Buyer Be Heard! Social Media Buyers Guide on Blog Talk Radio March 4, 2009

**Updated: The Service Providers and Technology Vendors podcasts are rescheduled for the week of March 9. See below for details.**

Social Media Club is hosting three podcasts next Wednesday, March 4, 2009 for the purpose of gathering supporting research for the Social Media Buyers Guide Project.

Join SMC Founder Chris Heuer and E-Storm CEO William Gaultier as we interview several leading social media technology vendors, services providers and organizational buyers. We will be talking about their lessons learned and the most important advice they have for other organizations evaluating and purchasing social media. Guests will also be asked to share the three most important questions they recommend asking any social media consultant, agency, vendor or solutions provider before signing a contract.

Visit the show pages linked below to listen in on the web. If you have relevant experiences you would like to share or questions you would like answered, please feel free to join the call via the phone numbers below. We would also ask that you take some time to help us with the project, by completing the Social Media Buyers Guide Survey. Of course, we would be remiss if we didn’t ask for your help in spreading the word, by pointing your colleagues to this post.

The podcasts are on Wednesday, March 4 at the following times (PST):

• Social Media Buyers Guide: Insights from Technology Vendors, UPDATED: Due to technical difficulties, the show is rescheduled to Monday, March 9, 10:00 AM – 10:45 AM (PST). [was 9:00 - 9:45AM March 4]. You can listen on the web or call: (347) 308-8038
  • Special guests to be announced
• Social Media Buyers Guide: Insights from Service Providers, UPDATED: Due to technical difficulties, the show is rescheduled to Thursday, March 12, 11:00 AM – 11:45 AM (PST). [was 10:00 - 10:45AM March 4]. You can listen on the web or call: (347) 308-8038
  • Special guests to be announced
• Social Media Buyers Guide: Insights from Organizational Buyers, 11:00 – 11:45AM You can listen on the web or call: (347) 308-8038
  • Special guests include Christopher Barger from GM and others to be announced

Other guests are being confirmed as we write this, so this page and the show pages will be updated as they confirm.

Project Background

The Social Media Buyers Guide is a project of Social Media Club, a nonprofit working to improve media literacy and the sharing of lessons learned amongst social media practitioners. The project was developed to help organizational buyers of social media services and technologies make better decisions. For more details, check out the blog post announcing the project, contribute your thoughts on the project wiki, and complete the survey. It is our desire to ultimately serve the individuals in large corporations, small businesses, nonprofits and government agencies who are tasked with being social media champions inside of their organizations.

I want to Tweet your Blood…

On March 3^rd, SMC will team up with Blood Centers of the Pacific for the first San Francisco Blood Drive Tweetup. Walk-ins are welcome, but appointments encouraged!  To register as a donor, visit bloodheroes.com, click “Donate Blood” and use the sponsor code “Tweetup.”  If you have not donated with BCOP before, it will ask you to set up a new login that asks for name, date of birth and email address. Then you can select the appointment.

Then join us at the Elephant and Castle at 424 Clay Street from 4-8 pm to hang out, save lives and claim your free post-donation burger.

We are also looking for volunteers for the big day, so if you can chip in a few hours let Kristie know by sending an email to kristie [at] socialmediaclub [dot [org].

For more info please visit:

• Upcoming link: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1746451/
  
• Twtvite link: http://twtvite.com/2ra6ds
• Also an event on our Facebook page: http://tinyurl.com/BCPonFacebook
• Official tag for this event is bcopsf1

So please come on by, roll up that sleeve and donate a pint or two!

Special request: We would appreciate any help you can give in spreading the word by retweeting this text to your pals on Twitter:

Please RT: Help BCOP and SMC save lives! SF Bay Area Blood Tweetup on March 3rd! Roll up your sleeve & donate a pint! http://bit.ly/bcopsmc1

Social Media Club NYC meets Content Nation Author John Blossom

At last night’s Social Media Club meeting in New York, John Blossom, author of the book Content Nation joined more than 30 attendees to discuss his book and engage in a lively debate.

