Join us for the ALsocme Spring Soiree at World of Beer, our first event for 2013.

We’ll be at World of Beer on Southside on Tuesday, April 23, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. for an after-work networking tweetup. Specials for the tweetup are:

• 20 percent off select drafts;
• Half off wine by the glass.

In addition, we have a special bonus for this event:

Our event sponsor World of Beer will give away two $25 WOB gift cards.

(To qualify to win, you must RSVP in advance, and you must be present to win.)

Photographer Lynsey Weatherspoon will be shooting the event.

The event is free and open to the public, but advance registration is required.

See who’s coming to this event!

Tickets are limited, so reserve your seat today.

Questions: Contact us.

Photo by Lynsey Weatherspoon

From left, Rickey, Jenn and Wade.

Hello, friends.

We are getting ready to launch our events for 2013 this spring. In the meantime, we have been recruiting new committee members. We can’t wait for you to meet them at our April social.

Speaking of which, we will have six social events this year throughout the metro Birmingham area. If your bar or restaurant is interested in sponsoring an event, let us know as soon as possible on our online form. We bring a hundred thirsty (and often hungry) professionals to our events — we’re here to support locally owned businesses.

Our good friend Lynsey Weatherspoon has helped our organization since the beginning. She was kind enough to take our board photo, and we highly recommend her photography services for your business or personal needs. See her site at lynseyweatherspoon.com.

I have mentioned our five committees before, but you can learn more about them on our About Us page. Those who share our goal of educating people in social media and want a great opportunity to work on building our organization should step up now before our committees fill up.

I’ll have much more to report next month as we announce our first event of 2013. Till then …

Wade Kwon

P.S. Friday marks ALsocme’s second anniversary, so Happy Anniversary, y’all!

Photo by Lynsey Weatherspoon

Hello, friends.

I’m excited to tell you about what the Alabama Social Media Association has planned for 2013. Before I get to that, allow me to introduce our new board members, Jennifer Warren and Rickey White Jr.

Jenn, Rickey and I are looking forward to a busy year with ALsocme, helping you learn more about social media.

Let me thank the volunteers from our first 2 years, including board members and committee members. They worked tirelessly to put on events, recruit sponsors, find speakers, maintain our website and other online channels and the million little things that gets a nonprofit organization off the ground.

We’re looking for new committee members in February. If you want to help with marketing, sponsor recruitment, programming or partner outreach — and you can spare a few hours each month — please take 2 minutes to fill out our Volunteer questionnaire right now.

Look for our first social event in April and our first educational event in May. We can’t wait to see you again, and I can’t wait for you to meet Jenn, Rickey and our new team. Our events wouldn’t be possible without great sponsors in our community. If your company is interested in providing catering or cash for our events, please fill out our Sponsor interest questionnaire.

Make sure you’re on our free mailing list to be the first to know about all our events. (We often run out of tickets, because our email subscribers always get exclusive access to tickets before anyone else.)

As the new chair for 2013, I want your help. I believe in transparency and accountability, so you’re welcome to contact me any time with questions, ideas, suggestions and gripes. I’ll provide regular updates on our site throughout the year, so you’ll know how ALsocme is working to serve you and the community.

Here’s to a terrific 2013!

Wade Kwon

Photo: Arik Sokol

The Alabama Social Media Association works hard to educate the community about social media at no charge. But one thing is missing: you.

Help continue the mission in 2013 by applying for a spot on our board of directors. During your 2-year term, you’ll put on educational programming and social events, meet with sponsors, recruit volunteers and coordinate with our partners.

You’ll also manage one of our five committees: Finance, Outreach, Education and Programming, Technology or Conference.

We’re looking for Birmingham-area residents who are savvy in social media, organized, creative and professional. This volunteer position requires passion, time and a head for nonprofit work.

We’ll interview candidates soon, but first, you need to apply online:

APPLY

Make sure you submit your information by Dec. 31.

We look forward to meeting you! If you have questions, please contact us.

P.S. If you know someone who might be interested, please forward this email to them.

Members like you keep the Alabama Social Media Association moving forward.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the ALsocme Filing Paperstravaganza, our first fund-raiser! In just 3 days, we raised $1,020 (and we needed just $1,000 to file our nonprofit paperwork).

These 15 members gave $520 in gifts (listed alphabetically):

Along with a matching gift of $500 from our fund-raising sponsor Birmingham-based IT Rockstars, we are one step closer to becoming an official 501(c)6 nonprofit organization.

Thank you!

After announcing to the world that a paltry 16% of people who “like” a particular Facebook page actually see that page’s updates in their news feed, the company introduced Promoted Posts, a mechanism that allows page owners to pay money in order to reach more of the people who “like” their page.

This means that if 1,500 people have “liked” your Facebook page, only 240 of them, on average, will actually see a post that you send out via their news feed. If 3,000 people “like” your page, approximately 480 of them will see a certain update from you when viewing their news feed. For 7,500 “likes” – around 1,200 of these people will see an update, and so on.

What, exactly, does 16% look like?

The reason behind the “content curation” that’s taking place in news feeds is the sheer amount of information posted on Facebook every day. Facebook uses an algorithm to determine the posts that are eventually seen in a user’s news feed. This mathematical formula takes into account several factors including the pages and profiles you visit regularly and those you interact with through “likes” and comments. If posts and updates from every friend and page you like on Facebook showed up in the news feed, it would be nearly impossible to keep up with all the information; hence, only 16% of the people who like a certain page on Facebook will see an update from them in their news feed, and these users are likely those who are already interacting regularly with that page.

While it’s true that fresh, engaging content drives Facebook users to your page, how is it possible to engage them if the majority don’t even see the content that’s being posted? To reach the other 84% of these users, you’ll need to cleverly entice them to check your page directly on a regular basis – or be prepared to pull out your wallet.

