Hello fellow denizens! It’s me, Stephanie aka @Glam__Slam and I’m back! I wanted to share with you all the wonderful time I had at our recent first official #SMTulsa Summit meetup at @TulsaTech. Denizens gathered to learn from our presenters who came to share their experiences and expertise on the power of social media, effective ways to use social media to promote your business, tips on social media networking and much more. Speakers presenting were @HardlyNormal Mark Horvath, our very own Cheryl Lawson @PartyAficiondao and @SocMediaTulsa, @Mandy_Vavrinak and Carlos Moreno @chimchim237.
The atmosphere was entrepreneurial, motivating and all done with a wonderful “pink glow” to honor @TurnTulsaPink aka the fabulous Judi Grove; proceeds from the event were used to purchase Turn Tulsa Pink T-shirts.
I consider myself a avid social media user and practitioner (I mean, I am very much addicted to Twitter and couldn’t imagine my life without it), but by no means would I consider myself an expert. I myself just started my own website and blog, so I was greatly looking forward to learning more about how to use it to help promote my site. I must say that I was blown away and learned so much at this event!
Our first speaker was the one and only @HardlyNormal aka Mark Horvath from @Invisiblepeople. Mark shared with us his incredible story of how he started @Invisiblepeople with only $45, a laptop, social media and an IPhone. I learned from Mark that you don’t have to have a ton of money or resources to start and the harnessing the power of social media is the best thing you can do.
Next, our fearless leader herself Cheryl Lawson @SocMediaTulsa and @PartyAficiondao, worked her magic and graced us with her amazing social media wisdom and more than anyone else, further reinforced and impressioned on me how effective social media is and what an integral tool it is to promoting your business and your brand. We’re going to call her the “social media goddess”. What do you guys think? I think she deserves the title! 
As the summit continued, myself and all denizens in attendance learned how important it is to truly promote your “brand” to your audience and how to effectively tell the “story” of you or your business. The most interesting thing I learned during this part of the summit, is that even if you’re tweeting about what you had for lunch today, if it really speaks to who you are and reinforces your “brand”, that even this is content. I never thought of this before, but the more I though about it, the more I realized how right she is! By she, I mean the awesome PR, marketing and social media machine of @Mandy_Vavrinak of Crossroads Communications, LLC.
Additionally, I also learned from the genius of whom I am know going to call “The WordPress Man”, Carlos Moreno @chimchim237 owner of Auryn Creative. Carlos is a WordPress expert and is someone whom I now know that I can go to with any WordPress question I have, as I know he’ll have the answer!
I am so glad I was able to attend this event and I have to say I left feeling so confident in how to more effectively use social media and now more than ever truly believe in the power of social media! Because of what I learned here, I know I now have the tools to grow my own blog and that “the sky is the limit”. Most importantly though to me, thanks to the amazing man who is Mark Horvath, I am more inspired than ever. Mark proved to me that all it takes is a little inspiration and motivation to achieve great success and go after your dream!
This first summit was so awesome, that I know can’t wait for our next one!
To see full presentation from our speakers, visit the Social Media Tulsa page at: http://socialmediatulsa.org/2011/10/21/smtulsa-social-media-summit-2011-recap/
Note: I was provided free access to this event via our gracious leader Cheryl Lawson. In exchange for her kindness and charity to myself, “Miss Budgetnista” (Like that? I made it up myself. Kind of a combo of fashionista and budget. The term kind of describes me at the moment. Haha! ), I wrote a blog post regarding the event.
Until next time my fellow denizens!