Topics ranged from the future of Twitter’s business model to the future of the Newspaper industry’s business model. There seems to be a common theme – in the words of the philosopher Snoop Dogg, people have “their mind on their money and their money on their mind.” (link to lyrics- not safe for work.)

Our initial discussion on Twitter’s future business model included conjecture about Zappos. If Twitter were to charge for commerical accounts (not yet a fact), how would the over 400 Zappos twitterers be handled? They’re using their accounts both for work and for personal use.  Many consultants in the room also noted they use their Twitter for both business and personal use, and were not sure how that would work either. Discussion was tabled until we know more.

Update: John published his slides and notes on “Content Nation Meets Silicon Alley, Madison Ave. and Wall Street.”

[Read more]

Member Survey: To Auto DM or Not To Auto DM…

There are several services available today such as Twollow and SocialToo that help Twitter* users send an automated direct message (DM) to anyone who follows them. Some people use this auto DM this to say ‘thank you for following me,’ while others provide links to their websites or information they feel their followers would be interested in – some purely self promotional, others not.

Some folks love the auto DMs, some folks hate it.

It has been a hot issue on Twitter recently, so we thought we put together a quick poll (online or click on green ‘vote’ button on top right of map below) for YOUR thoughts, then write a little summary post and share the information with the SMC community. Answer away, we can’t wait to see what you have to say (note, we made it either love it or hate it to keep answers pure and easier to track for the purpose of this post – also, you do not need to be registered on ask500people.com to place your vote, but need to have an account if you wish to leave a comment).

*If you have not heard of Twitter before, it is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to post and read updates from other users. We encourage you to check out this swell video our friends over at Common Craft put together to explain it in a little more detail.

Government 2.0: February 2009 SMC SFSV Meeting

Last Tuesday we gathered at the Loopt offices in Mountain View to discuss how can Social Media can transform government, and what roles it could play in achieving transparency with the agencies.

Our moderator, J.J. Toothman, put together a great panel together consisting of:

• Ariel Waldman – former Independent consultant for NASA
• David Canepa – City Councilman in Daly City
• Evan Ratliff – freelance journalist and writer for Wired, The New Yorker, Outside, The New York Times Magazine, and other publications.
• Veronica McGregor – Manages the news office at NASA-JPL; and the @MarsPhoenix, @MarsRovers, @MarsScienceLabMars/Rovers Twitter accounts

It was great to listen to the panel share their various case studies of Social Media usage in their respective agencies, and discussing the challenges and obstacles facing widespread adoption of Social Media.  While some departments are experimenting with blogging, Twitter accounts, Facebook profiles and live streaming events, it seems overall, most government agencies are not quite ready to jump in yet. And if they do…it seems to be so controlled that it doesn’t work as well and it could (and should).

We live streamed (had about 40 following online) and recorded (see below) the panel, and while the quality is not stellar, I am happy to have been able to capture this discussion and hope to use this as a educational piece with other government agencies to reduce the ’scariness’ factor that seems to permeate within agency walls.  Several folks live tweeted the event (thank you) and Russell Johnson did a nice recap capturing the conversations as well.

I would also like to thank our friends at Loopt once again for opening their doors and providing a great space to gather in, and to Lunchat for making sure we had snacks and drinks for the folks joining us live.

Salt Lake City is a twitter with Social Media Club activity

More than 110 people crowded the downtown Salt Lake City loft-style office space of Neutron Interactive last night. They’re some of the valley’s most respected social media practitioners.

The Feb. 19 gathering was the second third Thursday meeting of the newly organized Social Media Club of Salt Lake City.

The social media panel discussion included four Utah residents, each well-known for their use of social media in various industries. At the last minute, the panel was supplemented by Philadelphia-based Frank Eliason, director of digital care for Comcast.

For an hour or so #smcslc was the number one trending topic on Twitter.

As the chapter’s program director and one of its original founders, I was once again overwhelmed by the amazing support from the community for the Social Media Club.

There appears to be a real need to speak out on social media best practices and serve as a resource in the community.

