Monica Weitzel recently received an SMBMad scholarship to Wisconsin SBDC’s Digital and Social Media Marketing Conference. Below, Monica provides a summary of her experience. 

The event staff was welcoming and friendly and the room was set up nicely. They outfitted us with name tags, an agenda folder, and additional information for seamless presentation and networking.

The first presenter was Terra Fletcher who talked about How to Attract Talent and Improve Your Employer Brand Online, definitely this was an eye opener for me because I did not realize the importance of this subject and focus on branding to get the right talent for my organization is key. I am planning to do audits more often and make sure all platforms are aligned with each other. Terra’s presentation was very interactive and fun because it helped the participants to get to know each other.

The second presenters were a team from Think in Prompts and they talked about The AI Advantage, this was totally new for me. I was amazed at how technology is developing and how much digital marketing work can be done in seconds. It is an interesting topic that I will continue looking into.

Then it was lunch time where we were able to chat a bit more with the presenters and ask some questions.

The third group of presenters were from Story First Media and they talked about how your business narrative can build your team. Storytelling is very powerful and can benefit your organization in many aspects, also can help you to connect better with your community. I enjoyed writing about the meaningful Business Moment activity.

The last presenter was Eagan Heath and he talked about Understand, Prepare and Update SEO for the Age of AI, his presentation was super fun and interactive, he discussed how SEO works and all the tools you can use to rank number one on Google search. He shared tools that he personally uses on his business social media platforms and explained how to most efficiently use AI.

Overall, I can say the event was very educational, informative, and fun for me. I met nice people, learned a lot of new tools and resources, and made connections with other small business owners and professionals.

Lastly, a huge thank you to Social Media Breakfast Madison for the opportunity.

https://www.instagram.com/monicaweitzel

Two weeks post conference… some awesome feedback from Monica:

“I have already implemented some of the tools in my work place and have seen growth.

• After attending the event I did an internal audit of our social media platforms. After that I was able to know we were not responding to all the Google Reviews on a regular basis, now we do.
• We also did not have our Google my business profiles optimized, now we do, adding current pictures of the properties as well as we update breakfast hours, etc.
• We implemented a strategy that will help the business to improve their position on Google search by asking satisfied guests to write a review on Google reviews right away, we create a QR code that the front desk has available for the guest to scan and goes immediately to the reviews tab.
• We set up Google alerts and Google Analytics.
• I am running analytics reports on Facebook and LinkedIn to know my audience better.
• We had planned our June content calendar and currently looking at what pay app/tool is the most beneficial for the business to simplify the process.
• We are listing all the detailed benefits in future job postings to attract more candidates.
• We asked the managers to repost the business postings on their professional profiles like LinkedIn and seen more interactions already.”