SoSo 2009

...is not the name of a conference featuring all things mediocre.

According to them,

SoSo stands for Social South - the Deep South’s Social Media Conference. It’s your chance to hear nationally recognized social media professionals at an affordable and easy-to-get-to location.

Their tagline is "Deep Fried Social Media", which cracks me up. The conference is next Friday and Saturday, so I'll be roadtripping to Birmingham for the weekend.

Other good things about the conference?

• It's close - Birmingham. And I get to reunite with (and crash with) my good friend, fellow blogger AND Auburn classmate, Katie!
  
• A whole slew of my Twitter friends (I WILL NOT use the term Tweeples) including @burhop, @lorimillerwhnt and @southernplate will be in attendance!
• My Style & Design in Public Relations messages teacher and social media mentor, Robert French will be presenting. This will be the first time I've seen him since college as well!
  

Tracks include:

• Social Media Tools – You’ve probably heard that you have to be on Facebook or Twitter, but has anyone told you why? This track explores not only the why, but the rest of the tools out there.
• Social Media Communications – Talking to your clients though social media using traditional media language won’t work. Track 2 explores why and how to change your message.
• Social Media Strategy – Learning the tools of the trade and the new language is just the first step, without a strategy neither have much of an effect. Track 3 explores how to tie the two together into something effective.
• Social Media Case Studies – Are you a business in the Southeast that is seeing results from social media? We want to hear your story – apply here to present it at Social South.

Looking forward to learning how to wrangle all of the social media outlets we use at work into one cohesive message that will drive traffic to our Web site. Also looking forward to seeing old friends. Social media is a funny thing for me because I've been neck deep in these applications since I was a sophomore in college, but that doesn't necessarily make me the best manager for outreach and business uses. I think that a meeting or two on the topic will help me reign all of these outreach efforts in to form something more functional.