Social Media Club SFSV: Sonoma Bound on July 11, 2009!

Come join the Social Media Club for their FIRST ever wine adventure!

We know you’ve been slaving away all year, so isn’t it time to kick back and relax a little? We thought so too, so we got together with Barbara Drady (@WineEvangelist) from Affairs of the Vine to put together a Social Media Club road trip to Sonoma wine country!

Here are the details:

• July 11 - we’ll meet up at the Presido Bowl Parking lot in the Presidio, San Francisco, board the bus and leave at 9:30 AM sharp.
• First stop is Keller Estate Winery. We’ll have a tour of the winery, a guided tasting and a light lunch provided by the winery.
• Next is Baletto Vineyards for a guided tasting and also enjoy some cheese and snacks with Dutton-Goldfield’s wines in their shared tasting room.
• We’ll wind up the tour at Owl Ridge, where we will taste more wonderful wines, learn about wine blending and blend our own bottle to take home.

After the blending party, it’s back on the bus to San Francisco.  We are expecting to be back in the city by approximately 5:30 PM.

The cost of this event is $65.00, and there are only 40 spots available.  Tickets will be on sale until July 10 at 5 PM - assuming they don’t sell out.  Book your tickets today to avoid being left out!  http://sfsvjul09.eventbrite.com

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Social Media Coverage Opportunity in Amsterdam

I am curently seeking two online content creators (blogging, video, audio, photo) to cover an event in Amsterdam. Locals only, and two tickets are provided for two people to cover the event utilizing as many coverage tools as possible to include:

• interviews with panelists
• photos of the event and the expo
• live blogging
• video coverage of as much as possible

Not requirements above need to be met, but candidates that can provide as many of those mentioned will be considered first.

The event is June 2nd, WiMAX Forum Global Congress 2009

Send your information HERE for consideration. Please include equipment you have to cover the event, availability, and links to blogs and other content you’ve created that highlight the work you’ve done.

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Online Community Unconference: SMC Member Discount

The Online Community Unconference is a gathering of online community and social media practitioners - managers, strategists, developers, business people, tool providers, investors - to discuss experience and strategies in the development and growth of online communities and social media. Those involved in online community development (and social software in general) share many common challenges: community management, tools, metrics and ROI, implementing new social media programs, business models, and legal issues. As we have found with our past events, the best source of information comes from open collaboration among smart and experienced online community and social media folks that attend our events. The Online Community Unconference is the biggest online community focused event that features a low-cost, high-value day of learning and collaborating on social media and community strategies and incredible networking opportunities.

The Online Community Unconference is inspired by the emerging “open space” conference format. (For an excellent description of our most recent unconference in New York, February 2009, see this Huffington Post article.

The Computer History Museum in Mountain View is a unique venue with plenty of parking and WiFi. Lunch and tasty snacks will be provided, and the Museum exhibits will be open to the group during the breaks.

An extensive FAQ has been posted here: http://www.forumonenetworks.com/ocu_faq

For more event information, or information about sponsorship opportunities contact Bill Johnston: bjohnston@forumone.com.

Registration link: http://ocu2009-smc.eventbrite.com
Discount Code: socialmediaclub
Discount amount: $25 off

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Social Media Camp + Internet Week = Good Times in NYC

Social Media Club is excited to be hosting Social Media Camp during Internet Week NY this year.  Given the current economic situation, we wanted to really focus this camp on helping small businesses learn how to use Social Media as an alternative (and cost effective) option to traditional marketing and communications.  So rather then just focusing on bringing social media ‘insiders’ together to talk in our special jargon filled language, how can we make Social Media more accessible and useful to everyday people.

This will be a traditional open space camp event where people who work with small businesses, job seekers, and even those people in bigger businesses who do marketing and communications will come together to learn from each other.  Everyone who attends is a participant and hopefully a teacher too.  In the morning, we will come together in a big group to plan out the majority of the sessions that will be taught throughout the day.  In addition to the participant lead sessions, Social Media Club is offering a special Social Media for your Small Business ‘track’ that is designed for the small business person who is just beginning to explore social media.  We will have some of the leading social media marketers in the world in NYC during Internet Week, and several of them, including Chris Heuer and Howard Greenstein will be teaching these classes.

So if you want to teach or you want to learn, please join us for this great day of open learning and collaboration.

The cost for the day is $25 which covers lunch. We are seeking multiple participating sponsors to offset the costs.  We do not yet have our venue, but it will be in Manhattan in an easily accessible location.

If you are buying a sponsorship here, we will be in touch with you to get your logo for the web site, t-shirt and event signage. If you have a venue to offer up, please contact us via camp@socialmediaclub.org

Social Media Camp will need people for many roles, including check in, helping with the food, logistical help, and more. Volunteers will have the registration fee waived.  If you’re interested, please leave a comment below.

