April Social Media Club Meeting

How quickly a month can roll by! I have made my wife and coworkers sick of social media stories since I had such a great experience at the Social Media Club of Cache Valley (SMCCV) meeting last month. The April meeting was tonight and it again was fantastic.
The meeting had a different flavor to it compared to last month. It highlighted Liz Butcher, creator and owner of Butcher’s Bunches. She creates premium jams that have been celebrated such events as the Sundance Film Festival.
Liz markets almost exclusively through Facebook. She said she took out a newspaper advertisement one time, but did not get the results that she continues to get by marketing online.
I was impressed by her story. She is riding the social media wave in a unique way. The right people found out about her and the right things happened. It went ‘organic’.
I wrote last month about my paradigm shift with social media. Social media is nothing to be controlled or managed. It is a matter of finding the right wave and jumping on. Social media is organic. It deals with millions of human users, so it comes as no surprised it demonstrates human tendencies. I come back to that word again…it’s organic.
Liz’s story motivated me to start up that gerbil in my head. You know, that little gerbil in that little wheel that starts running, spinning the wheel and cranking out ideas. Butcher’s Bunches sells jams and is thriving through social media. What is a business plan that I can hold on to? I am looking and talking and thinking. It is exciting. Social media opens up so much.
Back to the meeting. I must admit that I enjoyed the ‘how to’ format of the March meeting more, but that is my personality. It was nice to see the outcome of successful social media use and I enjoyed every minute of it. I see the benefit of that as well. I wonder if a meeting could be planned that would handle both formats? Maybe an hour of ‘how to’ and an hour of a highlighted success story.
Just an idea.

March CVSMC Meeting

Tonight I went to the Social Media Club of Cache Valley (SMCCV) meeting. The meeting tonight was held at the Bear River Health Department building.  I must admit, when I first heard of the organization, the first word that popped into my head was, “ug.” I was interested in it, but the term ‘social media club’ sounded funny.  In my mind’s eye I saw everyone walking around speaking Klingon.  Fortunately reality was completely different.  The purpose of this reaction post is to rectify my misconception in the hope that anyone who reads it will not see the same vision that I did.

I walked up to the meeting and was greeted at the door by Doug Thompson, former mayor of Logan City, Utah.  I knew of him, I voted for him for crying out loud, but had never shaken his hand.  The meeting room was set up into four stations, two for facebook info and two for twitter info.  The atmosphere was professional yet comfortable, and welcoming.  The name tags tended to be twitter handles, but that was as wild as it got.

I ventured over to the twitter side of the room and took a crash course on the basics of www.twitter.com.  I knew most of the material presented already but it was a confidence-booster to ‘officially’ learn what I already knew.  Afterward I ventured to the advanced twitter table and learned about www.tweetdeck.com.  What an eye opener!  I opened my laptop, created an account and started rapid-fire questioning my poor trainer.  She helped me set it up and showed me another website called to draw in twitter followers who share my same interests.  The website is http://www.twellow.com.  I registered with that website and it continues to work wonders.

My trainer was Lauralee.  The more I spoke with her, the more I found how respected of a blogger she is.  She brought up a trip she took to the White House and some of the blogging events that she is invited to speak at.  We spoke for about a half-hour.  I was surprised that she gave me that much time.

A board member named Jason, stood and headed a discussion about the power of social media in politics.  He brought up HB 477, a bill in the Utah State Legislature that was defeated primarily by social media.  I was floored!  He said that no one group spearheaded the movement, but rather an organic movement from hundreds of people through social media.  As I understood it, the bill had to do with the freedom of infomation.  I find it ironic that it was taken down with social media.

I truly enjoyed this meeting.  The people were top notch professionals and the type of people I enjoyed being around. The biggest concept that I take away from this meeting is this:  the trick to social media is the allow it to be organic.  Allow it to take on a life of it’s own.  Put yourself in the social media wave and ride it.  Controlling social media is impossible, but riding that wave will create results that you wouldn’t dream of.