Les Adkins of Orange SMS talks with Global Authority Agency about how to become an influence in your social media circles.
Craig: All right, Les Adkins. How we doing today, buddy?
Les: Doing good, man. How are you?
Craig: Outstanding. Outstanding. Got some beautiful weather. I know you’ve been traveling a lot. I’d just like to speak a little bit about one of the most recent conferences that you spoke at, which was, I got to catch the video of that, but very relevant to the day and age that we’re in.
I’d like to start off first getting an understanding of Orange SMS. I know the back-story of why you went with “Orange” and not just the color but the background as far as industry-wide and the brand but the “SMS.” Break that down for me.
Les: SMS, we started out doing business as Social Media Solutions. “SMS” stands for “Social Media Solutions.”
An interesting little story; my mother was trying to figure out “Orange SMS” and she came up with a very unique way of logically understanding why we named the company “Orange SMS” about asking me, and that “Orange” is a very unique word meaning that it doesn’t rhyme with anything. It doesn’t rhyme with another word. She came to the conclusion that, well, my company is unique; therefore I named it “Orange SMS,” which you know the back-story; that wasn’t the case, but it does ring true to how we portray ourselves in the marketplace.
Craig: Got you. Since you have the “SM” in there, which most modern-day business folk understand “SM” as “Social Media.” Tell me a little bit about what you see as trends in social media now as compared to in the past. Then I’d like to hear what you think what some of the projections of what it’s going to look like in the future.
Les: Well, I think social media began with “Let’s see how many connections I can get,” so the game of “I have more connections than you so I’m doing better at social media.” Then businesses starting getting involved in it, and they decided that they were … They immediately tried to sell their products and services on this thing called “Social Media.”
Now what people are finding is what’s trending now is more about “How do we develop through loyal customers on social media, true people that actually want to buy our services that are interested in our company to do business with them.”
One of the big things we’re finding, or from an individual standpoint, the people that are looking for influence if they’re trying to get a job or if they’re trying to leverage their position and move up in either their business or start doing speaking roles and things of that nature. What we found here at Orange was that the thing that’s been missing is how to develop influence within your digital world.
We say “Digital World.” That’s all your social media combined with your website and anything digital that you actually are out there doing from a digital standpoint. Digital usually equates to mobile, not necessarily your laptop or an iPad or things of that nature, but iPad could be considered more a mobile device.
Craig: Social media is available on desktops. It’s virtually everywhere; correct?
Les: Correct. That is correct. Here’s the interesting thing. There’s a lot of social media sites that are brand new that not so much are available on desktops. Look at Instagram. Instagram is not available on desktops. You have to download their app to make it function, to make it work for you, and there’s some new ones out there as well that aren’t going the desktop route, so there are some social media platforms out there that are no longer available to you or never were available to you through your desktop. They’re only available through a mobile device.
Craig: Wow. When you start talking about that vast social approach or that vast social network, what’s more relevant of course is that mobile platform.
Les: Right.
Craig: It’s still vast, including the web, your desktop access to it, but it’s really … When you’re talking about social media, you’re really talking about all the mini-devices that they have out there more than they have people out there; correct?
Les: Right, exactly. There was a quote that came out that said that there are, at the end of 2014, there are more mobile devices in the world than there are people. That includes your Smartphone. That includes your pads, things of that nature. Interestingly enough, it doesn’t even equate to the laptops and desktops that are out there.
Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on what side of the coin you’re on, we’re seeing a big change in how we do things. If you look at a lot of the big companies like Microsoft, they’ve even come out with the mobile apps lately that will allow them to do the things they need to do from a mobile application standpoint.
