Unless you have been living in a cave you have probably heard Scott Stratten @UnMarketing is joining us 9/14 as the first stop on his UnBookTour for the release of UnMarketing. Stop Marketing. Start Engaging.

REGISTER HERE: http://www.smcdallas13.eventbrite.com

Hey everybody! Cynthia Smoot of Gangway Advertising here, with a recap of last night’s SMC meeting! Click here to see all the party pics on Flickr.

The Social Media Club of Dallas held it’s monthly meeting at the offices of Buzzshift in Mockingbird Station last night.  The topic?

How to Make My Social Media Life Easier?

And don’t we all need to know more about that!

The first 45 minutes was spent mingling and devouring the delicious pizza and sandwiches that were provided by our food sponsor, Neo’s Pizza. Elysa Rice got things started by welcoming guests and thanking the sponsors.

Eddy Badrina

Eddy Badrina kicked things off by talking about the importance having a Social Media Strategy and Objectives.

He stressed that it’s important to arm your brand ambassadors with useful, shareable information.

When thinking about market strategy, think about the trend that’s driving the “trendy”.

The most important thing is to ask yourself — “what is the hook? Why would people want to pass this along to others?”

Colin Alsheimer

Next up was Colin Alsheimer who stressed the importance of Creating a Listening Station.

Start by determining your search terms, and always consider if they can and should be geo-targeted.

The easy way to start is to use free sites like Twitter Search, Google Alerts and Social Mention, plug in your keywords and plug that RSS feed to a Google Reader. Boardreader is a site to search forums.

Mike D. Merrill

The last topic was led by Mike D. Merrill who talked about Social Media Measurement and ROI.

He pointed out that it costs 5-8x more to attract the customer vs. maintaining them.

Mike pointed that that social media is not the end all/be all.  ““I can drive a lot of traffic to your website [via social media], but if your website sucks, it doesn’t matter” Amen, brotha.

He also predicted that eventually we will stop calling it “Social Media Marketing” and just call it “Marketing”.

As usual, it was a fun evening with a great group of folks who are passionate about the social marketing revolution.

Scott Stratten

Next month’s SMC meeting should be fantastic and I hope to see you all there!!!!

The featured speaker will be Scott Stratten, President of Un-Marketing.com.

He is an expert in Viral, Social, and Authentic Marketing which he calls Un-Marketing. It’s all about positioning yourself as a trusted expert in front of target market, so when they have the need, they choose you, That’s UN-Marketing.

Over 50,000 people follow his daily rantings on Twitter and was voted one of the top influencers on the site with over 90 million users .

His book “UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging” is due to hit the shelves in the Fall of 2010 from Wiley & Sons.

Registration is now open!

Not every meeting of the social minded has to be intellectual and all business. Sometimes, we just like to let our hair down and… talk.

I know, that seems really old-fashioned. But we are all about taking this new-fangled technology and bringing it offline to enjoy a good old-fashioned evening of socializing.

Of course, what happens there will definitely end up on Twitter, Facebook and maybe even YouTube. This is the Social Media Club after all!  We hope to see you there.

Thursday, July 22

6:30–9:30 PM

The Quarter Bar

301 McKinney Ave at Hall

2nd floor/Rooftop Deck

Dallas, TX 75204

We have fun at SMC Dallas. Whether it’s a Tweet Up, impromptu meetup or monthly speaker – we always draw a good crowd. Now we’re adding more to the mix with our Member Only events. Annual Members, volunteers, the leadership committee and their family and friends enjoyed Texas Rangers baseball, hotdogs and beer, courtesy of Overland Mortgage DFW Group.

You knew it was an SMC Dallas event by the number of people checking the score, checking in and tweeting on their phones. @mikedmerrill and @chrisvary were caught in action. @CameronGawley caught by surprise by @NunezPR’s four-year-old who served as the event photographer.  View more fun photos taken through the lens of a four-year-old.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that one of the hottest social media videos around is “Social Media Revolution” by Erik Qualman. It has received over 2,000,000 views since it debuted in July of 2009.

So, call it good karma that we booked Erik to speak and mere weeks before his scheduled appearance, he released an updated version of his smash viral hit called “Social Media Revolution 2 (Refresh)”

We had a lot of newbies a this event, thanks in part to Erik’s national exposure. It was great to see some fresh faces in the room!  Erik’s appearance also brought out a few of our local super-stars, like Cali Lewis and Giovanni Galluci.

Thanks to Colin Alsheimer for this picture inside the Magnolia Theater.