In fact, because of my involvement with Social Media Club I have been interviewed by a handful of traditional journalists in Salt Lake the past couple of months on stories that include Internet information. They approached me.

What has played out in Salt Lake City for the Social Media Club I’m sure has occurred in dozens and dozens of locales across the globe. Six chapter founders launched the local organization using only social media tools to spread the word. Instead of a few dozen participants in our first meeting we had more than 75. Now we’re planning our March meeting in a space that will accommodate 150.

With use of the Internet increasing at record pace and the desire for individuals to connect with each other and business to represent itself using social media tools, the future for Social Media Club is certainly bright.

We’re already discussing the launch later this year of the Utah Valley chapter of the Social Media Club, just 45 minutes to the south.

If you’re ever in Salt Lake City on the third Thursday, it’s Social Media Club Thursday in Utah and we’d love to have you join us at one of our events.

From Salt Lake City,
Pete Codella, APR
Program Director of the Social Media Club of Salt Lake City

Social Media Club Editoral Team Kickoff

A Social Survey for Social Causes

This is a modified version of a post that originally ran on Mashable, and is co-authored by Qui Diaz, Beth Kanter and Geoff Livingston.

Do you believe in social causes? That in any time, but especially bad economic times, we need our nonprofit industry working to help ailing parts of our society? If so, then we’d like your help filling out a survey.

Nonprofits have unique challenges learning how to communicate on the social web. It’s not as easy as selling a product or service, it’s charitable, and often involves education and relationship building with donors. Now that social media has become increasingly dominant and the old 1.0 ways aren’t working, nonprofits are grappling with how to connect with and engage the digitally savvy folks just like you.

The three of us – Geoff Livingston, Qui Diaz, and Beth Kanter – are working on a special project, dubbed “Philanthropy 2.0″ to provide nonprofits the information they need to best serve donors and advocates with meaningful conversations and dialogue about their causes. The Philanthropy 2.0 research project, funded by the San Francisco Foundation, Columbus Foundation and Minnesota Community Foundation/Saint Paul Foundation, will make this information available to the nonprofit sector. The Project intends to publish the executive summary of all of our findings in the Society for New Communications Research’s Journal of New Communications Research and for download on the Internet. Social Media Club members will get one of the first looks at the survey information.

So help us out, and take the survey. Give causes the information they need to best serve your desires for a smarter, better nonprofit industry that gets the social web. We’ll also give away ten copies of Now Is Gone by Geoff Livingston with Brian Solis to people who leave extra insights and feedback in the comments section on the original Mashable post. The most interesting comments will be selected.

Social Media Now: 2.6.09

Research Papers: Newspapers and Online Communities

The Bivings Group just completed their annual study called The Use of the Internet by America’s Newspapers that evaluates how newspapers are dealing with the threat and opportunity presented by the rise of the Internet as a news source, and were kind enough to share it with the Social Media Club community. Shows many papers are trying to engage – but we wonder if they can catch up fast enough to stay relevant in these Social Media times? You may also read a summary of the 2008 report as well as obtain the 2006-2007 reports on the Bivings Group website.

Rubicon Consulting recently released Online Communities and Their Impact on Business: Ignore at Your Peril that shows online reviews and comments written by users are second only to word of mouth as a purchase influence for most Americans. Some great stats in this document for you all to chew on including items such as websites that Americans value most are (in order), Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Wikipedia, and Facebook.  Although Yahoo’s financial challenges have generated a lot of press attention, it continues to have a very large and loyal following.

Articles of Interest

We also came across these articles from fellow SMC Members and wanted to make sure they hit your radar screen too:

• Mike Manuel asks How To Create A Social Media Monitoring Strategy. Amazing with all this technology, there is still not one company owning the space.
• Todd Defren penned an Open Letter To A Would Be CEO that includes a e-book covering basic principles to advanced techniques. Nicely done.

Find articles like this, and more, by installing the Social Media Club Member widget on your site. To get your SMC Member Badge, go here where you will find both mobile versions as well as a code snippet for your favorite dashboard service (netvibes, iGoogle, etc), web site or blog.

