Deshpande

Social Media: is a catch-all term for sites that may provide radically different social actions—Facebook Business Pages and Personal Profiles, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram. And those are the hot ones right? I won’t go into others because we are trying to lessen your headache not exponentially increase it.

The goals of social media platforms is to spread a message, using video, text, images, audio, widgets, virally through the social web to gain attention,

visibility, build a brand, generate traffic and ultimately to convert. Good so far? We agree.

So we’d probably agree that the first goal of internet marketing is getting people’s attention. This may not come as news to you but there’s too much noise today. And it’s only getting worse.

Your potential customers are already wired with their changing day to day responsibilities. And their Twitter Stream or Facebook News Feed is already full of other alternatives to your brand, product or service.

What I see over and over again is the following facts eventually click with companies:

Facebook: Billion users
Twitter: 182 million users
Pinterest: 104 million users
LinkedIn: 86 million users
Google+: 61 million users

That “aha” moment sets all sorts of wheels into chaotic company motion. They don’t walk warily into social media; they sprint without giving much thought to their overall strategy. The unsurprising result? A company that looks, sounds and feels just like everyone else.

It stands to reason then that the key to social media is to stand out. If you want to see a return on your efforts, then you need to separate yourself from the competition. Trust me, this is spoken from someone who’s been there, so give the following a whirl:

1. Answer the Question: Who You Are? Pretty profound and it’s not even 8:00 on a Saturday morning.
However; this is the first step to any marketing strategy. Dig deep here until you find a clear vision of who your target audience is. Again, nothing new–you try to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one.

Doesn’t it make sense to “market” to those people who share your worldview? These people aren’t just casual consumers, but your loyal fans. Start with your strengths:

What does your company/brand really stand for?
Who do you (specifically) serve?
What is your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)?
What specific qualities does your company embody?
Why does your company even exist (besides to turn a profit)?
Why are your products/services better than everyone else?

2. Position Yourself
how will you truly be different from all the competition? If you don’t come up with a USP, then you’ll be forgotten. You’ll get traffic, but it will bounce and never return again. I definitely take a stand behind small businesses for their creativity, agility, innovation and I truly believe they are the backbone to the success of this country.

One way to define who you are, is by defining who you aren’t. By taking a stand, you’re aligning yourself with a specific set of beliefs or opinions. So by default, the “other guys” are your enemy. While I worked at BearingPoint, we loved to hate BAH, that’s just the way it was, in fact we would partner with others who felt as we did. I can say that now because my consulting days are long gone and my husband now works for BAH.

So this enemy could be a company, a trend, an industry, or an attitude towards business. But it’s personal. For example I don’t like big companies pretending they care about a small or sole entrepreneur. I’m sorry they don’t. Individuals might truly care. I did when I was with the big 4 consulting firms but that got me nowhere.

3. Do Less

Yep, I said it, do less.

When you don’t have a lot of time, energy or money, then you need to focus where you invest to make a bigger impact. That means put more resources into fewer things. But where do you start?

1. Focus on the essential: Your website, your blog, and email marketing.

You own each of these channels (including all the data or content you’re creating), and they’re proven to be the most profitable channels. So start there. If your website is sub-par, your blog’s content isn’t engaging, or your email marketing is nonexistent, then start here first!

2. Focus on the highest ROI activities: Now figure out where you’re receiving “uncommon” results.

Maybe your style of creating content resonates with people and you see a lot of engagement. Or maybe your Facebook page sends a ton of traffic back to your website. Whatever the case, you should be able to identify one or two tactics that are really giving you a lot of return.

There’s absolutely no reason you need to prioritize more than two social networks. So don’t follow what everyone’s talking about. Pinterest for your business might be a waste of time.

Because most companies (outside of the Fortune 500) don’t have enough time, money or staff to make the returns worth the cost. They will eat up a lot of your time and energy, without giving you the returns you need.

And your goal is to stand out, not fit in. So instead of spreading yourself too thin (like every other business), go deeper and create a more rich, fulfilling experience for your customers.

You’ll get a higher ROI on your time & money, while also being able to stay sane in the process.

And you’ll have a better chance of keeping people’s attention, which is the first step of social media marketing.

IS YOUR MESSAGE GETTING HEARD? ARE YOU TELLING YOUR STORY? ARE YOU LIVING IT?

Recently I wrote about what not to do and what to do in social media. Today I would like to address both sides of my mouth--so to speak. One is the social media professional and two is the recipient of the social media professional.