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Conference Discounts Available to SMC Members

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

• Online Marketing Summit: Started May 5, 2009 in Boston and travels to 17 other cities, ending in Seattle on July 1st. SMC members receive 20% off by using code SMCNAT20.  This event series is focused on best practices in online marketing including Social Media, Search Engine Marketing (SEO & PPC), Web Analytics, Usability, Email Marketing, Integrated Marketing Strategy.
• Innovating Employee Engagement 2009: New Ideas for Touch Times taking place June 16, 2009 in Chicago, IL. Use code tweet1 to receive $100 off registration. You will learn and share on the most essential aspects of employee engagement, HR and social media for internal communications.
• Executing Social Media For Internal Communications 2009: Delivering More Value In A Tough Economy taking place on June 17, 2009 in Chicago, IL. Use code tweet1 to receive $100 off registration.  You will learn and share on the most essential aspects of employee engagement, HR and social media for internal communications.
• Rethinking Corporate Communications 2009: Delivering More Value in a Tough Economy taking place September 30-October 1, 2009 in Washington, DC. SMC member can use code tweet1 to receive $100 off registration.  This is an interactive and intimate conference for corporate, government and non-profit communicators.

There are two other events we encourage our community to attend:

• A Clean Life: May 21, 2009 in Washington, DC. A Clean Life is dedicated to environmental stewardship through reducing waste, sustainable eating, and community building.
• Social Media Camp: June 4, 2009 in New York, NY.  Social Media Camp is a Social Media Club event that is participant-driven with the intent of helping Small Businesses and Job Seekers to learn how Social Media can help them with their current (or starting up) business, or with their job search.

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SMC SFSV May Event: The Corporate Social Media EcoSystem

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SPSS sponsors the Social Media Club Workshop in Paris

SMC France is proud to announce its partnership with SPSS, leading worldwide provider of predictive analytics software and solutions. SPSS and its team will be actively supporting the SMC France during the first SMC Workshop, which will be held on May 15th, in Paris. As seasoned marketing professionals, SPSS chose no to be a “sleeping sponsor” and decided to be directly involved in the workshop: its managers will attend the whole day and help attendees to design their social media projects!

By associating its name, image, expertise and energy to SMC France, SPSS actively contributes to the development of SMC, and positions itself as a thought-leader in the marketing industry.

Many thanks to SPSS for its support and its trust!

For any infos on the SMC Workshop, please visit our page or contact us.

About SPSS Inc.
SPSS Inc. (Nasdaq: SPSS) is a leading global provider of Predictive Analytics software and solutions. The company’s Predictive Analytics technology improves business processes by giving organizations forward visibility for decisions made every day. By incorporating Predictive Analytics into their daily operations, organizations become Predictive Enterprises – able to direct and automate decisions to meet business goals and achieve a measurable competitive advantage. More than 250,000 public sector, academic and commercial customers rely on SPSS technology to help increase revenue, reduce costs and detect and prevent fraud. Founded in 1968, SPSS is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. For more information, please visit www.spss.com.

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Le premier Social Media Workshop in Paris, France

The Social Media Club French Chapter is  proud to unveil some details of the first Social Media Club Workshop, which will be held on May 15th, in Paris, France.

After reviewing two years of monthly conferences and sessions and having conducted many training and consulting missions, we came up with a detailed list of issues companies need to address to design an efficient social media strategy. Through an original format, the finest social media experts will train professionals and enable them to forge their own approach. This won’t be a series of lectures nor discussion sessions, this will be about designing your own social media project for your company and implementing it right away!

Roll up your sleeves and get ready to work along with Chris Heuer and experts from Rue89, AF83 and the Metrics Factory.

All right, but how will it be different from other conferences and seminars?

Instead of just listening to lecturers and trying to apply others’ best practices to your case, you’ll be asked to build up your own project throughout the day.  You’ll be provided with the basic analytical tools at the beginning of the training and the different session, held in very small and interactive groups, will be as many inputs for your reflections. Organizers and workshop leaders will stay available at any time to support you and challenge your project. At the end of the day, you and your team will present your project to the SMC experts and get their feedback immediately.

Workshop leaders and sessions will include:

• Chris Heuer, “Introduction: how to design a social media strategy” + “Social Media Tools for beginners”
• Rue89, “Communty Management: Make your users work for you!”
• AF83 , “How to recruit your community?”
• The Metrics Factory, “How to turn your social media metrics into gold?”

Participation is limited, so if you are in Paris, don’t hesitate to apply now (and save some money, with the “early bird” pricing). We are also currently still seeking sponsors for the workshop, contact us for more details.