Welcome to our SMB and Professional Members!

We’d like to acknowledge our latest Small and Medium Business Members and Professional Members here. Thank you ever so much for opening your heart, and your wallet, to support the mission of Social Media Club.

• SMB Members: Betsy Weber (Techsmith), Shelly Milam and Craig Oda (Page One PR), Jesse Engle, Aaron Gotwalt and Kyle Sollenberger (LaunchAbility)
• Professional Members: Kaarli Tasso, Murray Izenwasser, Jennifer Graddy, David Politis, Anne Bertelsen, John Swords, Catherine Martin, Christian Giangreco, Rachel Weatherly, Samir Balwani, JD Norton, Denise Ryan, Elisa Haidt, Gloria Bell, Nicole Swank, Debbi Jarvis, Stefan Möhler, Michelle Da Roza, Rebecca Keen, and Brian Remmel.

——-

Social Media Club Advisory Group News

• Alex de Carvalho will be on the Digital Tsunami: Breaking News at Breakneck Speeds panel at SXSWi in Austin, TX. For more on Alex, please visit StartPR
• Howard Greenstein will be speaking on Building Your Business on Social Networks in Chicago, IL on February 26th. For more on Howard, please visit Harbrooke Group.
• Chris Heuer will be leading a session on the Death of Advertising at Northern Voice/MooseCamp in Vancouver, BC on February 20th and will be speaking at the Next 09 conference in Hamburg, Germany on May 5th.  For more on Chris, please visit AdHocnium.
• Connie Reece has several speaking engagements coming up with the first on February 27th at the Women’s Business Conference 2009 in Austin, TX. Connie will also be profiled in the March issue of Austin Woman magazine in a special feature”Blogistas + Social Media Mavens” section. For more on Connie, please visit Every Dot Connects.

Local Chapter News

2009 kicked off as we expected and we have a budding list of 30+ cities looking to launch SMC by Summer. Here is what has been happening and what is being planned. Please note the list below is subject to change, so it is best to check the SMC Event Calendar for real-time  meetings:

JANUARY:

• Chapter Launches: Canberra (Australia) – Gold Coast (Australia) – Greenville, SC (USA) – Hamburg (Germany) – Salt Lake City, UT (USA) – Seattle, WA (USA)
• Planning Meetings (preparing for launch): Portland, OR (USA) – Sacramento, CA (USA)

FEBRUARY:

• Chapter Launches: Columbia, SC (USA) – Portland, OR (USA)
• Planning Meetings (preparing for launch): Adelaide (Australia) – Indianapolis, IN (USA) – Irvine, CA (USA) – Jacksonville, FL (USA) – Orlando, FL (USA) – Richmond, VA (USA) – Sacramento, CA (USA) – Spartanburg, SC (USA) – Tampa, FL (USA)

MARCH:

• Chapter Launches: Orlando, FL (USA) – Sacramento, CA (USA) – Tampa Bay, FL (USA)
• Planning Meetings (preparing for launch): Anderson, SC (USA) – Asheville, NC (USA) – Melbourne (Australia) – New Orleans, LA (USA) – Toronto, ON (Canada) – Tucson, AZ (USA) – Virginia Tech, VA (USA)

To find out information on your city launch and/or planning meetings, please check out our Local Teams page and then click through to the SMC wiki. The great thing we have found is that you too can start an SMC chapter in your town – so just add your city on to the wiki if its not there and review the ideas and insights on the wiki about what you can do to be more successful with your efforts.

We are also hosting a weekly chapter call where we answer questions around what is needed to launch Social Media Club in your local city, how to develop awareness campaigns, discuss topics/conversations that have worked well in other chapters, securing sponsorships, and so much more.

The calls take place every Wednesday, and alternate weekly – at either 8am PST or 5:30pm PST – an updated schedule is available online in the Social Media Club events calendar. The conference call dial-in number is (269) 320-8400, and the access code is 509633#. These calls are recorded and will be posted shortly on the SMC website.

