Our first “Web Wednesday” meeting of 2011 is scheduled for January 19th, at Suga’s Deep South Cuisine in downtown Beaumont. Everyone is welcome to come by to learn, share, and discuss Social Media with us. This is also a great opportunity to network with others in the club and share your experiences with Social Media in the past year. The meeting takes place at Suga’s in Beaumont on Wednesday, January 19th from 11:30AM – 1:30PM. Bring a friend along with you! Make sure and RSVP via our facebook event page or leave us a comment here.

Below are the meeting notes taken by Jessica Benton from the last meeting of 2010 that took place at Sertino’s Cafe:

December 2010 Meeting Notes

The last meeting of 2010 for the Beaumont Social Media Club came to an end with some great take-a-ways. The meeting was held at Sertinos on Wednesday 12/15/2010 during lunch. These meetings have been dubbed “Web Wednesdays” by the Beaumont Social Media Club.

The meeting started out with discussing how social networking sites and social media has made its mark in the news over the course of 2010. There was a discussion about how Google SERPs are now showing tweets when searching keywords. You can now not only get up to date information about a particular subject from websites, but also the chatter on Twitter.

As the meeting progressed, the Beaumont Social Media Club members discussed online security, social sites and accounts being hacked, and the invasion of privacy. That conversation progressed into a conversation about out kids and teenagers who are already active in social media however may not have the knowledge of social media etiquette. Some discussed how parents should be responsible, but how can you hold parents responsible to teach their children about social media when most kids know more than their parents? Can we somehow get the education into the schools to teach the teachers, children, and the parents?

Some other great topics that arose included:

• Paper.li integrating with Facebook
• Wikileaks and how we are exposed to an online war
• How celebrities have used social media to raise money from fans for causes
• Twitter being hacked with hover links over the summer
• How to see short URL previews

Tips were shared by social media club members about the usage of Postling. Postling is a web interface that can send share information with multiple social media accounts that you have connected. You choose one account to update or several at the same time. There is a free Postling service for one profile or a paid service to help manage several profiles.

Members also discussed the management obstacles of Facebook Fan Pages. Over the last few months Facebook no longer notifies the admin of a page when a fan posts on the wall. At this point there is no work around for this issue.

The Beaumont Social Media Club also wants to welcome the Beaumont Salvation Army to the social media world. The Beaumont Salvation Army Facebook fan page was recently set up along with a Twitter account and a blog. They have also included the URL’s on their business cards to pass out to the community. The Beaumont Salvation Army took the steps to create social media accounts after attending a Beaumont Social Media Club meeting. Please help welcome them to the social media community by fanning their Facebook Fan page and following them on Twitter.Once they are up to 25 fans, they will then be able to create their custom “vanity” URL for their fan page.

Two members Tex and Clem also offered to spread the word about the Beaumont Social Media Club via free ads on their numerous local sites. The Beaumont Social Media Club wants to thank you for your generosity.

This was the last meeting of the year and the Beaumont Social Media club wants to thank all those who attended the meetings. We will be scheduling the first meeting of 2011 and will send out that information when details are completed. We hope everyone has a very merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year. May you have a very social media friendly holiday season!

Our final Web Wednesdays lunch  of 2010 will be on December 15th at Sertino’s Cafe in Beaumont from 11AM -1PM. Come join us and bring a friend. We’ll recap the year in Social Media and our leadership team will help answer any questions you might have about Social Media. Bring any and all questions about Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, youtube, foursquare and more!

Date: 12/15/2010
Time: 11AM – 1PM CST
Location: Sertino’s Cafe, 5657 Eastex Freeway, Beaumont, TX 77706

Please R.S.V.P. via our Facebook Event page if you can make it.

We had a great turnout last month for our Social Media isn’t Scary meeting. If you missed that event, here are some pictures and a audio recap from Justin McCullough. Now it’s time for our November meeting, this time we’re having an Social Media Think Tank. It will be an open Question and Answer session where you bring the questions on social media, and we’ll do our best to answer them. This is also a great opportunity to share on your own success stories with social media as well. Feel free to send us your questions in advance. You can comment on this post, reply to us on twitter, or leave a message on our facebook wall. Pass this invite on to your coworkers and friends also! Everyone is Welcome!

The meeting will take place on November 17th, from 11AM -12:30PM at Goodfella’s in Beaumont, Texas. If you’re planning to go, please RSVP on our facebook event page or leave a comment.

Each member of our leadership team will be giving a 3-5 minute talk over each of these topics. Feel free to bring your questions too! Casual setting and conversation.

Event Info:
Madison’s on Dowlen Rd
4020 Dowlen Rd # 200
Beaumont, TX 77706-6849
11:00AM – 12:30PM
Google Map

Make sure and RSVP via our Facebook Event Page.

Social media has been vastly growing over the last few years. Beaumont should be on the forefront of this stampede. Here are some statistics if you are not sure about this movement.

• Facebook claims that 50% of active users log into the site each day. This would mean at least 175m users every 24 hours.
• Twitter now has 75m user accounts, but only around 15m are active users on a regular basis. It’s still a fair increase from the estimated 6-10m global users from a few months ago.
• LinkedIn has over 50m members worldwide. This means an increase of around 1m members month-on-month since July/August last year.
• Facebook currently has in excess of 350 million active users on global basis. Six months ago, this was 250m… meaning around a 40% increase of users in less than half a year.
• 70% of bloggers are organically talking about brands on their blog.

[Data Source: econsultancy.com]

Last night, the Beaumont Social Media Club met to set volunteer roles. Those who attended included:

• Bryan Lee
• Justin McCullough
• Stephanie Molina
• Jessica Benton
• Renee Harrington
• Ashley White

Several topics were discussed and commitments to leadership positions were agreed upon. The conversation was centered around how the Beaumont Social Media Club would best benefit our community. Local businesses and individuals alike should be interested in how social media can help them professionally and socially. The goal is to educate, share, and prosper in social media as so many other parts of the country has.

The first meeting for individuals interested in the Beaumont Social Media Club will be held on October 27^th (location TBA). During this meeting each of the volunteers will discuss how a specific social media outlet can be utilized. Some of the platforms to be discussed will be LinkedIn, QR Codes, Facebook, and Twitter.

Monthly lunches will be held to gather all those interested in what the Beaumont Social Media Club has to offer. Monthly lunches will be held the second Wednesday of each month at 11am for approximately one hour (dubbed “Web Wednesdays”). Locations will be announced at a later time.

The objective is to provide educational, social, and networking events for all levels of social media involvement. Join the Beaumont Social Media Club to take your online presence to a higher level.

The Beaumont Social Media Club is actively looking for sponsors to help offset expenses. There are many benefits of sponsoring an event. If you are interested please let us know via our contact page.

Post Author: Jessica Benton

We had our first meeting for SMC Beaumont on Tuesday, September 28th at Rancho Grande on Crockett Street. We had twelve people show up our event as you can see in the picture above.

Justin and I took the floor first to explain what is Social Media Club and how we plan to implement it here in our community. We want to facilitate a current relevant presence for social media here in our community. We want to help to educate and encourage others to use social media for their own purposes. This can be through “how-to” seminars and guest speakers. We will also have other events like networking, parties, and sponsored events around Southeast Texas.

Below is video we took from the event of Justin and I speaking:

Part 1

Part 2

Special thanks to EatDrinkSETX.com for sponsoring the meeting with drinks and Rancho Grande in Beaumont for the meeting location!