Social Divas (6) – You Go Girl!

The social media scene is brimming with influential women who rightfully earned the “Social Diva” title. Each of them managed to print her unique mark and establish herself as a sought-after industry leader. Throughout our “Social Divas” post series, we will be shedding light on some of them. Today, I will introduce you to amazing women in the SocialMediaExaminer (SME) team:

• Cindy King: SME’s managing editor
• Andrea Vahl: SME’s Facebook community manager

Cindy King

As I’ve been reading about Cindy King’s (@CindyKing) outstanding contributions to the social scene, I felt tempted to ask her to give me some time management tips. She’s all over the place! I can assure you that if she ever published a book on this topic, I will be the first to buy it.  Let’s count her amazing contributions though I must warn you: the list is so long. In addition to her SME managing editor position (which could be a full-time job on its own), she’s also an international social media strategist and a cross-cultural marketer.

Cindy’s passion is helping businesses that strive for global expansion using social media. In fact, she created her own successful international business from scratch through blogging, Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites.  Listen to her as she shares her success story:

I’ve got a broad range of communication and business development skills, and have had a lot of practice in applying them to business. I’m originally from the Bahamas. I’ve lived in Europe all of my professional life. While working in international sales and marketing I’ve had executive level responsibilities for ASEAN, EMEA and North America. But my interests were always in understanding my clients no matter how different they were to me.

Then I shifted to online marketing and business development and was very lucky to have been personally mentored by Chris Garrett for over 2 years…

So I also give Strategy Audits where I team up with another industry expert. I help Europeans reach their North American markets through new media marketing. And I work with American businesses with culturally diverse audiences where strong communication skills are essential to growing their business… – CindyKing.biz

This’s just a short version of her impressive About page. If you wish to know Cindy better (and I’m sure you do), I invite you to check out her official website. Keep up the good work, Cindy!

Andrea Vahl

Andrea Vahl (@Andrea Vahl) is a social media coach, speaker, educatorr and strategist. She helps businesses in defining and implementing their social media strategy. Her richly diverse list of clients includes authors, retail stores, restaurants, realtors, online bloggers, and medical health centers to name just a few.

In addition, she co-authored the Facebook Marketing for Dummies, All-in-One book. (I am sure that this book will be a smashing success especially since I’ve watched some of her Facebook video tutorials and they were very informative).

Now let’s get to the fun part: Andrea has been practicing Improvisational Comedy for 10 years until she decided that it was time to align her passion with her career. This is how the Grandma Mary Show saw the light:

I used one of my favorite characters and created Grandma Mary – a slightly cranky lady who gives you the straight talk on using Social Media for your business. I wanted to help people learn Social Media, grow their business, and have fun. Mostly Grandma Mary just cracks me up and that’s why I like her so much. She makes learning Social Media fun.

I must give Andrea two thumbs up for this genius idea. Adding the fun factor to education is not an easy thing to do, but when done right, it could be very effective in helping people grasp and never forget information.

In fact, I read that laughter adds 8 times to a human’s learning capacity and I strongly believe in this statement!  Grandma Mary rightfully earned her Social Media Edutainer title. Just watch her in action and you will see what I mean. Way to go, Andrea!

What’s your take on today’s divas? I had a blast reading and writing about both of them, and I’m sure you felt the same. And hey, are there any fave diva(s) of yours you wish to see in future posts? Just name them and let Garious do the work! To our success!