Magic Mile Media will host the first Social Media Masterminds Marketing Summit (SM3) on October 5 in Kinston, N.C. The day-long event will feature social media professionals and thought leaders in discussions about how to go viral, how to tell your story and more.
Chris Suggs will be speaking at the summit to teach attendees about using social media to market to Generations X and Y.
Chris Suggs
In 2014, Suggs started his nonprofit organization, Kinston Teens, to serve and empower the teens of his hometown.
“At the time, there were a lot of issues going on in the community,” said Suggs. “I wanted to bring young people together to find solutions to those problems.”
Suggs credits Kinston Teens’ success largely to social media, which he used, and continues to use, to bring people together and start the dialogue of change.
“We experienced an amount of immeasurable success because of social media and how word spread across the community and across the county,” he said.
In fact, Suggs’ success with Kinston Teens led to many of the opportunities he’s had since, including consulting for Facebook on their youth programs and working with networks and platforms like BET, Nickelodeon, ABC and political campaigns. His focus is consistent—social media strategy and engagement strategy, particularly for younger generations.
We sat down with Suggs to ask him his opinion on the state of social media marketing today and what you can expect from his summit presentation:
What unique perspective do you bring to the summit?
I am a teenager. My generation, we’re the social media generation. We’re growing up in the age where all we know is social media. I get to share how my generation interacts with social media, what’s popular and how we’re using it in many more unique ways than maybe other generations are.
What’s the most challenging part of social media?
The most challenging part is being consistent with your posting. You have to manage your brand to make sure you’re constantly sharing information and keeping your followers and audience updated on your page. It can get challenging trying to stay consistent to your posting schedule, but it’s really important that you’re always keeping your followers and customers up to date on what’s going on.
What’s the most powerful part of social media?
The ability to bring people together. That’s what I love about social media. My mission with all of my social media pages is and how I use it for my business is to bring people together. You can do that with humor, with news and current events; you can gather people to volunteer or to donate to a certain cause. Social media’s ability to bring people together is definitely my favorite feature.
What’s most important for brands to know when using social media to market to the younger generations?
Trends change quickly. A lot of times we see businesses or brands trying to market to the young people, using hashtags or memes and phrases that were popular six months ago. In this digital age where the trends can change within the hour, it’s important for brands and businesses to stay up to date and current if they want their marketing to this generation to grow.
What are you most looking forward to about the summit?
Being a younger person there on the stage and sharing my youthful perspective. Hopefully just to share some insight to business leaders and social media marketers in attendance. I want to show the importance of engaging Generation Z as important clientele and an important audience on social media. We are the rising market clientele for your business, the rising electorate for your campaigns, so it’s really important that you’re thinking of Generation Z as you develop your marketing and communications strategy.
You can hear more from Chris Suggs and other professionals in social media marketing at the SM3 Summit on Oct. 5. Register at the link below!