Ranked by Klout as the sec­ond most influ­en­tial per­son on LinkedIn and com­ing in at num­ber 19 on the Forbes list of top Social Media Influ­encers, Eve May­er Ors­burn is proud not to be cool, and if you’re look­ing for media jobs, per­haps you’d bet­ter think about not being cool too.

May­er Ors­burn is CEO of Social Media Deliv­ered, a com­pa­ny that prides itself on offer­ing the best con­sult­ing, train­ing and man­aged social media ser­vices to busi­ness across the US. Using May­er Orsburn’s acclaimed Social Media Busi­ness Equa­tion, SMD lever­age the pow­er of Face­book, Twit­ter and LinkedIn, as well as YouTube and blog­ging, to help their clients achieve their objec­tives. They are also a mul­ti-lin­gual busi­ness. Clients include Sher­a­ton Hotels, Which Wich Sand­wich­es, Gen­er­al Motors and Har­vard Busi­ness School.

The com­pa­ny has been run­ning since 2008 and refer to them­selves as the ‘grand­moth­ers’ of social media, because they were there at the beginning.

Self-Effac­ing

May­er Ors­burn is refresh­ing­ly hon­est and self-dep­re­cat­ing. She is only too pleased to admit that her busi­ness mod­el is not focussed on flashy tech, more on a good old fash­ioned healthy bot­tom line.

She said: “Social Media Deliv­ered is dif­fer­ent from our com­peti­tors because we aren’t as cool as them. No, real­ly, that is what I mean.

“We aren’t just focused on the “cool” fac­tor of an app or the big num­bers on a Face­book page; we are focused on the nerdy busi­ness result.”

It seems that May­er Ors­burn rep­re­sents a new breed of social media influ­encer. The ones that were there at the begin­ning, have seen apps and tech come and go, and now know that sim­ply help­ing busi­ness­es achieve their goals with elbow grease and a bit of cre­ativ­i­ty is the key to their own success.

In order to grow her own busi­ness, May­er Ors­burn relied heav­i­ly on social media to raise SMD’s pro­file and attract cus­tomers. With no ad bud­get to speak of, the com­pa­ny was forced to devel­op strate­gies that helped them achieve their aims, and in doing so, knew the strate­gies they were cre­at­ing would also work for their clients.

“Thanks to our strong, con­sis­tent, and per­sis­tent social media pres­ence, we receive new cus­tomers via Twit­ter, LinkedIn, Face­book, YouTube, Google+,” said Eve.

“Our mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy start­ed with, and has con­tin­ued to be built on, social media for two rea­sons: We start­ed with $0 adver­tis­ing bud­get and had no choice but to use social media to cre­ate and strength­en our brand and to com­mu­ni­cate with our poten­tial cus­tomers; and, if we were going to pro­vide effec­tive social media ser­vices to oth­ers, we need­ed to first prove to our­selves that we could do incred­i­ble things with social media.”

Not Afraid to Take the Rough with the Smooth

May­er Ors­burn is dis­arm­ing­ly hon­est when it comes to her suc­cess­es and fail­ures and read­i­ly admits that she’s had some stinkers along the way. How­ev­er, her unswerv­ing opti­mism (easy to find when you’re at the top of your game, admit­ted­ly) means she looks back on the less-than-suc­cess­ful times, with a degree of fondness.

“I’ve had lots of suc­cess and lots of fail­ures,” she says. “And I antic­i­pate many more of both. The real­i­ty of life and of busi­ness is that it’s a roller­coast­er. Hang on tight, enjoy the ride, cel­e­brate the good stuff, and try to for­get the bad times as quick­ly as possible.”

She’s also a staunch advo­cate of women in busi­ness and is also proud that the high­light of her career so far is the time she got a black eye from one of her own employees.