We do ask that you review the SMC Chapter Guidelines before you jump on the call and if you have time, you might check out this 30-minute podcast SMC Founder, Chris Heuer, did with SMC Louisville Chapter Leader, Jason Falls, on organizing a Local Social Media Club. Take a listen.

We are still working to get some stronger organizational tools in place before launching more cities, but found…sometimes…you just need to let it happen and worry about the details later.  If this has been frustrating for you, we would like to apologize, but we only have so much time in the day and have been doing this as a labor of love as opposed to doing it as a paying job.  We appreciate your patience and your continued support of our growth, hopefully in a city near you soon!

The Bigger Story: It’s Time to Get to Work

Editorial Board

As a result of our continuing growth and the respect being garnered by our members all around the globe, we are beginning a renewed push to provide more educational resources, news, information and insights through our new site.

Today we have begun to take applications for our new editorial team which consists of a handful of folks on an Editorial Board working through the big issues and charting a course for our ongoing editorial strategy.  Working with them, with a bit more hands on responsibility for getting content published on the site are the Editors themselves who will be collaborating with the contributing Editors who will be pitching ideas in, and also taking assignments.  If you are interested, or would just like to get updates from the team occasionally, please fill out this form and let us know a little more about yourself and your interests.

In addition to a global editorial initiative that will be kicking off just before SxSW (details to come shortly), we have also begun two very important projects that need your support, contributions and retweets.

Social Media Buyers Guide

SMC founder Chris Heuer along with e-Storm’s William Gaultier and key members of the Social Media Club Advisory Group are kicking off a project today to develop a Social Media Buyer’s Guide to help organizations make informed purchase decisions.  The scope is pretty wide on this right now, as you can see from the initial work outlined on the [Social Media Club Wiki] Social Media Buyers Guide page. Please jump in on this and contribute your additional questions, ideas, concerns, insights and opinions.  Also, please help by writing your own original blog posts that answer the question, “What are the questions we should ask when purchasing Social Media solutions?” or perhaps even “What are the solutions that work best in different situations?” 

The tag for this project is #SMCbuyersguide

Social Media Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

A related, but distinct project due to its broader scope was kicked off last week with a blog post entitled “Building out the Social Media FAQ“.  This project is also on the Social Media Club Wiki, on the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page.  While we are starting this on a wiki, we hope to move it to a more user friendly, searchable database platform, perhaps even integrated into our new member’s site down the line.  In the short term, we have created a simple form we put on the blog post that you may fill out to submit your questions and even your answers if you have some you would like to share. Same goes for this effort as mentioned above – please help get others engaged, and help us find and tag great blog posts that might be useful and ask some great questions yourself.

The tag for this project is #SMCfaq

Yes indeedy, it’s time to get to work…

The Big Story: New Member Site Coming (finally)

Update from SMC Founder Chris Heuer

We have been hard at work rethinking what it means to be an association in the era of ad-hoc groups, smart mobs, tweetups, barcamps and other group activities that don’t require any institutions.  To this end, we have developed a plan for our online membership community that brings together the best in Social Media with the best aspects of traditional associations.

Our member site will serve many of the same purposes of typical ‘industry’ associations: to grow the industry; to look out for the better good; to discuss legislative concerns and advocate if appropriate; to educate the general public; to separate the signal from the noise; and ultimately to promote its members. With the rise of Web 2.0, there is also the added potential to leverage collaboration technology in entirely new ways, which we fully intend to do in what we think are several innovative ways.

The new Drupal based member site will serve three primary purposes.

1. Connecting members in local groups with others from around the globe to learn from each other, to collaborate, to socialize and to transact business.
2. Collaborating with each other in exploring, discussing, researching and ultimately creating informative media that furthers our understanding of social media and its application in different situations.
3. Promoting the Social Media Solutions offered by members (products, services, time, books or even workshops) within a respected website where buyer’s turn to find the solutions they need.