Facebook’s remedy for this 16% reach is their new Promote button, which appears when a new post is created. The fee schedule is structured so you can select what percentage of the people who like your page will see that particular post in their news feed. Payments are accepted through PayPal or with a credit card, and the post will be promoted over a period of 3 days. A few examples are as follows:

Obviously, promoted posts can become quite expensive, calling into question the deleterious effect it may have on non-profit organizations and community groups. After all, this is a blanket fee schedule – a non-profit, which likely has a limited advertising budget, is subject to the same prices as a large corporation. The same is true for community organizations.

One possible solution for this discrepancy is to discount “promoted post” fees for non-profits and community groups. Even among these organizations, however, a financial hierarchy exists. Can a grassroots effort really compete with a Red Cross or an American Cancer Society? Even at discounted rates, will a Facebook post that is warning a community about impending severe weather actually require payment so more than 16% of the people on the page can see it and take shelter?

Social media is not only used by businesses and corporations; we as a society have become reliant upon social media for communication of community news, events, and calls to action. Hopefully Facebook will take note of this distinction and find an alternative solution to their current model of promoted posts.

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Your support helps us keep bringing speakers like Erika Napoletano to Alabama.
Photo: Arik Sokol

Every nonprofit organization starts with but a single stack of paperwork.

The Alabama Social Media Association would like to take the next big step: File as a 501(c)6 group, which includes business leagues, chambers of commerce, real estate boards, boards of trade and professional football leagues. To do so, we need to raise $1,000 for various filing fees.

And that’s where you come in.

This is the first time in our 16-month history that we’ve asked for any donations for our new organization. To reach the goal faster, Birmingham-based branding and marketing company IT Rockstars will match your contributions dollar for dollar up to $500.*

If you’ve ever …

• attended one of our free educational lunches,
• dropped in on one of our free social events,
• watched one of our free informative videos,
• or learned something new from us,

… please consider a gift through our ChipIn widget. (It will allow you to give any amount via your debit card, credit card or Paypal account.) If you can’t see the widget on the right sidebar, please visit our special ChipIn page.

This special Filing Paperstravaganza fund-raiser runs through July 31. Note: These donations will not be tax deductible.

And check out IT Rockstars for help with branding, marketing, Web development, IT staffing and more.

Update: The fund-raiser reached its goal on July 12! See the list of givers …

*IT Rockstars stepped in as our new sponsor when the previous one backed out. We are very grateful for its generous support!

At the meeting, Erika signed copies of her new book entitled,  ‘The Power of Unpopular: A Guide to Building Your Brand for the Audience Who Will Love You (and why no one else matters)’ .  A limited number may still be available via ALSocme  HERE or you can purchase one at Books-A-Million.

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She stressed that likeability is a subjective thing, and return customers always prefer a strong brand.  Erika admitted that while her fiery style was ‘not for everyone‘, it was also why her loyal audience keeps following her sometimes bawdy, but never boring, RedHeadWriting.com .

Her book, The Power of Un-Popular,  includes the ‘how’ of many of the points that she made during the educational meeting, including the widely retweeted quote,  “Give away the why, sell them the how!”

A long-time resident of Denver, Erika is originally from Opelika, Alabama.  Consequently,  she enjoyed connecting with the Southern audience via phrases like, ‘Bless your heart‘,  (which can have multiple meanings) and ‘roadkill’ as in, “Don’t build for the middle or you’ll be roadkill“.

And whether you’re an aspiring business of just one person, or part of a major corporation, she stressed, “Think BIG“.  Create an infrastructure that includes the following:

1. Approachability – which gives your customers ownership in your brand
2. Scalability – which is your pricing and production infrastructure and
3. Profitability – which includes emotional AND financial profitability

In addition to her own book, she highly recommended the following which provided her with inspiration:

• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
• The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
• Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown

A few other highlights included her assertion that being unpopular as a child prepares you for business success because you learn early to ‘figure things out‘ and you don’t ‘follow the crowd‘.

• “Bring it down a notch“  is one of her least favorite phrases.
• “Stay to the right or the left and you won’t get run over.“
• “We are all inherently altruistic and want to share“, so give your audience something to share and let them be invested in your brand.

Thank you Erika, for reminding us that it’s not only cool but might be good for businesses to think outside the box and dare to be unpopular!  There are some segments in every audience that will never like your brand, regardless of how much you dilute it for mass appeal.  So be genuine, be daring, be honest, and your audience will find you.

Note: To hear the entire presentation or view photos, stay tuned for the video by Vulcan Media and photos by Arik Sokol which will be posted soon at www.alsocme.com.

Thanks to Vulcan Media and Arik Sokol who donated their media services, as well as our sponsors:  Location sponsor is the Hill Event Center at the Alabama Theatre; catering sponsor is Momentum Telecom. Door prizes will be provided by Griffin Technology and MailChimp. Beverage sponsor is Dekalb Office.  Please support our sponsors!  We couldn’t have these meetings without them.

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Thanks to our friends at Books-A-Million, we’ll have a limited number of copies of her new book, “The Power of Unpopular,” for purchase. (You can take a sneak peek at her book on the website.)

We’ll take cash, we’ll take checks, we’ll even take credit cards (though we make less that way) at the event.

The books, with tax included, will be $27.20 each, of which $4.69 to $5.44 goes directly to ALsocme! In addition, Erika will be signing copies after the event.

If you want to be absolutely certain to get a book, you can purchase them now below using Paypal.

We’ll see you on Tuesday! (Don’t forget to order your free tickets …)

Video: Jay Baer and Erika Napoletano discuss “The Power of Unpopular.”