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First Social Media Strategy Workshop in Birmingham Alabama

We are very excited to unveil some details of our upcoming Social Media Workshop which will be held on Tuesday April 27 in Birmingham Alabama. After taking the pulse of the market, reviewing the result of the Social Media Buyers Guide and discussing anecdotal evidence, we came to realize pretty quickly that almost everyone is in need of a clear strategy for integrating social media into their marketing and communications mix so companies can start to engage. It was also clear, that the biggest challenge social media champions face is selling it internally and educating coworkers, so our plan for this latest series of workshops pretty much wrote itself.

For only $295, you will benefit from the experience and creative insights from some of the leading practitioners in social media for business. Join Mack Collier, Scott Schablow, Ike Pigott and Chris Heuer for a full day workshop where you get to leave with the framework for your social media strategy and insights on how to sell the plan to management so you can begin to make it real.

So roll up your sleeves, this isn’t a bunch of pseudo-celebrities trying to show you how great they are while talking about how many followers they have on Twitter, this is about you making social media an integrated part of your business strategy. We are doing a WORKSHOP so that you can put social media to work for you. In fact, when you register, you can tell us what you are specifically trying to accomplish and we will work to tailor the final agenda and related discussions to your specific needs.

So what will the Social Media Strategy Workshop look like?

We will start the day discussing the impact Social Media has on your business and why so many people are turning to social media for an up turn in their business during the economic downturn. How does social media change things? What exactly is it? What is possible and what is not? How can it help your business? Why is everyone talking about it? What are the most important principles you need to understand? What’s the different between a status update, a Tweet, a poke, a nudge and all those other silly sounding terms?

After a brief introductory presentation addressing these key questions, each of our workshop leaders will host smaller conversations in breakout groups so we can more directly support your specific needs.  Each workshop leader will then host a conversation that includes some presentation materials as well as demonstrations of important services, software and web sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, YouTube and more.  We will also highlight important areas of focus which may be a part of your final strategy inlcuding:

• Review of current marketing plan (do you have your’s? bring it.)
• Building and maintaining relationships
• Looking, Listening and Responding
• Producing Media
• Engaging with the Market
• Managing Community
• Social Media Campaigns
• Metrics and ROI
• Becoming a Social Organization
• Social Media Campaigns
• Measuring Influence and Maximizing It

After lunch we will review case studies from leading companies such as Dell, H&R Block, GM and Zappos as well as from smaller everyday folks applying the same insights in distinct ways. While the cases are all unique to the specific situation at hand, they do offer incredible insight into the perspective required to be successful. Participants are encouraged to share their own case studies as part of this discussion too so that we may learn from each other throughout the day.

The remainder of the afternoon will focus on developing a social media strategy for you to take back to your business. In addition to discussing in-depth details behind key strategic decisions you need to make, we will also discuss how you can get support for these activities within your organization. So you will leave at the end of the day with a strategic plan and a plan for how to begin putting it to work within your organization.

Participation is limited, so if you live in or near Birmingham, we hope you will consider spending the day with us figuring out how to apply social media to your business.  It’s a transformational step for you and your career as well as your business. So, please register today and join us in Birmingham on Monday April 27.

We are also currently still seeking sponsors for the workshop. If you are interested in sponsoring the event, $5,000 will make you the title sponsor for the workshop.  If you are interested in supporting your local community and you are looking at buying 2 tickets, you might be interested in becoming a participating sponsor for $1,500 which includes 2 tickets for you and your company in addition to 2 tickets for a non-profit organization and traditional workshop sponsorship coverage.  Contact us for more details.

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San Antonio SMC Participates in Mayoral Race

San Antonio is proud to be the hotbed for so much activity. From the popular buzz at SXSW for the amazing start-ups locally to the involvement of local media experts in one of the hottest mayoral races to date. Coming off the heels of the recent presidential race, local candidates have not wasted time in incorporating social technologies as just one of many tools to reach out to prospective and current supporters. With so much buzz on networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and other chat forums, it is no surprise that San Antonio has been thrust into the spotlight of yet another ground breaking event, the SA4Mayor initiative.

Begun as a passion and labor for love, the project has catapulted into mainstream media by highlighting the mayoral leaders for this highly contested position. While each of the candidates has held their own townhall meetings, SA4Mayor plans on bringing the candidates into one room for what is sure to be an amazing night of discussion, debating, and progress. This ground breaking event will cover this race both live and online to ensure that all supporters have alternatives in experiencing this event.

“Our goal is to open the door to everyone. We want to go beyond traditional candidates forums, and complement the richest of local media,” says Patricio Espinoza, Emmy award winning journalist and Founder-Managing Editor of SA4Mayor.com. “We have built an online 24/7 stage, they - the people - are coming, and now it is up to the candidates to meet the challenge.”