A basic need of humans whether 1 day 10 months or a 100 years old, is to be heard. So as a brand, because truly, let's face it behind every brand there is a person or a whole big bunch of people, it's a battlefield, right?

You struggle to be heard in a world of media noise and clamor. Today, most brand messages and mass appeals for causes are drowned out before they even reach us. But a few consistently break through trusting the only tool that has ever moved minds and changed behavior--great stories.

I remember in college one of the best classes I ever took, was the "African Storyteller". I would look forward with great anticipation as I walked the famous "Bascom Hill" at the UW-Madison, Wisconsin to be captivated from the learning or I mean stories (amazing learning was snuck in there) of this talented sage. With insights from mythology, advertising history, evolutionary biology, and psychology, this viral storyteller took his students into a fascinating world of seemingly insurmountable challenges and enormous opportunity.

I feel that’s a hot topic at the moment. While most brands now understand what social media is, why it’s different from traditional channels and how it can benefit them, I find many are still confused about how they can tailor it to their business. A small business owner can read all the case studies, blog posts and white papers in the world, but at the end of the day, their business is unique and requires a social media solution specific to them.

First, those who know me well, the following does not come as a surprise, so keep doing what you are doing. Those who don't know me well, the following will remain consistent for the foreseeable future.

Content: Without good content, you have no spark to ignite interest and engagement among your communities. Social media tools are driving a return to the oral tradition, in which stories that matter rise above the fray. Memorable stories based on timeless themes build legions of eager evangelists, Let me interject here that I am in social media now after 20 plus years in a polar opposite career because I truly believe people--and if you want labels--marketers and audiences--can work together to create deeper meaning and stronger partnerships in building a better world. SO, make sure you are providing your audience with valuable and relevant content – with a good portion of this being your own original content. Only once you have engaged your community should you start to expect to satisfy your own business interests.

Learn from others: Research which brands in your niche have a solid grip on social media marketing, and follow their lead. Once you have this foundation, you can start tailoring a strategy specific to your own audience.

Start engaging: Be present in the conversation. Once you get to grips with how things work, you can then join in and drive your own discussions.

Listen to your customers: There are few better ways of deciphering how social media can work for your business than by listening to what your customers want. Find out where the conversation is happening, and sit back and take it all in. It will provide incredible insight into how your social media strategy should look.

Testing, testing and more testing: The key to all marketing – testing and experimentation. Don’t be afraid to jump in and put your ideas to the test. Yep, you may be wrong. In fact, at some point you’re sure to be wrong, but it’s only by making these mistakes that we can pinpoint where to find success.

If you’ve been struggling with how to make social media work for you, then hopefully these tips will help you take that first step. In fact, even for the professionals among us, it’s always nice to see these reminders – they help keep us on the right track!

If you have a compelling message, then you are obligated to tell your story!!! This s a call to arms for business communicators to cast aside broken traditions and join a revolution to build the iconic brands of the future. People unit! Success doesn't come just from telling great stories, but from learning to live them!

No surprise that I am writing on what customers want at this point since my last two articles focused on what customers don’t want!

When we focus on customer’s value and our efforts on creating and delivering that value, we are understanding the essence of what customer’s value. The key word in the last sentence is essence.

Too many times we really don’t understand what our customer’s value. We impose what we think they should value instead. Alternatively, we know what value our solutions provide, so we seek to impose these on them. We develop all sorts of marketing collateral with long lists of feature and benefits. Sometimes, I feel like I am reading a version of Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham—”You may like them in a box, you may like them with a fox, you may like them in a house, you may like them with a mouse…….”

Too often, there is the attitude that more is better. The longer the list of benefits we can create, the longer the list of “value” we deliver, the better. If our list is longer than the competition’s, then clearly we create much greater value than they.

When we don’t know, or are too lazy to figure it out, we substitute by imposing everything on the customer—throwing all the value we create at them, hoping they can sort it out and determine our solutions create value for them.

More value is not better! More value is confusing and distracting. More value can create complexity from the point of view of the customer—they have to figure out and sort through all the stuff we throw at them. More value wastes customer time and resources in trying to understand exactly what value we create for the customer. More value, in the eyes of the customer becomes less value!

It means we don’t waste their time or ours in talking about lots of other things—they may represent value to others, but they don’t represent value to this customer.

