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Tuesday, December 5th the Hockey Players in Business Cleveland Chapter held an informative networking event centered around the topic of “Using Social Media to Grow Your Business.” The event was sponsored and made possible by JIT Packaging Aurora Inc. – a privately held independent manufacturer and distributor of corrugated packaging owned by HPIB board member Rick MacDonald (special thanks to Rick!) It was well attended by approximately 30 members and guests and was hosted by Roll House Entertainment in Solon within the private 8-lane bowling suite at their recently renovated facility. The atmosphere was awesome, the networking was great, and the full service bar and menu didn’t disappoint.

The Guest Panel of speakers was headlined by Glenn Gable, owner of Roll House Entertainment, who discussed how he has leveraged Facebook to successfully grow his business as well as his Rotary club. His passionate plea was something to behold as he told the story of how he has personally seen positive sales results from the platform.

Roll House Marketing Consultant, Jeremy Amos of Hill + Jane Design provided a deep dive into why we should pay attention and put resources into utilizing Facebook as a marketing platform no matter what business you are in. The numbers he presented in his slide presentation were impressive. Facebook now boasts 1.7+ Billion users! A platform that is free to use that allows you to reach over 22% of the entire world’s population is not something we should ignore.

Eric Cantini of Digital Yalo added great insight into how those business owners and executives who would rather not use Facebook personally can spend minimal time but still reap some rewards. As content marketing is a proven strategy for getting inbound sales leads a key tip in building a business page on Facebook without creating unique content would be to simply share articles that are of interest to your target market. Digital Yalo’s philosophy was described in sports terms as a football field, The first 80 yards are the information gathering stages of the sales funnel, this is where social media is so important to a content marketing strategy; building your reputation as an expert in the industry. The final 20 yards, The RED ZONE, meanwhile can only be reached after your prospects have researched your business via your website and social channels and are ready to meet face-to-face to give you the opportunity to close.

Nick Pietravoia of Contempo Design + Communications provided real world results in the form of a short case study of a business event that his firm recently held. The annual event was teetering on the edge of being discontinued until the successful social media plan was implemented this year utilizing LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The results were promising, largest attendance ever, Increases in sponsorships and ticket sales by 40+% each, and increased profits by a factor of 4x! The Best part, the campaign also netted a new design client for the firm with a large contract. Download the case study from this example.

Overall, these experts helped attendees to understand reasons to move forward with putting more time and resources into Social Media marketing. Many more details and specific tactics were mentioned that will hopefully allow those in attendance to implement some ideas that lead to real world sales results.