Social Media Club of Dallas is Looking for a New Venue

For­tu­nately, the Social Media Club of Dal­las con­tin­ues to grow in size as we drive more aware­ness and peo­ple under­stand the power of social media and con­tent mar­ket­ing to have an impact on how they do busi­ness and engage cus­tomers. A big part of that credit goes to our mem­bers who share the event with co-workers and other mar­ket­ing and busi­ness professionals.

Our event this past Thurs­day with Chris Bro­gan def­i­nitely expanded our reach region­ally. How­ever, our last sev­eral events have been sold out due to space con­straints so it’s time to look for a new venue. We have been very thank­ful to Moroch | Part­ners for host­ing us. There­fore, we have decided to crowd­source sug­ges­tions from our members.  I have already been talk­ing with numer­ous friends and mem­bers of the team about the ideal loca­tion and requirements.

Our Wish­list

As you know we depend on spon­sors to fund much of the activ­ity of the club. We also focus on an evening so we can host a post tweetup to drive the most effec­tive net­work­ing envi­ron­ment. Besides, we are social ani­mals anyways.

Below is a list of the ideal attrib­utes of a new location.

1. Loca­tion: Any­where from Down­town Dal­las to Addi­son between 75 and Dal­las North toll­way or very close to one of those high­ways. No fur­ther north than Beltline.
2. Capac­ity: Min­i­mum of 150 peo­ple to 250
3. WiFi: Free access to WiFi that can sup­port at least 75–100 con­cur­rent users
4. No charge for venue or sig­nif­i­cant discount
5. Abil­ity to bring in our own catered food — Since we depend on in-kind food spon­sors this is critical
6. High-end AV: Ide­ally you can sup­port up to 2 wire­less micro­phones and two pro­jec­tors at the same time. We would also like the abil­ity to cap­ture sound as well. A huge thanks to Derek Schae­fer of @orangecast for cap­tur­ing sound at our Chris Bro­gan event and to Cyn­thia Smoot @OhSoCynthia for cap­tur­ing video.
7. Min­i­mum of 6 month com­mit­ment to agreed upon dates
8. Free park­ing or comped valet

What does our new poten­tial venue receive?

1. Enhanced image and rep­u­ta­tion through access and asso­ci­a­tion with the mar­ket­ing influ­encers of the DFW area. Not only are many of these folks in PR and cor­po­rate mar­ket­ing, but they also are engaged in plan­ning events in the Dal­las area. What a great oppor­tu­nity to get your venue in front of a very influ­en­tial crowd.
2. Online pub­lic­ity and media cov­er­age. Your venue will be pro­moted fre­quently online via Face­book, Twit­ter, Linkedin, Eventbrite, Plan­cast, and blogs of many of our members.
3. Pho­tos and video of your venue shared through­out the web. With many of our mem­bers post­ing pho­tos and videos on YouTube, Flickr and their social media streams, this is free pub­lic­ity and exposure.
4. Location-Based appli­ca­tion men­tions. Many of our mem­bers reg­u­larly lever­age appli­ca­tions such as Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, and Yelp to share with their social net­works where they are.
5. Pro­mo­tion at the event and the oppor­tu­nity to share pro­mo­tional offers with our guests at the event.
6. The abil­ity to per­son­ally net­work with many of the most influ­en­tial mar­keters in the DFW area.

If you know of a poten­tial venue that fits these require­ments or very close please con­tact me via twit­ter @mikedmerrill or pro­vide sug­ges­tions and poten­tial con­tacts in the com­ments sec­tion below. We are will­ing to work with a poten­tial in-kind venue to make this work.