Understanding the essence of what customer’s value simplifies things tremendously. Once we understand the essence of what customer’s value, we focus everything around these elements, we don’t waste our time or the customers’ time on anything that is extraneous or non-value add. In fact, we set ourselves apart by creating great clarity for the customer.

We have to understand what each customer–each person–values, then focus on creating that value with them. Marketing needs to segment, focusing on the value created for each segment.

It is wonderful if with each of our products and services, we have very long lists of value elements. These increase the likelihood that we can create value for many different customers. But it is pure laziness and absence of customer focus to impose all of them on the customer, increasing their work to figure it out. It’s incumbent on us to focus, to eliminate on all those “value elements” the customer does not value, instead focusing on the essence of what they value.

Delivering great and differentiated value means focusing on the essence of what customer’s value, not on delivering more value.

Let me just first start with an emotional outburst! You have got to be kidding me! Guys, gals, why are we in social media? I’m in it to listen, teach what I know, engage and respond. To have meaningful dialogue with cyber friends, provide solid, good and helpful content to help one another--to build trusting relationships!

But just like every other offline relationship, online relationships take time to cultivate into trusting exchanges. Yes Facebook ‘likes ‘Twitter followers, etc., are all things that go into the larger equation of the algorithm that Google uses to measure your online presence.

But do you know what the Google crawler likes the most? The best thing you can do is post really good content consistently. Admittedly I get so wrapped up in helping clients do what I preach, that I miss my own deadlines. Not anymore, so these articles will go up consistantly going forward. Ok, now back to the headline of this article.

Buying likes is one of the most fake things you can do in social media. This spider is SMART and knows when lists are artificial. Even if it didn’t, how does getting thousands of likes from people you don’t even know help your business? How will you engage with your audience? I am told that there are companies (unenlightened) out there who buy likes and I can’t think of anything more artificial and, in all candor, those organizations and/or individuals give social media a bad rap. This artificial act is appalling to those of us who wish to do good with social media and are holding out for a more ‘likeable’ world through genuine connections and business.

Don’t support companies out there whose lists are purchased. The best way to see if the audience has been purchased is through the engagement feedback via post likes/comments and shares. If you look into the demographics of the fans, 9 times out of 10 the likes are coming from Germany, India and Egypt only.

Please don’t let anyone tell you that, as a small business, targeting local demographics, i.e., in your geographic specific area or even in the states, that you should buy "vanity" metrics to expand your reach to "likes" that don't even exist.

Remember, the whole point of social media is to earn the trust of your consumers. Do not lie to them from the get go.

Last article I asked you all to be the top gun, CEO, Secretary, Director, etc., of your organization as we walked through the overarching landscape of social. I also asked you to put in place a social media policy that would serve as part of onboarding training and updated training for current employees. After your organization’s social media policy and agenda are created, a social business is born out of three characteristics.

1. Being Engaged: By now it should be clear that your organization’s foundation for success is a culture of creativity, connection and networks of people to generate new sources of innovation, and greater reach and exposure to new business opportunities. The trust I spoke of earlier will be cultivated and nurtured through this willingness to openly share information and will develop a deeper sense of loyalty among customers and your engine—the people. It empowers everyone to engage with one another and together creatively solve business challenges. Implied in all of this is basic social media training for everyone! You must invest in your employees this way! They will then help carry the water for you by being ambassadors of your brand. But give them to tools to help you succeed!

2. Being Transparent: For life-long learners, this one is easy. A social business is continuously learning and places no boundaries between experts inside the organization and marketplace. This translates into gathering knowledge and insight from various sources which allows for sensing quick changes in customer mood, employee sentiment or process efficiencies. Analytics are analyzed inside and outside the organization to solve business problems and capture new business opportunities. Being transparent does not mean you ask for employee passwords! Again it’s about the relationships NOT the rigor and control!

3. Being Nimble: No matter the size of your organization, these social networks are your tools to gain real-time insight to make quicker and better informed decisions. Time and location aren’t constraints but advantages for a business that is social. You and your people can do business anytime/anywhere it delivers the greatest value. This allows your culture to be at the epicenter of a changing marketplace.

In conclusion, to bring all this to real life, here are two examples: Go to Twitter and follow Zappos. Why? Zappos is the best social business example I know of right now. First because everyone understands their social media policy, which is essentially “use your best judgment.” Zappos empowers their people to have fun with social media and they understand that the upside of being a social business far outweighs the downside where one employee might make a mistake. The irony of this second example is that Apple is the anti-social social media business. The organization itself is full of introverts who don’t engage, just the opposite of everything I would recommend. Odd, though, because everyone knows that walking into an Apple store is everything but anti-social.

