Shannon Kinney, national online marketing and social media expert, is founder and client success officer for Dream Local Digital, a national company that creates digital content and social media campaigns for local businesses.

Q: Tell me how your career evolved to get you to where you are today?

A: I started my career in newspaper advertising sales and sales management and became hooked on working with small businesses to help them grow their businesses. I never considered myself a salesperson, but rather a consultant whose job it was to understand their needs and help them get results using my products. I was very fortunate that this approach brought success, and I set many sales records for my company. Then, when the Internet began to have an early impact on our industry in the mid-nineties, I jumped at the chance to get involved in a new media to help businesses reach their customers. I then joined the team to create cars.com and worked with publishers and their advertiser car dealers in 157 markets, and then launch Real Cities newspaper and city sites in more than 60 markets in the U.S. Three years ago I saw that small businesses lacked advocates and solutions to understand the options available to them in online and social media marketing and started Dream Local serving thousands of businesses. It's been a great way to get back to my roots.

Q: How does your company work with other local newspapers across the country?

A: Dream Local Digital helps local newspapers offer services to their advertisers in the areas of social media marketing strategy and management, search engine optimization, website development, pay per click (PPC) advertising, email marketing, and much more. Local businesses are seeking trusted partners to help them understand how to promote themselves online, and many are so busy running their businesses they need someone to do it for them. We help local newspapers offer those solutions through training and managing fulfillment. Through a partnership with us, newspapers are able to reach a wide customer base of small businesses they may not be reaching with other products, and develop strong digital revenue bases.

Shannon Kinney

Q: What do you love most about what you do?

A: I love talking to a newspaper sales manager, or a business owner, and hearing accounts of how we've changed their businesses. It still gives me chills, and I live for it. I have story after story of clients that have dramatically increased their businesses based on our work and there is nothing that feels better. What is also exciting is that our business is changing every day as we keep up with the rapidly changing social media sites -- Facebook hit one billion active users this month, for example, and that we are working with different businesses every day.

Q: Why should small businesses invest their time or resources in social media?

A: Ninety-three percent of marketers for medium to large businesses are utilizing social media for business in today's environment, and seeing tremendous results. Social media marketing offers small business an opportunity to build close relationships with customers and prospects much in the way they do in the real world -- and they can do it even better than larger companies. Social media offers the ability to connect, build your message, and reach customers and prospects where they are with your message if done well. People spend more than 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook alone, and businesses need to utilize these tools to promote themselves. If they're not sure what to do or don't have time, no problem. Working with Dream Local Digital, the local newspaper can manage their online marketing so they can manage their business.

Q: With so many social media options out there now, what advice would you give to small businesses considering mounting an online marketing campaign?

A: The biggest advice I can offer is to have a plan. A business should review their marketing goals, and understand deeply who their target customer (or product/service) is and where they are. The plan should consider what social network is right for that business, develop messages that will reach their customers, and also listen and respond to comments that they find. We help businesses develop these plans, and then for businesses that are too busy to execute it, we manage them for them.

Q: What are some of the biggest mistakes you see small businesses making in their online marketing efforts?  

A: The largest and most common mistake is not recognizing the importance of these mediums and not devoting the right resources to the project. Often it's an intern or some friend of a friend -- people that do not understand marketing or how to represent the company in a public forum. Companies start a presence and abandon it, or worse, do not listen and respond to what readers are saying about them online. Another common mistake is businesses that start and post only aggressive sales messages, and never mix it in with soft sell messages or listen to their needs. I often will reference the ‘cocktail party conversation rule' -- you wouldn't only aggressively sell at a cocktail party, rather you would build relationships, listen to people, and then make recommendations how you may help. Social media is the same.