True Blood Social Networking ideas

One of the topics tonight I wanted to talk about was starting your own local True Blood fan club or Sookie Book club.
As many of you know we have started one in North Texas and we have even had a couple of F2F ( face to face meet up ) – and others are in the works maybe even some road trips.

Now, I will say I’ve done quite a bit of online political and social activism stuff so I’m not very queasy about doing things like online social networking and meetups --but you should always be careful.
You should never, never give anyone online any of your personal information and when you plan meetings always plan them at public locations

For example, we initially met at the coffee shop inside a big book store …and from there we planned meeting up for a movie.

The best first step for you would be to form a free Google group. It’s a great way to start getting organized and you can harness the power of Google to do it. If you are willing to be the organizer first create a Gmail address like ‘TrueBloodfansMiami "@ gmail.com’
Go to www.Google.com click on Gmail >click on sign up for Gmail and create your account

Once you have created an email address you can login to Gmail account and click on “my account link “ top right corner
In there you will find both Google groups and Google calendars and well as tons of other google function both can be used to help you get you group going and active.

We set up a goggle group and you can see ours at http://groups.google.com/group/loving-true-blood-in-dallas don’t worry about trying to write that down just go to the links area of the blog and you’ll see the link there

Once the group was set up anyone could join – we have 8 members and we can email back and forth and share files and docs and plan events and co- calendar. When new people contact me I can send them an invitation to join and Google group does all the work for you.

Another tool you can use within Google is the Google calendar you can post your events there and allow folks to see then and to co-calendar with you can even send invites right from within the calendar. There you can click on a date set up an event and you can set the calendar to be publicly viewable or to only be viewed by certain people it will even send you reminders of events

Again log in in with you Google group email and click on my account this time click on calendar

Then click on a date > then on add an event and it will walk you through the steps
You can then invite others to attend right from the calendar.

Now these are just some of the great tools available for free and online for social networking
You can also use things like Meetup (check it out at www.meetup.com ) but unfortunately it is no longer free but is a great tool and now cost about 10 a month but if you prefer this interface all the members can all chip into help pay the costs and then there is evite ( www.evite.com ) this mainly for sending out invitations but it could be used you could also even use your myspace or facebook and connect “ by adding or 'friending' each other

Speaking of Face book and MySpace you can add or friend Loving True Blood in Dallas is on both Face book and MySpace – again if you’ll go to the links area of the blog you will find links or just search for us next time you are on your site or search for us by truebloodindallas@gmail.com

I hope some of this was helpful and I hope some of you get face 2 face groups going on in your town…

Post in the comment area your TB wiki name and the town you live in and maybe you can make some connections