In addition to local group sites which will be 10x better then Facebook groups IMHO, we are expanding on our Social Media Events Calendar and launching several new blogs which will be open for member contributions. Of greatest interest to many of you will be our Social Media Directories – a Member’s Directory, a Speakers Directory, a Solutions Directory and a Service Provider/Consultant Directory. In support of this new member site, we are also launching a new editorial effort which is detailed below.

We now have the resources in place and the confidence in the community support we can get to undertake this important step forward knowing we are not alone in our quest.  We believe this is not only beneficial for us, but hopefully for other groups and associations struggling with similar issues.  We hope we can help light the way for some other organizations who are figuring out how to make the most of this Social Media and Web 2.0 technology for their members.

We are working with Samuel Rose out of Canada as the lead Drupal developer – in addition to being recommended by Michele Wolverton, Sam worked on the Social Media Classroom Project with Howard Rheingold (which we hope to support in some cool ways).  It will be several months before all the pieces are in place to complete the full vision. As with any well intentioned Web 2.0 project, the process will be open to feedback from members and continuously evolve as we literally redefine the purpose of member associations.

Bold claim? I think not because I am in shock that more associations are not using these collaborative technologies for the benefit of their membership. We will launch the beta during SxSW with a limited alpha starting next week seeking your input and suggestions.

So what’s in store for members? Stay tuned… or better still, would you consider joining Social Media Club as a professional or business member? We haven’t really made an appeal such as this directly, but today we are launching our first fund raising drive so we can afford to develop this new member site and put more administrative staff in place to keep the trains running on time (which I clearly can’t do on my own despite having a great wife and partner like Kristie Wells). The cost is just $100 for a Professional membership, $250 for a Small Business membership or $2,499 for a Corporate membership.  The benefits mentioned above are just a few on an ever growing list.  Please join us on our mission to improve media literacy, promote industry standards, share best practices and encourage discussions of ethics and become a member today.

Conference Discounts Available to SMC Members

We are pleased to pass along discounts provided to members of the Social Media Club (SMC) community for the following events:

• UGCX: February 9-10, 2009 in San Jose, CA (USA) – Discount available: 15% off the conference rate. Please use discount code UGCXSMC.
• SocComm Summit: February 10, 2009 in New York, NY (USA) – Discount available: $50 off ticket price. Please use discount code SMC.
• Online Community Unconference East: February 11, 2009 in New York City, NY (USA) – Discount available: $25.00 off ticket price. Please use discount code: smcnyc.
• Social Networking Forum: March 9-10, 2009 in London (UK) – Discount Available: 15% off ticket price. Please register using this special form to ensure you receive the discount.
• Pool 2.0 at SxSWi:March 15, 2009 in Austin, TX (USA) – Discount available: Social Media Club ‘card carrying’ members get in for free. Please register early as tickets are limited. You can fill out this form if you are interested in one of the 16 team slots (play for your favorite charity) or reply to this email if you are interested in sponsoring this fantastic event.
• Online Community Business Forum: March 19-20, 2009 in Sonoma, CA (USA) – Discount available: $100 off ticket price. Please use the following registration password: sonoma, and discount code is smcocbf.

Other conferences happening around the world we think you might be interested in:

• SoCon09: February 6-7, 2009 in Atlanta, GA (USA)
• Twestival: February 12, 2009 online/worldwide
• SXSW Interactive: March 13-17, 2009 in Austin, TX (USA)

A word from our ’sponsor’

Social Media Club is currently run by a small group of volunteers with understanding bosses (partners and spouses too!) who ’sponsor us’ by allowing us time to work on projects we love. We would like to take a quick moment in these newsletters to publicly thank them for being so darn nice by hopefully sending a little love back their way.

Docstoc (from Serena Ehrlich, SMC’s Secretary)
We all know that the more places your company appears on the web, the more links to your website, the better their natural search results (SERPS). We would like to introduce you to one more way you can increase your own natural search engine visibility – easily and for free.  Upload your press releases, investor presentations, media and tradeshow kits into Docstoc’s highly optimized document database and piggyback off their inherent SEO.  Docstoc even provides measurement – you can track the views and downloads of every uploaded document. Simply create an account at www.docstoc.com and start uploading.

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