Derek James, Fox News Charlotte Likes LinktoCharlotte

We are now posting some of our members and people in the community who are fans of LinktoCharlotte. We have over 2,000 members of our groups on various platforms. We are using our new Flip HD camera to capture our fans and members.

Here is one of out latest LinktoCharlotte fans, Reporter, Derek James of Fox News Charlotte. We caught up with Derek at a Twitter 101 event run by a LinktoCharlotte member at La Dolce Vita in NODA. Fox News covered the story of this event on Fox News on two consecutive nights and had people call in to leave messages on whether they twitter or not.

LinktoCharlotte is getting active on Twitter

LinktoCharlotte on Twitter (@linktocharlotte) will be pushing out events in the Charlotte area on a daily basis. If you are a member of www.linktocharlotte and would like you event to be twittered by us. Just send us a note as a direct message on twitter with the details or e-mail Andrew Kaplan on the LinktoCharlotte.com network.

If you are interested in the Charlotte, NC area and are thinking of moving here. LinktoCharlotte and our network is the place to be. You can find us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and NING.

If you don't know what twitter is, just go to www.twitter.com and spend a few minutes to set up an account. It is what we call micro-blogging.

LinktoCharlotte Mentioned in Mashable.com article

LinktoCharlotte just surpassed its 2000th member this month. We are now receiving recognition on how we built a successful social network.

Here is the link the the article
"12 Inspiring Stories of Successful Social Networkers"
http://mashable.com/2009/04/28/grow-social-network/

LinktoCharlotte.com - 2009 Plans, Plots and Parties

MediaMensch Networks has successfully launched a new platform for www.linktocharlotte.com and have attracted over 75 new members within the first month of launching. Since mid-2007 we have been working with the professional community in Charlotte helping them connect with each other. As of today, LinktoCharlotte has over 1400 members on LinkedIn.

Why multiple platforms? Think about a tool kit. The purpose of LinkedIn is for professional to network. Much of their information is hidden from others unless you are directly connected. It is also very difficult to find a large group of contacts in Charlotte and promote yourself to that group. So our new platform, developed on NING.com allows for posting of photos, videos, blog posts and is easy to navigate.

The founder is one of the early adopters of social media technology and has built that practice on his background as one of the first sales automation/crm consultants in the world (started in 1987).

In 2009, we intend bring education and opportunities to our members to learn how to be "professional networkers" both on-line and in person. If you are a member and would like to speak or help out to promote the value of this network, please contact Andrew Kaplan. (Hint: you can find him on www.linktocharlotte.com).

If you use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, NING or any other emerging social media tool, you will find this of use.

If you are on Twitter you can follow:
www.twitter.com/linktocharlotte
www.twitter.com/coachkaplan (tips and tricks for social media)

If you are interested in sponsoring an event or financially supporting this endeavor, we will be interested in speaking with you.

Some Coffee with Your Networking

Link to Charlotte had its 2nd coffee "meet and greet" at Caribou Coffee today. We had conversation about how we can make Link to Charlotte even better and how we can get more people to join the network.

We are looking forward to putting together another event in August. We are planning to have an "after work" event. We will be working on the location.

Some of you could not make the coffee this morning, but expressed interest in working in an advisory capacity to LinktoCharlotte.

We have already have had about 25% of our members meet each other, so far and I would encourage each of you to make plans to come to our next event.

Andrew Kaplan
Moderator, LinktoCharlotte.com

Link to Charlotte Tops 70 members

As of June 30th, in less than two months, LinktoCharlotte has reached 70 members. We have not officially announced anything to the public, but have grown via word of mouth to our associates and friends and those on a global network called LinkedIn.

As I reflect back on the goals, here are the top 10 we met:

1. Have business leaders form diverse companies in the community join
2. Have well known civic and sports organizations join
3. Have a kickoff meeting to meet and receive feedback from our members
4. Establish a regular low cost event for members to meet
5. Learn the administration tools needed to operate the site.
6. Bring in paid sponsors or members.
7. Have members post of news of interesting events or places to visit
8. Fill out their "visual space" and keyword profiles
9. Find a passionate core of early adopters who will help propel this forward.
10. Grow at an average of 1 to 2 new people per day.

As we start the third quarter our goal is to invite the media to join and learn about our site and social networking. This would include newspaper, magazines, radio and television. Having a background in media (see www.mediamensch.com I believe that the real core of social networking is "communications". The goal of this site is to "connect" individuals who may not otherwise ever meet. For example, how does a public relations professional meet an organic gardening expert. (yes, we do have one). They typically don't go to the same industry networking groups. On a personal side as we get more isolated from each other, our visual space area can help you find people of similar interests and let you know, through a visual bubble map or clould that you may want to connect.

This is exciting stuff.

Also exciting is that our other sister networks in New York City, Chicago and Nashville continue to grow as well. We also have trade groups for the wireless and "Relationship Networking" industries as part of platform which linktocharlotte runs on. This gives our development team the funding needed to propel this platform forward and create awareness as we cross promote between cities and industry groups.

Thanks for all your support during our initial launch.

VIP Kickoff a success

On June 14th, we had a very successful VIP kickoff of LinktoCharlotte sponsored by the Carolina Panthers. The following members were in attendance

Patrick "Hutch" Hutchinson
Candy Stone
Stephen Young
Rory Brady
Diane Stewart
Brandon Rosenthal
Erica Singleton
Patrick Chang
Robert Bramwell

We were welcomed by Mike Mahoney of the Panthers and provided with a car magnet and refreshments. We had a chance for introductions and then had an overview of LinktoCharlotte and the idea of localized networking on the web. We discussed how this is "our site" and the more people we invite in, the more opportunites to find trusted friends and business associates.

Some of the discussion led to areas on how to use the "visual space" area, how to post video blogs, and the concept of groups. This was a wonderful start with a great group of individuals.

Our next steps are to:
1) Invite more friends
2) Have a "hands-on" education program for members
3) Plan a calendar of "monthly" events

Thanks to our sponsor level member:
Candy Stone, MyTownHomeRealty-Maison Properties
Andrew Kaplan, eWarrior LLC and MediaMensch Networks

Welcome to LinktoCharlotte

This is our first post for LinktoCharlotte.com's blog. I decided to create an associated blog, so we can post up articles and questions and see if this can also become more searchable for Google, Yahoo, etc.

Please go to www.linktocharlotte.com
to learn about the power of localized business to business networking on the web.