Becky Pearce tweeted, “Really excited to have met @CaliLewis in person tonight. I was a bit star struck. Should have asked for a pic but didn’t.”

Next time, please ask! She’s very approachable… promise.

Theodore Kim tweeted, “Standing room only tonight at #smcdallas. That young professionals are knocking down this club’s doors should tell us something.”

My special thanks goes to Victoria Harres who tweeted me a shout out to say, “The coolest kid at #smcdallas is @ohsocynthia who has a cosmo on the podium as she speaks.” What can I say… that’s just how I roll.

Adam Robinson tweeted, “Pretty amazing vibe at the #smcdallas event w/@equalman”

Thanks to Andy Lawson for the picture

The first thing you notice about Erik Qualman is that he is tall. I mean, really tall. Like basketball player tall.  No offense, but you don’t see a lot of men in Texas over 6’2″.

Erik kicked off his talk with a naughty cartoon that got Elysa Rice to tweet, “I think @equalman just started new trend. All #smcdallas events should start with cartoons & music!”

Here are a couple of points from his talk , taken from tweets sent during the event:

“Acceptance: the number 1 need for humans. Social engagement thrives social media.” @AmandaHawk

“Social media has over taken porn as the #1 activity on the web according to @equalman”  @JoyHays

“Key to long life? Be socially and mentally engaged.” @RoryEllis

“How to go viral w/ videos? 1) music 2) keep under 5 minutes 3) don’t push your message it’s not about u 4) help others” @ChrisYates11

“What is socialnomics? In short — Word of mouth on digital steroids” @KirbyRenee

“Wannabe a superstar? Put together a one pager of aggregated SM data around your co on a weekly basis. Then show it to your CEO.” @Andy_Lawson

“Don’t beg, borrow, and steal. Beg, borrow, and make better!” @JenWinn

“How big is social gaming? Green Giant sells vegetables that come with free Farmville cash.” @MichaelMolinar

Thanks to our awesome volunteers!

“78% of consumers trust peer recommendations. Start the conversations in your community and watch it spread word of mouth.” @RunningCouple

“Again what an amazing #smcdallas event tonight. Erik Qualman really is a must see speaker. Can’t wait 2 dive into his book #socialnomics.” @YoBlake

And I think Jeana Plas summed it up best with this tweet, “#smcdallas is the BEST networking group I have ever been to! Everyone is fun!”

We hope to see everyone at our July 22 event!

This Thursday we are fortunate to host Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics and producer of the wildly viral “Social Media Revolution” video.

The title of Erik’s talk is titled:  Socialnomics: “It’s a People Driven Economy Stupid.”

+ How great companies embrace social media

+ Social Commerce & other future uses of social media

+ How Qualman personally uses social media to market & sell [eating his own dog food]

+ Old School Social (aka Q&A time)

For more information on the book: http://amzn.to/cC7wLl

The first 100 registrants will receive a copy of the book at the event so register now. Those who don’t make the first 100 registrants can pick up their book at our next event in July or August. We will not be shipping the book out individually.

Following our event at Magnolia Theater we will host a post Tweetup at the Lemon Bar in West Village.

Register here: http://smcdallas10.eventbrite.com/

Updated: Renamed this the Annual Membership Program so as not to compete with the national Social Media Club Professional membership program.

At the last monthly meeting we outlined our Annual Membership Program. Several of our members have inquired about annual membership with the Social Media Club of Dallas and for a long time we didn’t see a market need for it.  Since many of our members have the luxury of expensing events like this, we heard from several that it would be much easier to pay one invoice for the year.

Price: $175.00

We plan to have eleven monthly meetings a year and a holiday party. As you know, we typically charge $20.00 per meeting for a total of $220.00 annually. For those that join our membership program and pay all up front, we will provide over a 20% discount on what you would pay for each meeting. Additionally, professional members won’t pay any extra for special guests where we are required to pay for a book for each attendee.

Benefits

1. Over 20% off list price of monthly meeting registration fees
2. Directory Listing on SMC Dallas website:  Alphabetical by company name, URL, Twitter name
3. Reserved seating — Will prove valuable for Erik Qualman Event
4. Free Social Media Club of Dallas T-Shirt with your Twitter name on the back. A $22.00 value.
5. Expense once for entire year

The directory listing will launch with the new website in the next 30 days or so.

If you are interested or have questions, shoot an email to smcdallasevents[@] gmail [dot] com and a paypal invoice will be sent to you.

