Skeptics say social media hasn’t existed long enough to produce experts. Clearly, those folks haven’t met Shama Kabani. The 26-year-old wrote her master’s thesis for the University of Texas at Austin about Twitter–when it had only 2,000 users, not the 175 million it has today. She hosts a web TV show about technology. Her 2010 book, The Zen of Social Media Marketing: An Easier Way to Build Credibility, Generate Buzz and Increase Revenue, is the No. 4 seller about web marketing on Amazon.com.
And those are just the side projects. In 2009, at 24, Kabani founded The Marketing Zen Group, a social media marketing firm in Dallas. The company, which she launched with $1,500 of her own money, specializes in all aspects of web marketing for clients–from Facebook and Twitter to blogs and video.
We are in an age where people are tired of the faceless corporate culture,” the Texas native says. “Every day, I ask myself the same question: What can I do today to increase value for our trusted audience (blog readers, TV watchers, Twitter followers, etc.), for our team and for our clients?”
That value means different things for different clients. For k9cuisine.com, a Paris, Ill.-based online retailer of dog food, Marketing Zen established blog and Twitter presences and cultivated relationships with pet-related bloggers. For Arthur Murray Dance Studios in Boston, the company optimized a website to generate more targeted sales leads.
Marketing Zen wasn’t always about social media. Kabani says her original plan was to start a general consulting agency. But she quickly realized her passions–and all the best gigs, for that matter–were in the social media space, so she tweaked her strategy.http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/220221
Empowering Women 