The People who put Social Media on the Map
July 22, 2015
Social media has become such an integral element of
marketing companies that we forget where it came from and who made it what it is today. You may wonder why that matters, but by watching where these industry leaders are taking the media and you can create campaigns that are way out in front of the others.
Love him or hate him, Mark Zuckerberg and all his fresh faced compatriots straight out of college have taken online marketing by storm and turned it into social media. Maybe not everyone
loves Facebook, but everyone
knows Facebook, and it’s stronghold on the world is still breaking new frontiers.
Can I tell you anything about Zuck and his wonder platform? No, you all have a Facebook account, you know it all already.
These maps show us what is really going on:
You can see how Facebook has continued to squeeze out other social media each year since 2009, when there were 17 strong social media platforms and whittled them down to only five, with Facebook pretty much sweeping the board for affluence, population and influence – and it still continues to do so.
Ann Handley
Ann is also a big name in the social media world due to her career as an author with books like Content Rules, her successful speaking career, 200,000 + followers on Twitter, and her position as the Chief Content Officer for MarketingProfs. Her blog focuses on content creation, marketing, social media, and occasionally discusses social issues such as sexism in the workplace. For example, Ann had some critique and analysis for Sheryl Sandberg’s “Ban Bossy” campaign, which denounces the sexist idea that strong professional women in leadership roles are doomed to be bossy and annoying. She argued that simply banning the word “bossy” and swapping it for “good leadership” essentially denies that being bossy is ever a problem. Forbes attests to her ability as a blogger as they once ranked her in the Top 20 female bloggers in the world. Like Gary, she was a pioneer in early social media and will surely continue to shape the future of her industry.
Forbes ranked Sean as the #1 Social Media Influencer in the world. His blog, “The 2morrowknight,” has a massive following despite its seemingly simple layout. It features many different guest bloggers, which adds to its diversity of subjects ranging from Twitter tips, general advice to engage people with social media, and SEO improvement techniques. He is a key leader in the #GivingTuesday Campaign, which encourages entrepreneurs to donate to charities, causes, and foreign aid. He has over 600,00 followers on Twitter alone and a successful speaking career. People on different avenues of social media including Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn, and Facebook tend to describe Sean as a “social media icon.”
Jeff Bullas is a blogger, author, strategist and speaker and working social media expert who works with companies and executives to optimize their online personal and company brands with digital, content and social media marketing. He curates a blog about all things to do with “Social Media Marketing”, Content Marketing and Digital Marketing. This includes Twitter, Blogging, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and email marketing. The focus is to assist business in “getting found online” in a digital world and making you visible and successful on a crowded web.
His Achievements include:
Quite an impressive list and linked to way he activey engages with industry, his influence wil not be diminishing in the near future.
Jay Baer has spent 20 years in digital marketing, consulting for more than 700 companies during that period, including 30 of the FORTUNE 500. His current firm – Convince & Convert – provides social media and content marketing advice and counsel to leading companies such as Oracle, Salesforce.com, California Tourism, Billabong, Hardee’s, DOLE and more.
Jay’s
Convince & Convert blog was named the world’s #1 content marketing blog by the Content Marketing Institute, and is visited by more than 200,000 marketers each month. Jay also hosts and produces the
Social Pros podcast, which is downloaded 25,000 times monthly.
A fixture in social media, Jay draws attention to interesting and useful articles, videos, blog posts and events via following on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google Plus, which number more than 100,000. He is also an active venture capitalist, and is an investor or advisor to more than a dozen early stage technology and social media companies.
Joe Pulizzi is an entrepreneur, speaker, author, podcaster, father and lover of all things orange. He’s the founder of multiple startups, including the
Content Marketing Institute (CMI), the leading content marketing educational resource for enterprise brands, recognized as the fastest growing business media company by Inc. magazine in 2014. CMI is responsible for producing
Content Marketing World, the largest content marketing event in the world (held every September in Cleveland, Ohio), as well as the leading content marketing magazine,
Chief Content Officer. He began using the term “content marketing” back in 2001. CMI also offers advisory services for innovative organizations such as HP, AT&T, Petco, LinkedIn, SAP, the Gates Foundation and many others.
Joe is the winner of the
2014 John Caldwell Lifetime Achievement Award from the Content Council. Joe’s third book,
Epic Content Marketing: How to Tell a Different Story, Break through the Clutter, and Win More Customers by Marketing Less was named one of “
Five Must Read Business Books of the Year” by Fortune Magazine. His fourth book, Content Inc., will be released in September 2015. Joe has also co-authored two other books,
Get Content Get Customers and
Managing Content Marketing. Joe has spoken at more than 400 locations in 14 countries advancing the practice of content marketing. He’s delivered keynote speeches for events and organizations including SXSW, NAMM, Fortune Magazine’s Leadership Summit, Oracle Eloqua, DuPont, SAP, HP and Dell.
Stephanie Sammons is the CEO and Founder of Wired Advisor. She is a digital personal branding, business and marketing specialist, author, speaker, and podcaster who has been named a Top 30 Marketing Thought Leader and Top 25 Social Media Expert by LinkedIn.
Prior to launching Wired Advisor in January of 2010, Stephanie spent 15 years running her own wealth advisory practice and served in corporate leadership roles at Merrill Lynch and UBS. She continues to hold the Certified Financial Planner™ designation, but her real power is in the way she leverages LinkedIn as a marketing platform.
Passionate about marketing and pushing the frontier, Stephanie has moved social media in a new direction without making it all about her. And she isn’t finished yet.
And Finally …
… one to watch
Nichole Kelly, CEO, spent 15 years as a brand-side marketer working for organizations such as Sherwin-Williams, The Federal Reserve Bank, CareOne Debt Relief Services, and Signs By Tomorrow. Through her brand-side experience she learned something important: measurement is critical for any marketer’s career trajectory.
In 2012, Nichole launched SME Digital, the digital consultancy arm of
Social Media Explorer and has since assumed the responsibility for day to day operations of Social Media Explorer, a top 40 marketing blog. She is also the co-founder of
trks.it, a link shortening, measurement and remarketing platform as well as, Actionable Intellect, a social media sales intelligence platform. She is a sought after speaker and the author of
How to Measure Social Media. Nichole is also a world-renowned karaoke star.
Ok, so it’s not strictly a person, but the brainchild behind this site is David Still an influence in the Calgary marketing scene.
This is worth including because of the amazing results the company is getting through social media. Over nine million impressions on one platform in eight months from start-up – astounding! Their tactics are innovative and trendsetting – just when you thought there couldn’t possibly be a better way to do it, David and his team have managed to find one.
Expect great things from this company – definitely one to watch.
This is not an exhaustive list as there are many people out in the industry leading and training the next generation of social media managers, or in Calgary.isgreen.ca’s case, out being the next generation of social media.
Follow them, we have a lot to learn.
Talk to a person
