Dec 27, 2011
 

Video Transcript

00:07 Dave Kerpen: So my name is Dave Kerpen, I'm the co-founder and CEO of Likeable Media. We're a social media and word of mouth marketing firm dedicated to creating a more likeable world. We work with companies of all sizes, mostly larger companies though, in helping them leverage Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social platforms.

How did Likeable get started?

00:29 Kerpen: So the story of our company's founding is a pretty fun one, back in 2006 when my wife and I got engaged we both had a marketing background but we didn't have the money to afford a big New York wedding. So we had an idea to partner with a minor league baseball team, we put together a sponsored wedding promotion for the Brooklyn Cyclones, a Mets affiliate, and we were able to sell sponsorships to our wedding. So 1-800 Flowers sponsored our wedding, sponsored our flowers, Smirnoff sponsored our alcohol, David's Bridal sponsored our bridesmaids' gowns. We raised a hundred thousand dollars for an amazing wedding for five hundred friends and family and five thousand strangers at the end of a game. We raised twenty thousand dollars for charity. The event attracted massive buzz; ABC, CBS, New York Times, CNBC, and thousands of blogs, which at the time was social media. After the event, it was an awesome event because I got married to the love of my life, but it was an amazing promotion as well. After the even our vendors said this was great, what are you guys doing next? And we couldn't get married again so we decided to start a company instead.

01:28 Kerpen: So when we started after our wedding it was just my wife and me. We had a couple of interns and we've doubled each year since then, roughly. So now we have thirty-five full time folks and about a hundred part time folks. We're here in New York, we're in Boston, we're in Chicago, and we've just launched our Likeable2, our Spanish Language social media counterpart in Mexico City. It's been great. It's been a really wild run. Of course I always want things to be better so I follow the growth of Facebook and Twitter and Foursquare and say wow we could grow even faster, but I'm really thrilled with how quickly we've grown and I'm even more excited about the future.

Who is a natural at Twitter, Facebook and other social media?

02:11 Kerpen: The most successful person in social media is the same person that's the most successful person at a cocktail party. The kind of person that listens well, tells good jokes, tells good stories, and is the life of the party at a cocktail party is going to be a winner in social media. The kind of person that's a schmuck at a cocktail party and can't stop talking about himself is the kind of person that's going to lose in social media.

What do entrepreneurs need to know about social media in 2012?

02:38 Kerpen: So social media is going to continue to get more and more mobile. Right now roughly forty percent of folks that use Facebook from their mobile phones, that number's going to increase dramatically. As marketers and small businesses think about how they're using social media they want to keep in mind that people are going to be using social media more and more from their smartphones and tablets in 2012.


Andrew Maclean is the video editor at Inc.com. He previously worked at MediaStorm and did his graduate studies in video production at Syracuse University. He can be contacted via email at: amaclean@inc.com.