Penny Power, Author, International Speaker, Entrepreneur and founder of Ecademy talks about the role of social networks for modern professionals. Penny Power is a published author, a highly engaging speaker and one of the UK’s most inspirational and successful female entrepreneurs. Penny founded Ecademy, the UK’s first social network for business, in 1998 at the age of 33 with her husband Thomas Power.

Penny will be speaking and chairing at the Social Media World Forum event taking place at Olympia, London in March.

How important is understanding social media for modern professionals?

I often think about how executives feel about all the noise going on in the world of social media. The desire to see it as a fad, or as something not relevant to their business must be very strong for some. Many will say, and I have heard it said “oh, that is something my kids waste time doing, I am a busy person, I don’t have time for that stuff”. I wonder if I might have felt that if I had stayed in the old world 12 years ago.

The danger is that they are right, there is a lot of hype, noise, errors, time wasting; I can credit them with that insight, but it is not a fad, it is not just for kids and it is not going away and it is working for an increasing amount of business who have taken time and invested resources to learn. Learning to be a networked business takes time, a certain leap of faith and a real commitment to the future of the business they work for. Executives can just about, I repeat, just about, get away without embracing social media but for how long? The world is becoming connected and the conversations taking place are strategic, tactical, consumer led, channel led and they help businesses find solutions and needs for the future apart from finding potential clients or managing unhappy ones.

What would be your top tip for using social networks?

My top tip is belief, trust and take a leap. Not just a leap into using it, but also a leap into belonging to communities and having conversations. To engage, be a friend, be Open, Random and Supportive©  . This is an experiential form of learning, this cannot be learned through a manual, you can only see the benefits to your business when you directly experience it, then you will understand what your strategy should be.

Company social media accounts – should they be personal or professional?

At all times the reader must know who is creating the conversation, I would not go into a pub and have a drink and a chat with a logo! I can understand a brand wanting to ‘own’ the space and brand they are creating online so it can be past from staff member to staff member, like a job role, however, when I visit the Tweet or Profile of a brand I want a person to be revealed and to talk to them

Ecademy Workshop –

Thomas Power is Chairman of Ecademy founded in 1998 with Penny Power and Glenn Watkins will be running a workshop alongside the Social Media World Forum , The workshop provides and introduction for those wanting to get into social media. It will consist of a roundtable format, highly interactive, and focus on the practical elements of setting up your own social media marketing plan, managing your personal and brand performance, and using leading social networks to build your online reputation.

What should we expect to learn and take away from the Ecademy workshop?

Penny and Thomas Power are Community Builders, they have supported businesses in the online world for over 12 years through building the ‘worlds most popular social network for small business’, they know what it takes to build a brand. It starts with understanding why someone would want to know you; how to become known, progressing to being liked and then what it is that would make someone ‘follow’ you online. The most successful brands and individuals will achieve ‘Connectedness’. Penny and Thomas will ensure you have an insight to what this means.

1000-1230	Introduction to Social Media covering (Blogs, Tweets, Videos)
	How to use Blogging to build your personal and business brand
	How to get the most out of Twitter and why it’s so powerful
	How to have fun with Tweetmeme and Techmeme
	Why Youtube is so important for enhancing your reputation
1230-1400	Networking break
1400-1500	Measuring your personal and brand performance online
	Using Friendfeed, Quantcast, Compete, Alexa, SM2, Bit.ly and other performance measurement tools
1500-1600	Getting the most out of Linkedin, Facebook, Ecademy, Viadeo, Xing, Plaxo and other social networks
	Using multiple platforms to build your reputation throughout the internet

Workshop Host:

Thomas Power is Chairman of Ecademy founded in 1998 with Penny Power and Glenn Watkins. Ecademy is the oldest
social network on the Internet built with private capital. 300,000 people use ecademy each month source: Quantcast

Workshop passes available at £199 – click here to register.