunch will be served around noon, and then it will be time for the second keynote of the day. Rohit Bhargava is the a founding member of one of the largest social strategy groups at Oglivy as well as a professor of Global Marketing at Georgetown University. He is a proponent of bringing the human touch back into the marketing world, touting the importance of being likeable as a major factor in success. He is the author of several highly rated and incredibly popular books, Likeonomics (his most recent book) and Personality Not Included. His books are not just something to read; Likeonomics also offers a website full of useful exercises and ideas to help make you and your brand more likeable, and attractive, to future clients.

[dropshadowbox align=”right” effect=”lifted-both” width=”320px” height=”” background_color=”#ffffff” border_width=”1″ border_color=”#dddddd” ]SummitUp
Sinclair Community College, Building 12
October 16th, 7:00am – 4:30pm
Full Day Ticket Member Pricing: $119.00
Full Day Ticket Non – Member Pricing: $159.00
Click for Tickets[/dropshadowbox]

The final keynote of the day is at the end of the last group of four sessions. If you are familiar with the name of the person who is presenting, you have certainly seen his work on multiple websites. His name is Tim Schigel, and he is the chairman and founder of ShareThis, which has their widgets for social media sharing scattered across the Internet. Tim has done innovative work for some of the biggest firms in the country, from Apple to Procter and Gamble. The impetus behind ShareThis was to start measuring how people share the interesting things that they find outside of search engines, and that involves tracking how people use social sites to share. What is getting shared? How is it getting shared? And what is the future of measuring and sharing data?

The transition to social media presents a new set of challenges, much like the first pioneers into radio media faced. Whether you are in traditional media or cultivating pin boards, if you are new to the game or still think fondly of your AOL marketing efforts, SummitUp is a great way to develop your skills in this new realm. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and a bevy of other new platforms are out there for people to use, integrate, and broadcast from. This is a fine opportunity to take advantage of all this brilliance in a local environment, at a great price. Connect with the best talent in Dayton and beyond, and take your marketing efforts to the next level. We all hope to see you on October 16th!