SMPerth is a social media networking event/meetup, held on the last Tuesday of each month, at a random venue in the city that serves alcohol. It’s about to have its first birthday, so we met up with #SMPerth’s founders Michelle Milton and Meg Coffey to talk about it.
Michelle’s story is an awesome example of deliberate “accidental” success: find an audience for something, nurture it diligently, feed it carefully, monetise it sensitively and good things will happen. www.highteasociety.com has come up from nothing over the past five years into a solid lifestyle business brand.
Meg’s is more conventional; a corporate marketer gone freelancer and doing amazing things for her corporate hospitality customers under the banner of www.coffeyandtea.com.
The origins of #SMPerth lie in the murky past, well a couple of years ago anyway, when Michelle returned to Perth from over east fresh from the hectic networking of the marketing scene there, and wondered where the action was. Finding that there wasn’t any, she talked to her friend Meg and together they created their own in the form of a regular meetup they called Social Media Perth(#SMPerth). SMPerth had 60 attendees on its inaugural event, which is fantastic numbers for a new event in Perth. It’s gone from success to success ever since, with events becoming more popular not only with the attendees but also with the venues; they now compete to attract SMPerth as you’ll never have a more tweet-happy crowd at your venue.
Social Media itself is constantly changing, and it has become a speciality part of the marketing industry as the amount of knowledge and research required to run a good social marketing campaign is enormous. SMPerth concentrates on sharing knowledge rather than conventional networking; speakers are advised not to spruik themselves but to concentrate on giving the audience useful information. Professional networkers are quickly outed as not quite fitting in and soon lose the sudden look in the eye and the easy smile. It all sounds like a startup event; the focus on genuine connection, real information and the aversion to sharks is all very similar. There is a significant crossover from the startup scene, as you’d expect given that social is the dominant form of marketing used by startups. We need to know this stuff, and SMPerth is a great place to meet people who already know this stuff.
#SMPerth’s first birthday event is being held at The Brisbane on Tuesday the 24th June 2014. Check it out here