First Annual Member — Traci Koller @heykolls

Traci is the Community Coordinator at The National Breast Cancer Foundation; she handles their social media accounts, including  Twitter and Facebook pages, and she moderates their online community

She’s also part of the the overall marketing team, so in addition to her social media duties, she also works on digital strategy and researches trends, demographics, etc.

“I also have the pleasure of working with Cameron Gawley, VP Membership of SMC Dallas (@cgawley), and Kevin Williams (@brandlessons, who really ought to visit SMC meetings more frequently!).”

The National Breast Cancer Foundation’s mission is to save lives by increasing awareness of breast cancer through education and by providing mammograms for those in need. For more information about NBCF, please visit us at http://nationalbreastcancer.org, follow us on Twitter at @nbcf, or “like” us on Facebook at http://facebook.com/nationalbreastcancer.

See you all on the 17th!

What a treat to spend the evening with Austin’s Tim Hayden of Blue Clover.  You might know him by his former twitter handle @GamePlanHayden.  He has a new job and a new twitter name: @TheTimHayden.  If you aren’t following him on twitter — please do so NOW.

I liked Tim from the first time I met him.  He doesn’t come in preaching the gospel of social media.  He questions.  He provokes.  He teases.  He ridicules what he sees as mass media hype.  Yep, I like him a lot.

So, here’s how the evening went:

Jeff Canton from Meals On The Move

Meals On the Move was our food sponsor of the evening.  They deliver from a bunch of different restaurants in the Dallas area.  From single orders to large catering events, they can bring what you want right to your door. I love that!

For our soiree, they catered from Dodie’s in Addison: Jambalaya, Salad and Bread Pudding. Their team was super nice and they handed out $10 off coupons to our members. SCORE!

They are welcome back anytime…

“@momdelivers! thanks for dinner at #smcdallas. I’m going to have to visit Dodie’s soon! Great food!”, tweeted @KatFarmer.

Yummy New Flavors from Paciugo

Paciugo Gelato co-owner, Cristiana Ginatta

It was a huge BONUS to also have Dallas-based Paciugo also on board, serving us a sneak peak of their 4 new Summer flavors:

• Chocolate Chipotle Butter Pecan
• Roasted Banana Cashew-Heath Crunch
• Durian
• Organic Maple Caramelized Bacon.

@FrankLogic tweeted, “With bacon ice cream does it mean we can eat ice cream for breakfast finally?”

@Orangecast commented, “Food at #smcdallas excellent. How can u not love #paciugo

The Crew from Magic Logix

After the Cajun fest was over and people were trying to undo the top button on their pants without anyone else noticing… Our first speaker was up:

“Hassan Bawab of MagicLogix talking about page rank and SEO… (they) are able to help w/ caching & compression, DNS, JavaScript etc.”, tweeted @FriscoStyleMatt.

After Magic Logix’s presentation, Precise Agency added their two cents to the conversation.

“According to @PreciseAgency Facebook is averaging 15k new users per day”, tweeted @Elysa

They also dropped a cool statistic that there are “15000 new users a day on foursquare”, said @StratfordX.

Finally, our featured speaker was ready to take the floor.

SMC Attendees with Tim Hayden

@FriscoStyleMatt tweeted, “Going to throw gadgets/tech under bus and talk trends, behavior, says @TheTimHayden http://twitpic.com/1pinyr”

@OhSoCynthia tweeted, Tim just threw out a Gary Vanynerchuk quote, “Content is King, but Mktg is Queen. And the Queen rules the house.” Y-E-S.

“What makes people excited about living and sharing? It’s content above all else.” tweeted @AGardina.

“Three points of engagement — live, mobile, online. All two way communications.” tweeted @LevelTen_Colin.

Mike Merrill gives SMC swag to Tim

“90% of word of mouth takes place offline — and mobile is going to make that even higher. Get out of the cube.” tweeted @AGardina.

Did you know that “Only 40% of Americans have smart phones?” tweeted @FrankLogic. I found this an interesting statistic.

I really liked this Tim tidbit that @AGardina tweeted, “Look at humans and know what they want. Use the technology to match that — don’t let the technology dictate what you do.” This is why Tim is so fantastic at what he does. he GETS it.

Tim gave us some social media predictions:

1. The Hispanic market is moving into the mobile market faster than any other demographic.  Target them there.
2. Twitter is going to slow up or “fizzle”. People don’t have time to sit and look at TweetDeck all day (AMEN!) It needs to integrate into a more usable platform or the masses will not adopt it.
3. The real opportunity for the iPad is not with the consumer base, but in the B2B market. Think medical, restaurants and retail. What can you develop for that?

