Stephen Smith

Stephen Smith is a customer-service oriented professional with over 14 years of experience in hospitality management leading sales and service  (that’s a fancy way of saying that he used to manage restaurants and hotel banquet departments!). Coming from that dynamic environment, Stephen brings high-touch experience to the internet with hands-on coaching and education.

Believing that it is more important to teach someone how to fish than to simply give them a fish, you can expect him to teach you how to cast your line into the waters of media properties, and why they are to be cast that way.

Most entrepreneurs and small-business people know a great deal about their chosen field and have a passion for what it is that they do in their business. However, unless that passion includes researching things like…

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tactics,
• Internet-specific writing styles,
• Website architecture,
• Social Media Marketing and Engagement strategies

…then it is quite likely that they will continue to struggle in the old ways of advertising and marketing. Advertising that gets increasingly expensive, less effective and decreases as newspaper and TV exposure decline. Your customers are moving their attention to the internet, how will they find you there? That is the conundrum that Stephen will teach you how to solve.

Social Media Marketing may sound really complicated and technical, but it only means one thing: you get to talk to other people about things that you are both excited about. Oh, and once you all get to know each other, maybe do some business.You know the details of your business, whether that is flowers, fishing, or mortgage banking. You talk about these things with your customers when they see you at work, with your friends and neighbors when you see them in the neighborhood, with your colleagues in the business world when you get together for Chamber and Rotary events. Sure, you talk about local news and current events too, right? No one wants to talk about business all the time.

You talk about the things that are important to you and about things that are important to your friends.Now imagine taking these conversations online, put them on your website so that when strangers come by they can see what you and your friends are talking about. They can ask questions. They can get involved too. Then they will stop being strangers and start to become members of your community, your circle of friends.

“All things being equal, people want to do business with their friends.” ~Jeffrey Gitomer

Stephen Smith stopped having a “job” in September of 2008. He has been writing for online news sites and blogs for more than two years, establishing Productivity in Context as one of the top-rated Productivity blogs in the world. Along the way he learned what it takes to turn a simple website into a trusted resource, a publishing vehicle, an advertising tool, and part of a route to financial independence. He now creates websites and internet marketing programs for start-ups, small- and mid-sized-businesses and coaches them on how to engage their audience via the tools of Social Media.

Stephen refers to himself as a “Social Media Evangelist” as there is no such thing as a “Social Media Expert“. The concepts and ideas of Social Media are just too new. An innovation may lie just around the corner that can blow up everything that we know. Until then, you need to know what is available to you - to your business NOW - and how to use it to reach out to your customers. Stephen will teach you how to do this without spamming them and without acting like the classic, smarmy “used car salesman” (he’s been one of those too).