The other evening I attended my first Social Media Club Melbourne meetup to listen to 3 local entrepreneurs chat about how they’re using social media effectively to build their businesses and their brands. The three blokes in the spotlight were:

• Scott Kilmartin from Haul
• Steve Sammartino from Rentoid.com and
• Sahil Merchant from MagNation

I’d had the pleasure of interviewing Scott Kilmartin on the Small Business Big Marketing podcast and Steve and Sahil were certainly of the same caliber; intelligent and inspiring. Trevor Young also did a great job hosting the evening.

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There’s something I didn’t understand though. There were probably 40 or 50 attendees there to learn about Social Media Marketing from 3 guys who are using it to build buzz around their brand. And doing it very well I might add. Essentially, people were there to hear about others’ techniques for marketing their businesses.

Yet, I was the only one in the room employing an age old, simple, cheap, guerrilla marketing technique. I’ll share the secret with you – it’s a branded t-shirt.

I just don’t get it. Is is perhaps bad etiquette to brand yourself at these events? Did I commit some sort of faux pas by wearing a branded t-shirt to a networking event? If I did then there’s surely some irony in it.

It’s funny how people will use something as relatively sophisticated as social media marketing yet not do the basics. This T-shirt cost all of about $20, yet every time I wear it in public – at a networking event or just walking down the street, it’s generating brand awareness.

Apart form being a branding tool, it’s also a good icebreaker. People who are familiar with the brand come up and say g’day – and people who aren’t ask what the business does. I might have handed out a couple of business cards that evening, but almost every person in the room laid eyes on the brand.

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