My New Connection: April 26th FORUM:

We are living through a social media revolution where social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIN are used on a professional level for visibility and branding awareness. Kris Ruby, a fellow Alumni friend from Boston University, began her own Public relations and social Media agency called Ruby Media Group LLC where she specializes in social media optimization and branding in real time. Her mission is to socialize businesses and ease business owners into transitions into a social lifestyle.

She is a powerful force of example for many female entrepreneurs and executives. She is motivated and has carved her own path in the social media and personal branding field. What is most impressive is that she has done all of this on her own during a time when many other young people may have chosen financial stability over following their dream career. She created this company straight out of college and her story is very inspirational to other young graduates in the country who are still looking for work- Kris's story will hopefully inspire you to create your own path and start your own company!

She recently led several speaking engagements – her most recent speaking engagement was a workshop on Social Media at Columbia University Business School, and she will also be speaking at Microsoft on Personal Branding so we are honored to have her as our third CEO guest speaker for the Month of March! Kris Ruby joins us among a line up of many great speakers for MyNewConnection -- Ronaldo Stern, CEO and Owner of of H.Stern Jewelry, and Howard Smith, Vice Chairman-Finance of C.V. Starr & Co.

MYNEWCONNECTION is proud to

Announce the 3rd forum held on

Monday, April 26th

Please join us for a discussion with the CEO

Kristen Ruby -- President and Founder of Ruby Media Group LLC

6:30pm – 8:30pm

The Veneto at 250 East 53rd street

PLEASE RSVP at Mynewconnection@gmail.com.

Seats are limited!

INTERVIEW WITH KRIS RUBY:

Eugenia: What led you to create your business? How did you get started?

Kris: I graduated from college in May and have since opened up my own social media marketing & PR agency. I was one of the few seniors who had a job lined up out of school, but after working there for 2 months, I decided I wanted to follow my passion and open up my own agency. Rather than getting down about the economy, I chose another path of entrepreneurship and created my own career. My mission is to empower business owners to use social media and to ease their transition into a social lifestyle. I also help executives define their personal brand and adapt their brand to the social media space.

• Growing up in a time where Facebook and MySpace dominated the web, I had a natural interest in seeing exactly how much any company can benefit from using social networks.

• Being a frequent blogger and member of social networking sites, while also possessing a love for PR, I wanted to start a company focused on social media, as well as the traditional methods of a PR and Marketing firm.

Eugenia: What is the difference between Web 2.0 and social media and networking?

Kris: Web 1.0 was a lot more static and business card like- social media is more heavily based around customer engagement and expanding your sphere of influence.

Web 2.0 is a more customizable interface and you have the ability to frequently share relevant content with other users. Social Media and Networking is different- it is fully user controlled and allows the user to virtually connect and share anything to any other user on the network. It uses a simple interface in which the user is restricted to how much they can customize it, but is centered around the information that users exchange.

Eugenia: What social media & PR services do you offer?

Kris: RMG offers the following Social Media Marketing, Public Relations and Personal Branding services.

• PR 2.0- Optimized Public Relations

• Social Media Marketing

• Personal Branding

• Social Media Education & Workshops

• E-Marketing- Building viral buzz

• Content Creation & Development

• Viral marketing

Eugenia: Can you talk about some of the challenges you have faced introducing social media to clients?

Kris: C suite executives are primarily outsourcing social media rather then doing it in house. I think there is a huge fear factor involved in social media; however, once executives overcome this and are properly trained on how to use these social tools, they are often very engaged and push their internal marketing team to use social media. The executives who are not blogging, tweeting or posting on Facebook are missing out on a huge opportunity to promote and cross market their brand to their consumer base. In the future, we will see a large shift towards more companies using social media marketing as the primary customer service tool. We will also begin to see more companies using social media for HR & recruiting efforts to attract better talent. Finally, there will be a very large shift in the way companies choose who to hire based on their personal branding efforts and presence in social media networks. All companies will begin to pre-screen and "social profile" candidates before inviting them in for a first round of interviews. With the advent of google optimizing real time tweets and indexing them in search engines, company's can no longer hide from social media.

Eugenia: How do you measure success using social media for branding?

Kris:

• Pages hits, number of people who respond to your posts, tweets and blog posts

• Retweets & re-distrbution of your content

• Blog Placements

Eugenia: What general advice would you give someone who wants to startup a small company as you did?

Kris: Go for your dreams! Don’t let anyone stop you- go against the grain.

• Make sure you are connected- you never know when the right opportunity will come up.

• Be open to the opportunities and jobs that the universe sends your way

• Say Yes!

• Start a business plan

• Begin to establish your personal brand identity before you start your company so that you are well equipped once you have started it