Social Geek

Ken Walker, CEO of Driven Brands declared "Franchising Is Back!" to IFA attendees at the 51st annual convention held in Las Vegas.

Next week AK Stout will be a presenter at the COMPUTER EXPLORERS conference. She will share some of her strategies on using Google Places and Merchant Circle in business and will give a sneak peak of her presentation.

On Thursday, February 17th while Deb is traveling back from the International Franchise Association Convention, AK will be joined by guest co-host Dana Lopez of Graphic Management.

AK & Dana will be speaking with Shelley Roth, Founder & President, Springboard Works. http://www.springboardworks.com.

Since 1999, Springboard has been helping businesses create and implement ways to grow sales. As a social media trainer | speaker | consultant, Shelley has been working with companies and business owners with a focus on using social media marketing for business growth and brand recognition. At Springboard, they are passionate about teaching how to use social media tools to get the party started! The biz party that is!

On February 10th AK and Deb welcome guest, Greg Pitkoff, Managing Director of GRiP Communications.

Greg has been working in the franchise community for nearly 15 years, during which he has helped startups with just a few locations, multi-national companies with thousands of sites and a broad range of companies in between attract prospective franchisees, gain more customers, build and broadcast their brand, recruit, retain and reward employees, and much more. He spent a decade heading up franchise account teams at several New York PR agencies before branching out on his own in 2007 with GRiP Communications. Today the list of franchise companies he has represented tops two dozen, and he continues to add new franchise clients year after year. Greg has been a co-moderator on the former weekly AOL Franchise Chat and on several IFA Convention Roundtables. He has contributed columns on marketing and communications to the IFA's Franchising World magazine, and has consulted with several franchise organizations on taking the plunge into social media both as a means of communicating internally and reaching consumers and other key audiences externally.

Tune in to hear how Greg plans to attend IFA this year virtually!

Connect with Greg via Twitter @gripcommpr or

AK Stout will be traveling to a speaking engagement on Feb 3rd and not available for Social Geek Radio. She will be missed but Deb welcomes BJ Emerson as co-host! Together they will speak with Ron Stack, Founder/COO of Zavee, an innovative community-based social shopping program that rewards loyal consumers, empowers local businesses and provides support for local civic and charitable organizations. Look for Zavee on the Web at zavee.com, check them out on Facebook and follow on Twitter @zavee. Have your computers fired up and ready as BJ returns as the first Geek of the favorite segment, GeekItOut!

Chris Anderson joins AK Stout and Deb Evans to discuss how independent business owners can attract and convert customers online through their own blogs, websites, and in social media.

Chris will discuss how Empowerkit, can meet the needs of business owners with their own personalized websites – without risking harm to the brand, loss of corporate control, or legal compliance liabilities in the process.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisanderson215