Speaker 1:
Here with Shama Hyder and we are at South by Interactive 2009. And we’re going to talk a little bit about video blogs. I understand you recently into the video blogs and getting more in depth with video blogs-
Shama Hyder:
Right.
Speaker 1:
… So tell me a little bit about that.
Shama Hyder:
I just started a web TV show, which is a video blog in other words, called the Shama.TV, S-H-A-M-A.TV. And it’s been really exciting because I think video is the one place where you can get very interactive-
Speaker 1:
Right.
Shama Hyder:
… With your audience. When I did my blog on my business site, but then always stick to very professional topics and people don’t really get to see who you are when you’re writing about such professional topics. So I did a video blog so I could connect with my audience at a deeper level, and it’s been fabulous.
Shama Hyder:
And I think across the board though, people are more engaged by video than they are by reading. You obviously have people who would prefer to read than do video. But the statistics are that 64% of people will finish watching a video clip. Whereas 24% will actually finish reading an article.
Shama Hyder:
But remember this was about eight years ago. When if you really think about social media technology, the digital age, all of this is still so new. Think about this, eight years ago our iPhones didn’t exist as we know them today. There was no Instagram. There’s no Snapchat. There’s no Spotify. You just think about how far we’ve come in those years alone. So I think technology as we talk about it has really come leaps forward in just the last less than a decade, if you will.
Shama Hyder:
So we graduated from the University of Texas and I thought that I would go out there and get a, what? What are you supposed to get when you graduate? A job. Right? You’re supposed to go get a job? Except there was one problem when I got out to go get a job. Not only did jobs not exist, but the industry didn’t exist because eight years ago when you said social media, people said, what? And people asked me things like what’s Twitter, right? Or Facebook is something my 13 year old uses. Remember, this is very, very early days of social media. So this was the start of an industry, the start of an entirely new technology age, if you will.
Shama Hyder:
So I had two choices, I guess I could be unemployed or I could be self-employed. So I decided to be an entrepreneur, I started my own social media digital PR agency, arguably one of the first social media agencies in the world, because it’s really easy to be the first when there’s not anyone else doing what you’re doing. And so of course we’ve come such a long way, but today I’m sharing some of that with you, lessons I’ve learned academically, but also building my own company.
Shama Hyder:
The importance of building your reputation online before you need it. And if you think about the corner office, [inaudible 00:02:55] it used to be the corner office, it would be the glass door, the assistant when you walked in. And today, that really has shifted online. What that first impression is when I type in your company’s name into Google or Yahoo or Bing, what do I find? That’s my first impression. That’s your corner office. And so how are you proactively building that reputation so when people seek you out, and that really should be the goal of a good business branding and marketing, is that people are now seeking you out, what’s that impression and what are you doing to proactively cultivate a positive digital footprint?
Shama Hyder:
The other way to look at it is people get scared when they have something negative online, whether it’s a negative review or just one bad piece of press. And it’s because they have nothing good to counteract that.
Speaker 3:
Right.
Shama Hyder:
They haven’t really proactively built something. And so, obviously when things like that happen it’s the only thing out there that they [inaudible 00:03:43] to find them.
Shama Hyder:
Anytime I share something I think, is there value here? So even if I say, hey guys, just finished speaking at this event, I’ll share something that I thought was particularly interesting from that event.
Speaker 4:
Okay.
Shama Hyder:
Or a question that I got. So everything that I share I try to ask myself before I do, is this providing value? Did this help anybody’s day get easier in some way? Or is it just… I’ve never been a fan of adding to the noise-
Speaker 4:
Right.
Shama Hyder:
… On the internet. And I certainly never want to be the cause of that.
Shama Hyder:
Yeah, there’s a lot of great female brands and brands in general, but here’s the other thing I’ll say. I think sometimes when we talk about putting your brand out there, I feel like there’s this myth that it has to be loud, right? And you really have to be out there to shine. And I just don’t think that’s true. I think what’s really important is that you’re providing value. That’s what’s really important. And you do resonate with your audience, with your tribe, and that’s going to look very different for based on who your audience is.
Shama Hyder:
One of my colleagues and I guess slash in some ways competitors, right? Is Gary Vaynerchuk. We both run digital agencies. We both got an early start. We’ve spoken at a lot of the same conferences. But we have completely different personalities. And our audiences, like people who resonate with him standing on stage saying the F word is not my… That’s not my audience, it’s not my style. So it’s hard. Like I would never pretend to be someone that I’m not just so I could be loud or bigger. It works for him because that’s who he is. And I think it’s really important to find what works for you because it’s who you are.
Shama Hyder:
I was talking to this female engineer and she said, I’m thinking about writing my perspective, on LinkedIn specifically, about kind of stories from a perspective of a female engineer, especially in Silicon Valley. And I told her, that’s a great idea, why don’t you do that? And she said, I just don’t know if it would be valuable. And I said, yeah, absolutely it would be valuable because only you have your perspective, your lens, and that is valuable. And this is the other thing, what you write, what you share, doesn’t have to appeal to everyone, right? This isn’t about how many people can you get to follow or like or retweet. That’s not what I’m talking about. It’s how can you get the attention of the right people.