After I posted the article “Managers Need to up their Game with Social Media” many of you have asked me how to sort out social. Intentionally „media‟ was left out of that sentence. Today‟s world orbits around the broader landscape of social media, which is an active presence on the “big four”—LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Blogs. These are simply the tools that go into your organization‟s strategy for being social in this new digital age.

I wish for every reader of this blog to be the CEO (or top leader) of their own organization. If you actually are the top leader all the better, share this blog with everyone in your organization. If not, share with your CEO and top leadership! Some leaders think social is just for kids and universities, however; enlightened and emerging leaders are hinged to success by living “social” in their ubiquitous day-to-day business and personal exchanges.

There are three things top leaders must embrace and „live‟ by if they want to create a culture of success in the NOW of the future of social. Before we hit those simple points, let‟s step back and take inventory of where we are as a digital world today.

The Internet took over the market imagination in the 1990‟s. Social media is predicted to be at least three times the size of the Internet growth. The „guts‟ of social media is about inbound marketing (through the “big four”) and public relations. I‟ve never held the role of „marketer‟ so through my lens, social media is an extension of how I have always lived my life personally and professionally, and that is through trusted relationships. My strong belief is that trusted relationships always has and always will be the foundation from which all success in business and life flows.

In order for you to succeed in this digital world of new tools, it starts with you setting the tone. The larger landscape of social is what I think of as social collaboration or being in charge of your social business.

It is you who sets the example of connecting people to people, people to information, and data to insight.

Be it public, private or non-profit, you are the catalyst
 To engage your employees and clients in a two-way dialogue with social tools,
 To be transparent in sharing expertise beyond your company‟s four walls and;
 To be nimble in insight to change quickly.

The result is you, your people and company will have transformed into a mighty social business which will thrive now and forever.

Stay tuned, more on this next week! In the meantime, make sure your organization has put in place a “social business” policy. Please email your thoughts, I am eager to hear them! Send to: info@conniesconfidanteconsulting.com

Hello social media friends! I hope you had a good week. Each time I speak with friends, prospects and clients, there are questions that are asked so often that I jot them down. I dedicate this week’s blog to answering the top ten questions regarding Facebook (FB) that have come across my desk this week, hoping that these are some of your questions too. However; if you have other questions please do not to hestiate contact me on any of the mediums below. Happy FBing! Let’s dive in:

Q #10: When operating on a tight budget what is the best way to market your business?

Q #7: How do I protect patient information as I recruit for clinical studies?

Q #5: I have three different businesses that are unrelated to each other, how many pages can I have as business pages can I have?

PART II -- How Should Organizations, Government & Individuals be thinking about Digital Strategies?

Last week I wrote about the “The 10 Keys to Social Media Success”. I gave you the first five keys only and indicated I would give you the second five this week. So as promised, here we go. My goal is to encourage you to participate and learn social media at your pace. If you read last week’s article, I mentioned how those two little words—social media—about 14 months ago seemed like a flies that would not buzz off. What a difference a year makes, the flies have not buzzed off, and in fact we’ve become great friends. However; just as I had no idea what those two little words meant a year ago, I had no idea when my love started to blossom for them how big they were, are and will remain! The second half of the 10 keys to social media success is a little harder to swallow than the first because if you are new to this entire landscape, it’s almost like learning another language. Hang on, here we go! Start a thread on Time to Play, ask questions, see if I can answer them!

6) Integrate SEO into your social media strategy. What is an SEO? Why SEO? SEO means Search Engine Optimization (SEO). A website that is “optimized” means the information placed on a website has been organized in a simple, clear and logical way so that search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing can scan and read text. The way the search engines archive is based on code and text. It’s a big deal when a site is not optimized because the user is not getting the information you are putting out there. The concept behind SEO is to drive people to your website and to understand what the key concepts are for ranking well in search engines. As traditional marketing methods decline, the use of social media tools to promote and advertise is rapidly growing because that is where the audience is. Therefore, an understanding about SEO tools and techniques is vital for businesses and individuals looking to market and promote themselves online. Understanding how to get people to your site is why it’s important to understand SEO. Google uses a metric to determine how relevant your ad is to the query that is going on in real time and this determines where you show up in search engine question.

