NateBW: Thoughts on life, the internet, and everything

The site sees a lot of activity locally in terms of reviews and discussion. The only part that has been missing is the real-life get-togethers. This can either be in the form of official events, organized by Yelp, or Unofficial Yelp Events (UYEs) organized by the community. There are typically many more UYEs than official events.

I've been thinking of organizing a Tampa UYE for some time, but haven't done it until now! To welcome a friend from out of town, I've organized an impromptu UYE at BurgerMonger on Dale Mabry for Sunday 10/3. Please read the info on Yelp for all the details, including the Yelper discount.

Of course, non-Yelpers are welcome, too, so I'd love to see you there. And even if you can't make it, help spread the word!

-Nate

I had written this up on the Yelp Talk Page, but figured that I should open it up to everyone, even if they are not super active in Yelp. I do believe the community nature of help and think it has a lot of potential in Tampa Bay.

I've been a Tampa Yelper for a couple of years. While I do think the scene is building, it think it is slow. This is surprising to me because I feel that Tampa has a vibrant social/tech scene. What really proved it to me was foursquare: After Tampa was unlocked, it didn't take long for people to start using foursquare. And the Tampa folks really, and I mean really, rallied around Foursquare Day. It was a proud day for us all. It showed me that Tampa is ready for anything; we don't have to just sit back and watch NYC and southern California.

So what can we do to grow the Yelp community? I think we area  long way off from getting a CM in Tampa. Too many factors that yelp looks at that we don't meet. So it is up to us. I'd like to get some ideas from the Elites. We can keep this thread growing and spin off more as needed.

• We should come up with a schedule I try to have one UYE a month, rotated in different parts of the bay area to reach different people.
• If you know of business owners who not just have reviews, but are active in the Yelp community, reach out to the and see how they'd like to be involved.
• We need to use our Facebook, Twitter and other networks to grow the local Yelp scene. I'm going to start using the hashtag #YelpTPA for this purpose.

So even if you are too busy now, if you are interested in build yelp in Tampa, then drop a quick reply in this thread and we can make a list of interested people

THANKS EVERYONE!

There is so much activity about the social media meet up, that I wanted to provide a little update.

AOA Social Media Meetup

7pm-9pm Thursday June 17th at Sora

First, I am thrilled that the wonderful folks from CooperVision, who are presenting the social media symposium will be able to attend the meet up. Their contribution to social media at Optometry's Meeting is invaluable and they will certainly contribute to meet up and are glad they can make it.

Second, I want to point out that if you are NOT going to be in Orlando, you can still attend! Simply use Skype and a webcam to join the party. If you don't know what skype is, it is a very simple, free program to let you talk and web conference.If you want to participate, email PeriphVis@gmail.com to let us know you are interested and then during the meet up, call PeriphVis on skype.

Third, if you listened to podcast #4, you know that this week's challenge is guess the number of attendees to the meetup. The winner will receive a free book of their choosing from this list.

Here are the rules:

• You have to enter by posting your guess on our Facebook page.
• The person who enters the closest without going over, will win.
• You may only enter once.
• Virtual attendees (via skype) will count towards attendance.
• All entries must be received by 7pm EST Thursday 6/17.

When tweeting about the social media meetup, don't forget to use the hashtag #OMSMMeet!

Finally,if you are not able to make it to the social media meetup, be sure to grab me in the halls and say hi if you see me.

I wrote this today and liked it enough to share.....

-Nate

Why do people use social media?

People use social media because it improves their lives. It gives them
an easy way to connect to other people, organizations and movements
that they are interested in. The essential unit of social media is the
thought. In social media, thoughts are spread by Facebook status
updates, Twitter tweets, blogs, and limitless other ways. The social
web is an infinite sea of thoughts, rising and sinking, mixing
together and breaking apart. Thoughts come in every variety: silly,
profound, witty, disgusting, hateful, useful and any other adjective
you can create.

In social media, people are judged by the thoughts they share with
others. If people are attracted to your thoughts, for one reason or
another, you will have a home in social media. If people find that
your thoughts are good enough to share with others, then you can grow
to have a larger and larger influence within the social media
community. If you don’t share thoughts, either your own or those of
others, you have no place in social media. As my friend Jim Alexander
AKA Tweetmaker says, “Social media is just media unless you are
social.” And in this day and age, we’ve got more media than we need.
Why make more?

You can use social media to simultaneously explore new thoughts and
share you own with others. In the process, you can make friends, learn
some things, and be an advocate for yourself and others. This is why
people use social media.

-Nate

At one point, I made the following two points:

1) If you personally are not interested in social media or don't have someone you trust who is interested, then it probably will never work. At best you can delegate to a staff member it or outsource it if you feel it is valuable, but that is dicey because you won't be able to verify the quality of what the person you are paying to represent YOU is putting out there and there are people who would be happy to take your money to pump out blog posts/tweets/Facebook status updates to make it look like you are "with it" but actually are just pointlessly spinning your wheels and burning scarce marketing cash.

2) There are lot of people who are generally interested in eyecare for one reason or another and they will follow you,because you are their optometrist. But, and this is important enough to bold: People only follow you if there is something in it for them. They don't really care about you. If they can't find it useful or interesting, so they can forward it to their friends or use it to their advantage in their care of themselves or their family, they simply won't care enough to get involved. You can write whatever you want about how great you are and what you are doing, but if it isn't directly beneficial to your audience, then you are wasting your time. Only AFTER they think of your relationship as something that benefits them, will they go to bat for you and help you spread your message. 

If you don't think you've got the interest to do #1 or and have too much ego to understand #2, then stop while you are ahead. Spend your time and money on other forms of self promotion until you are ready.  But know this: if there isn't already, there soon will be one or more optometrists that have 1 and 2 in spades and are directly completing with you. And then you have to figure out what your alternative strategy will be to catch up.