Before you start thinking I kept the Shift key down too long, don’t worry, that capitalized ING in the title is supposed to be there. It’s in honor of Honolulu’s ING Direct Cafe, located at 1958 Kalakaua Ave. It’s the former Local Motion store. So why the honor? Many thanks to Cleo Brown for allowing us to use the space for the launch of the Social Media Club Hawaii Chapter.
I apologize to our convenor and catalyst Roxanne Darling (@roxannedarling) for missing the beginning of her introduction – I was opening my Orange Savings Account. You can, too – it only took about 10 minutes to open my account.
So what is Social Media Club Hawaii all about? Well, it’s whatever we want it to be. The flavor has much in common with Manoa Geeks, but it is different; SMCH focuses on social media. And this doesn’t preclude the two organizations from collaborating. After all, this is social media, so we expect some socialization. Roxanne also blogged about SMCH’s launch.
We want to harness the power of social media. If we can raise $7,000 at Twestival with two weeks of planning and collaboration, I can only imagine the possibilities if we have a sustained presence and effort. Attendees (or should I call us “founding members” of SMCH?) were from all sorts of backgrounds: web professionals, social media professionals, government, non-profits, small businesses, PR professionals, enthusiasts, dabblers in tech and geek things, Twirgins (those uninitiated to Twitter), and even a pastry chef!
While specific details will be forthcoming, here are some areas we think we’ll focus on:
- Collaboration and education: Roxanne brought some books from her library to share and also included an informative PowerPoint on social media:
- Share if you care: case studies and demos to help others
- Ed Morita (@nctrnlbst) shared a story of how he’s drumming up business for Longhi’s through Twitter
- One of the PR mavens noted it was amazing we can have three PR competitors in the same room – behold the power of social media!
- I also see SMCH as an incubator of sorts. Whether it is for ideas, support, or education, this is the place where all of social media converges, or at least it can.
There are different membership levels/fees: Open (Free!), Non-Profit or Student ($25), Professional ($100), Small Business ($250, 3 memberships), Media ($1,000, 5 memberships), Corporate ($2,499, 10 memberships). Dues are split between the main organization and the local chapter for operational costs.
One thing I really like about our Club: we made a commitment to using our powers to help non-profits in our community delve into the world of social media. We’ll figure out the selection process later, but I’m excited about this possibility. One challenge for non-profits is spending so much of their time, energy, and effort on their mission and providing services that they often don’t have time to tell other people about all the good work they are doing. I know this from experience.
If you missed it, we’d love to see you next time. For now, meetings are monthly, on the second Friday of the month, probably at 5:30 or 6 pm, at the ING Direct Cafe.
Mahalo!
[...] chapter of the Social Media Club, I got an email from Capsun Poe, one of the attendees. He was writing a blog post about it and wanted a copy of my slide deck, aka PowerPoint [...]
[...] to be stingy and instead embracing sharing as good for business. She was the catalyst behind the Social Media Club Hawaii launch and I’m thankful she allowed me and others to use her PowerPoint presentation which [...]