Social Media Women is a networking group that encourages and assists women to participate more prominently in social media. It’s a group that didn’t stop at being tight-knit online, either, it wanted to take the networking offline and into real life. Here’s how they did it.

Client: Social Media Women

Agency: CP Communications

Background

There is no doubt that social media provides opportunities for networking and building communities, however there is often criticism of its ability to replace real life networking. Social Media Women is a networking group that combines the two, with attendees learning about social media and experimenting with applying the processes of social media to real life.

Objective

Social Media Women is a networking group that encourages and assists women to participate more prominently in social media. The group was established in March 2010 by Director of CP Communications, Catriona Pollard and Director of Magnolia Solutions, Nancy Georges after they identified the need for a networking group for women in social media.

Social Media Women set out to combine online and offline networking to create a super-connected community where members could gain experience and confidence to ask questions, learn and challenge themselves to grow, evolve and aspire.

Strategy

The launch of Social Media Women was seen as a chance to build a network both online and offline. Co-founders Pollard and Georges focussed on generating awareness, building membership and creating an online community for women in social media.

Through Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, many of the women who attend Social Media Women knew each other prior to its inception. Social Media Women was about creating a dedicated community for these relationships, then taking them offline once a month.

Execution

The evening begins with a game of Twitter IRL (In Real Life). Attendees are asked to spend thirty seconds speaking to two people they don’t know. The exchange of information about name, job, company and interests are the same small taste of information that Twitter provides.

Twitter is a key element to the communication strategy with the aim of building an online community for women in social media. The Twitter handle @SocialMediaWomn was created to share useful or interesting articles, news and events about social media and women in general.

Twitter followers also use the hashtag #smwomen so that the audience can centralise all Twitter conversation about Social Media Women, as well as contribute to it.

A Facebook page was created which was a place to upload event information and photos and engage with members. Facebook allows the online community to interact with each other and view photos from each event. The Social Media Women blog feeds into the Facebook page so that fans of the page are alerted to updates and new articles.

A LinkedIn group was created to connect all of the participants both online as well as offline.  It provides a platform where the community create discussions, make news announcements, or posts job vacancies to members of Social Media Women.

Results

Having recently celebrated its one year anniversary, Social Media Women is not slowing down. Each week sees more new faces, and familiar ones that keep returning. Social Media Women has a membership of over 250 women

• The Facebook page has 940 Fans.
• Twitter followers grew to 799 within a few months, and the number is now close to 1,750.
• @SocialMediaWomen also features on 155 lists.
• Social Media Women meets offline on the second Tuesday of every month at The Supper Club at The Oxford Hotel, Darlinghurst.