Interesting observation from @CatherineKaram, “The majority of people (here) are with an agency — maybe shows how many brands are scared to try social media on their own?”

And @YoBlake summed it up by commenting, “I think they are going to rename @TheTimHayden the “Chuck Norris of Social Media” after his #smcdallas event tonight. Great job!”

I concur.

A huge thanks to our wonderful sponsors for making tonight such a fantastic experience:

• Magic Logix
• KickApps
• Meals On The Move
• Paciugo
• Moroch PR
• Firehost
• Blue Sky Factory

We couldn’t do this without you!

Join SMC Dallas this Thursday as Tim Hayden, Chief Strategy Officer and Partner at Blue Clover, presents on social media, mobile strategy, and the importance of maintaining face-to-face relationships and engagement.

With skyrocketing smartphone sales, the evolution of augmented reality and growth of mobile ads, it’s easy to forget the importance and impact of offline communities. From Tim Hayden:

The rise of “social” and consumer-to-brand relationships that we now have with smartphones doesn’t necessarily mean we’re online, all the time.  In fact, so much of what will drive interest in your company or product is happening offfline.  With face-to-face conversation still the most powerful “engagement” there is, let’s talk about the digital and not-so-digital ways to make the most of the mobile revolution.

And, bonus material — Christmas in May: Five predictions on consumer behavior for the next eighteen months! (Plus, you get to let Tim know that you’re holding him to those!)

Food at the event will be provided by Meals on the Move and Paciugo. Big thanks to our platinum sponsor, Magic Logix; gold sponsor, Kick Apps; venue sponsor, Moroch; email marketing sponsor, Blue Sky Factory; and web hosting sponsor, Firehost.

RSVP here.

I logged on to write a recap of tonight’s awesome SMC event with Duct Tape Marketing’s John Jantsch, and then I thought, “Why not let the tweets speak for themselves.”   So, here is a recap of the evening by those who were in attendance:

“Now playing at Studio Movie Grill: #SMCDallas! http://post.ly/f51q” @AGardina

“Reason u should join local Social Media Club: who wouldn’t want to sit in room full of nerds, tweet, drink & hear smart ppl talk?”  @Elysa

“At #smcdallas & just received a preview copy of The Referral Engine from @ducttape. Can’t wait to read!” @SarahAlyea

Dallas’ own @Cali Lewis showed up to plug her upcoming conference. “I am pumped for Open Camp. Blogging geeks (definitely me) unite!” @JerodMSF

Mary Anne Schweers, Cynthia Smoot & Eddy Badrina

“People make referrals because it feels good to help people out. #smcdallas via @ducttape” @VSEllis

“50% + of new business for small biz comes from #referrals” @CatherineOnline

“trying not to laugh from “big papa” ringtone playing at #smcdallas. *hint turn your ringers off ” @Elysa

“Will 100% of your customers refer you to new business leads? If they trust you, they will” @CatherineOnline

John Jantsch signs his latest book for Chris Walters

“Want a referral? Figure out what part of your business is “talkable”.” @AGardina

“Nobody talks about a boring business,” says @DuctTape. What are you doing to stand out?’ @OhSoCynthia

“Referral tip from @ducttape: ask 5 of your customers what it is that you do that they appreciate” @TheEllipseCow

“Consistency builds trust. Repetition is good. Repetition is good.” @EllaGantz

“Marketing — n. Getting someone who has a need to know, trust, and like you. / via @ducttape” @EddyBadrina

Talton Figgins browsing The Referral Engine

“This might be the best slide in @ducttape’s deck http://yfrog.com/07qrqrj” @LeveltenColin

“The 4 C’s of Mktg according to @DuctTape: Content, Context, Connection and Community.” @OhSoCynthia

“Know, Like, Trust, Try, Buy, Repeat, Refer” @MrCCPlus

““when it comes to lead and referral generation, customer experience is the new black.” @MarketWaveBM

“The problem with competing on price is there is always someone willing to go out of business sooner than you” @MikeDMerrill

“A big thanks to Diane Feffer and Studio Movie Grill for hosting #smcdallas.” @MASchweers

And I think @YoBlake sums it up by saying, “event 4 me = reminder 4 how much the unique small things & experience we provide vastly set us apart & stand out”

You can see all of the party pics on Flickr courtesy of Gangway Advertising.

We hope to see everyone out on Thursday, May 20 to hear Tim Hayden of Blue Clover!