ResearchGoddess

These spotlights are opportunities for you to get to know some individuals who were recommended to me for the article I wrote for Mashable, 4 Essential Traits for Social Media Success in Your Career. The purpose of my project, detailed here, is to profile some social media professionals to keep an eye on in the coming year.

Spotlight:

What Aliza had to say about Laura: “Laura is excellent at branding and marketing herself…this gal is a powerhouse, incredibly smart and seeing her moderate a panel recently made me realize how insightful she is.”

Laura attended the University of Texas – Austin and earned a BS in Advertising. As a self employed individual, she teaches small businesses how to market using social media through her company, LauraRoeder.com. She is also the creator of the Creating Fame Classroom and Your Backstage Pass to Twitter.

Why Laura believes Aliza recommended her: Laura has a unique way in being able to explain technical concepts in understandable ways. She makes it easy to understand the technical aspects of social media, and she believes that Aliza knows this is a valuable skill and has noticed this about her.

How Laura became interested in social media: Laura ‘grew up’ on the web – she has always had a computer. It’s always something she’s involved herself in for fun. Being a natural entrepreneur, she wanted to see how she could incorporate what she did for fun into a business. She started doing web design for small businesses, and she would talk to her clients about the marketing purposes of their sites. She found out that not all web designers did that for their clients and saw an opportunity. As a result, she stopped designing web sites and moved into helping with social media strategy. When it comes to social media, Laura has always been fascinated with how people connect with each other online. One of the most exciting aspects of social media to her is how it has revolutionized how businesses are run. Companies can go ‘international’ instantly – business owners can take their company that may have only been local before and make it global using social technologies.

Laura’s thoughts on the social media echo chamber: “The social media world can be guilty of being insular; a lot of the events that we love, we only talk to each other about. Where are the people who are eager to learn, so we don’t create an echo chamber? I encourage people to be brave, get out of their comfort zone, and go to places where people may be skeptical of social media and of us. We need to evangelize more.”

Where Laura sees social media going in the future: The press lately has been mainly on how social media can be used in corporate environments; how companies can use the web to have a much more personal relationship with their customers. A lot of businesses that are new to the web are wary of this – they don’t want ot seem unprofessional or too casual. But being more personal and more casual is what she has seen as successful endeavors over the last year. Laura believes we will see more of this in the coming months – businesses being able to be more themselves, more real, more fun.

Connect with Laura on:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Blog

Tags: aliza sherman, brand, career, laura roeder, pay it forward, PIF2010

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