7) Create High Performance PPC Campaigns. Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is a booming industry on the Internet. These adverts are supplied by advertising agencies that market them for their clients throughout the Internet. The most famous is Google with their Ad Words scheme. This is a very useful type of advertising because it only costs the advertiser, the person paying for the advert, if it actually works. This makes it very attractive because there is some guarantee that it will work for the advertiser. Unlike television, radio and other media adverts that must be paid for whether the viewers or listeners reply or even listen to the advert. If you own a website or blog it could be profitable for you to place these adverts on your page. What determines how effective your advertising campaigns are? For brevity, here are three: content relevance, positioning and the cost of the advert. Content relevance is a fancy way of saying that your viewers must be interested in the adverts to click on them. These ads show up because a business or person has paid the search engine company to have their link be displayed prominently in the hopes that you will first click on their link. The science behind which ads show up when is based on some pretty complex algorithms, but in general it comes down to a list of keywords that define a particular product or service. This is important, because by correctly identifying the right keywords that define your business, product or service, you are more likely to generate more leads through your PPC campaign.

8) Email Marketing: SEO and PPC are tricky to understand, so always know you can email me at conniedeshpande@comcast.net for a more comprehensive explanation. Now tying email marketing with your social presence is very important and starts with building lists. A lot of people will attempt to sell you lists, don’t take them. If you have a list of 50,000 people and they mean absolutely nothing to you, then you have nothing. You need to segment your customers into two distinct groups; current and future customers. Each group needs to be marketed to and communicated with uniquely. By aligning your social media marketing strategy with these two distinct groups you will be better able to fulfill their specific needs.

9) Strategic PR to Increase Visibility: A strong public relations strategy supports building and sustaining relationships with your stakeholders. Basically, how do we want people to perceive your brand; what do we want people to think and feel about your brand? So when you establish a relationship with your stakeholders, you are able to directly market and influence them. By creating an effective PR campaign, you are able to increase your company’s visibility and message and cut through the clutter of online dissonance. This not only allows you to effectively promote your product or service but also combat potential customer issues that could damage your online presence. By building a strong online presence through an effective social media strategy, you can make sure your side of a customer issue is heard and therefore lessen the potential negative impact of online customer complaints. The brand loyalty that you have built through you PR campaign will therefore help you in both good and bad times.

10) Localize your Presence: Localized search has really gotten big for local businesses. Google recognizes that people are searching and very much want information about businesses, events, and things that are happening on a localized basis. Their goal is to provide a good search experience for their end user. The early era of the internet of the 1990s was a push to think global, the problem with that is the majority of small businesses have far more narrow of a focus than thinking global. They will service a very smaller constituency, a localized geographic region, a city or town or state or maybe a region of the country. Now, the real needs of a localized business are emphasized when you start to take a look at the level of commitment required between the ecommerce customer and the small business customer. There is a constant bombardment of different media messages and all different forms of distraction that are constantly vying for the attention of our prospects and our customers, whittling away at that very precious attention opportunity that we have with an individual who is potentially wanting to do business with our company. Since the population of the internet has just exploded over the past decade or two, now there are so many localized users that it really has made it a lot more worthwhile for businesses. Because of that shift toward localized activity, you have to remember that people gravitate towards familiarity. For example, we want to watch news stories of things that are happening around the globe, but ultimately news still happens locally. People live locally and think globally. Ultimately, they act locally. Because of that, there’s this real shift towards the localization of the internet. People are going to connect with their friends and family. The social media aspect of the internet has really allowed a lot of interpersonal communication and connection. People are going to connect with their already existing friends and family networks that also tend to gravitate towards being fairly local.

How Should Organizations, Government and Individuals Be Thinking About Digital Strategies?

While those two little words—social media—resonate well with most of my audience, they seem to intimidate some, or even terrify others into putting their heads in the sand. My goal today in writing this article is three fold: to empathize, educate [(or put another way, “What’s in it for me (WITFM)”]
and to motivate.

First let me start by empathizing with those in the world who are stuck in the “I’m too busy to care syndrome”. You’ve got deadlines to meet, children to feed and dogs to walk. I’m with you. Or at least I was with you over a year ago. The very scholar who coined the term “Web Enterprise 2.0” couldn’t get even get through to me. I could have cared less about his lecture over a year ago now, on Web Enterprise 2.0. At the time, I was hard pressed to come up with anything that sounded more boring than social media.

