SAN DIEGO, Sept. 24, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — Afif Khoury, CEO of social media technology company SOCi, took part in a key digital marketing industry panel at BIA Kelsey’s Leading in Local 2014 Conference on Tuesday focusing on the new paradigm of SMB marketing and commerce being forged by social media.

Khoury was a featured speaker on a panel discussing the New Paradigm: Social Media’s Shift of SMB Marketing and Commerce—which included Facebook’s Joseph Devoy, Promojam’s Amanda McNaughton and Main Street Hub’s Jed Williams— honing in on emerging trends in social media which are driving change in SMB marketing and commerce, stating:

• “Assuming, without leveraging social signals, insights & data, that you know what content resonates best in your industry and on your pages can be a very dangerous thing.”
• “Today’s social media marketing relies heavily on the quality and impact of your page’s content. Spending advertising dollars without good content to send traffic to, is social media’s proverbial ‘spinning your wheels’.”
• “Social media marketing is about communication and truly reaching your target audience through great, engaging content.”

SOCi’s social content discovery engine and management platform, SOCi, continues to see growth and adoption as an enterprise social media tool and solution. Current SOCi customers include national digital service providers, media companies, digital agencies, and major national franchises.

SOCi partners report a 2x increase in efficiency per client (meaning, each client now takes them half the time to manage compared to before SOCi), as well as a 250% increase in average social engagement rates (measured by social signals including Likes, Comments, Shares, Re-tweets, etc.) compared to social management using first-generation social media tools like HootSuite and SproutSocial.

About Afif Khoury

Afif Khoury is an entrepreneur and leader in Southern California’s venture scene. A noted startup attorney and venture capitalist who held senior positions at Gunderson & Dettmer LLP and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosatti, Khoury holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management and a JD from Northwestern. Khoury is also a published geneticist and contributor to the Human Genome Project.

About SOCi

SOCi is a proprietary social content discovery engine that sources real-time social content and creates scalable content cycles to boost consumer engagement and long-term usership. Leveraging social data to score, rank and recommend high-quality, industry-specific content, SOCi is a full enterprise social media solution for service providers, agencies, and others that manage social presence for clients.

Led by noted digital entrepreneur Afif Khoury, SOCi offers SMB’s, as well as large service providers and media companies, the ability to identify social content resonating with target audiences, using it to build engaging content streams across major social platforms. SOCi, Inc., which was named a 2014 COOL Company by San Diego Venture Group, is based in San Diego. (www.meetsoci.com)