Fast forward one year, and what a difference it makes. I have taken complete deep dives into the “Big Four” LinkedIn, Twitter, Blogging and Facebook. I am intimately aware that it’s no longer a question of whether social media is here to stay, but what social media platform you or your company decides (decided) to ‘get smart on first’.

Onto my second goal of this article, educating. Let me just start with five ways you will benefit from social media.
The first 5 keys ways to leverage social media for individual, business or government agency success:

I will give you the other five ways to leverage social media in the next article. Whether the organization you currently work for ‘gets it’ or not, shouldn’t stop you from becoming self-taught in what I refer to as the ‘new world order’ of communication. As a former fed, let me put it this way, social media is here to supplement not supplant traditional ways of marketing and communication. The big difference is that people read your texts, follow you on Twitter, watch your ‘how to’ videos, whereas they are more likely to tune out more traditional methods of advertising, marketing or communicating.

Onto addressing the “WITFM” factor. If you commit to learning a little bit each day, you will be ahead of the curve in your industry, you will be the one in the office who is irreplaceable, the person everyone wants to ‘get to’ thereby making yourself indispensable. You will become the person who supplies your colleagues with tidbits they need to know. You leave the office at a reasonable time to go home and play with your children while the rest stay to do their homework and start climbing that steep learning curve.

Now for the motivation piece of this article—it is true social media is relatively new in just being over five years old, but the pace that it is growing is faster than any previous development in the fields of marketing or communication. My approach to social media is to be aware of new trends in the industry while gaining in-depth knowledge of the titans in social media. The truth is that there are hundreds of different social media platforms, but the ones that really matter are the ones already stated. I treat social media as one big experiment that everyone is learning about, and if you aren’t doing something each day to understand the culture of modern communication, you will quickly find yourself left behind.

Social media is not just for the IBM’s of the world who set aside some 2 billion dollars in their annual budget for social media and is paying for all sorts of media displayed ads, Google live words, etc. Social media has free social platforms for the young and nimble companies as well!

If a company is truly committed to modern communication, it will ensure CEO’s, COO’s on down participate and engage in social media to make the organization known and identified as the ones in the ‘get it’ column. Web literacy breeds more engaged social audiences both internally and externally. Once you have new subscribers you can group them into communities on line. Allowing your company to better target and generate income from social media and new demographics.

One last thought to motivate. There is enormous popularity around mobile applications, and increasingly more time spent engaging in news via mobile apps and augmented reality applications. What is Augmented Reality (AR) you ask? AR is feeling virtually connected to something in the real world that you might not be in in real time. Things like holding up a smartphone in the air and all of a sudden interacting with animated characters that appear in front of you. A more practical use of course might be to locate a home, like for example in Amsterdam. The Augmented Reality Ap allows you to ‘walk down a street and look into interiors of homes without being present in living rooms’. A person is more closely connected to what’s in front of us in near space. It’s a virtual game you are living through with very practical ramifications.

While we don’t know what kind of products we’ll see in the future, we do know that Twitter grew much more rapidly than Facebook grew and that Instagram is growing much more rapidly than Twitter in its early days. What will lie in ahead in the Web 2.0 world will only be known when thoughtful analysis of why things have worked as they have is done.

Facebook has become the yellow pages of the Internet. Facebook is ubiquitous; it will be a brand in ten years, absolutely no doubt. In closing, if a company does not have a business Facebook account; chances are they are not reaching their customers. The bottom line—if you don’t have a presence online you don’t exist.

Ms. Deshpande has diligently devoted herself as an SME in soical media, she has over 20 years of professional experience in workplace development collaborations, government and private sector relationships. She has worked all levels of government, ran a congressional campaign for a mayor from her home state to serving the US President as a poltical appointee in education policy. Most recently, she was recruited to stand up a federal practice in leadership development and management training at Harvard Business Publishing. She has a passion for people’s personal and professional wellness and believes in the power of quieting the brain through meditation and muscle strengthening. With her MPA, she also has a passion for serving the public—whether accomplished inside the walls of government, as a fed, or political appointee, or through organizations interested in helping the government achieve its goals, Ms. Deshpande has contributed to the business of this Nation.These experiences have afforded her the opportunity to learn and embrace different ways of conducting business in key leadership positions with strategic, public and corporate impact on policy in leadership development, management, training, education, process and business improvement, economic development programs.