Social Media Club San Antonio has been asked to participate in this event, and take lead in bringing together top caliber bloggers, tweeters, and other online community members who look to share their voice, opinions, and concerns with the direction of this amazingly progressive city. There is no doubt, that when the dust settles it will be the voice of the people that will come out on top, so the candidates must be at the top of their game.

Join us for this historic townhall event to be webCast LIVE Tuesday, April 14, 2009, 6:30-7:30pm CST. To reach the broadest audience possible, SA4Mayor.com has teamed up with the Current, San Antonio’s award-winning alternative news-weekly.

Kudos to everyone involved in proving that San Antonio, TX is more than just the Alamo!

SA4Mayor Press Release

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How do you know if your social media vendor gets it?

As Social Media Club gets set to present the result of its Social Media Buyer’s Guide Survey at Web 2.0 on Friday, April 3, the SMC editorial board convened to mull one of the questions that wasn’t quite asked: How do you know that people know what they’re talking about with social media? In the spirit of our motto: If you get it, please share it, we’d love your thoughts and examples:

Social Media Club Question of the Week:

Does your vendor understand social media? And how do you know ?

Please tag your response #SMCQ3

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Social Media Club Workshop Series

On April 25th we are kicking off the first in a series of Social Media Workshops to help you understand why Social Media is such a hot topic, and what your organization should be doing about it.

Social Media Club’s Founder and Chairman, Chris Heuer, will be traveling to five* cities in this first leg and is pulling together a team of industry leaders and Social Media practitioners in each locale to develop sessions for the workshop(s). Each city will have a slightly different focus and flavor, depending on the practitioners chosen and on the specific needs of the local community. You learn from lectures, conversations and interactions and walk out of the workshop with a full understanding of what Social Media can do for your business, and an actionable plan that you can then implement into your marketing program.

The six cities in this first leg are:

• Birmingham, AL (USA): April 27, 2009
• Miami, FL (USA): May 2, 2009
• Hamburg (Germany): May 8, 2009
• London (United Kingdom): May 12, 2009
• Paris (France): May 15, 2009

Early bird discounts apply to all events, so book early and save a little cash.

After these events, we are heading to the Northeast USA and the Midwest USA in June, and will be in the land Down Under in November - so stay tuned, as there will be more dates added soon…

We are also looking for sponsors for individual workshops, as well as the entire workshop series (17 workshops being held in the US, Europe and the Asia Pacific Rim detween April and November 2009). Please contact us for details on the various levels of sponsorship available.

UPDATE: * The Raleigh workshop has been moved to June due to scheduling conflicts.

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Social Media Buyers Guide Ver 1.0 Sneak Peak

The results are coming in from the Social Media Buyers Guide Survey and there are definitely some valuable nuggets of gold we are finding.  We are keeping the survey open to get your responses, so if you haven’t contributed yet, the survey is still waiting for you to weigh in and share your own insights.

As a little sample of some of the stuff we are preparing to go into the presentation next week at Web 2.0 Expo, we wanted to share a bit of the more helpful information we are collecting.  For starters, we thought that since this is a buyer’s guide, we would share some of the key questions people reccomend asking of any service provider, media company or techynology vendor.

We asked respondents to recommend the top three questions buyers should ask any social media technology or services providers before closing the deal and here is what they shared with us:

• What does the technology accomplish that can’t be accomplished without it?
• How secure will our info be?
• How will you help me achieve my business objectives?
• How will you measure the results you have promised?
• Can you explain why you are on each of these platforms and what is your strategy for engaging with others on each platform?
• Can I see your case studies? Have you performed these services for more than yourself and one other client?
• Can you provide references?
• Is it robust?
• Will it deliver my requirements?
• Do we own the data?
• How accurate is the reporting?
• Will it let me have two way conversations?
• Our goal for this project is X. How does your service/technology help us achieve that goal?
• How sophisticated is your analytics package and what makes it unique?
• What do you like about our current infrastructure?
• What do we need to improve in order to be better positioned?
• What technology is relevant to our situation and what do we need to do in order to leverage it?
• How are you going to manage my brand’s good name?
• How popular is the site?
• How easy is it for people to respond to posts?
• How easy is it to manage?
• When would you NOT recommend this?
• What is your SLA?
• How stable is your operation?
• What needs does your tool/service specifically meet?
• What training will my users require to be able to use this effectively?
• Do you have business consulting experience?
• Have you established alliances with market leaders in the social media arena?
• How long have you, as a company, been involved in social media?
• What have been your biggest hurdles/what have you learned from them?
• What is your niche/specialty?
• What do you know about MY audience in terms of tech savvy, resources and current trends?
• What can they do to bring value to your customers?
• What will we do if this doesn’t work?
• How do you use social media in your everyday personal or professional life?
• How are you different than the free alternatives to your service, and why should I pay for your service?
• Is your product or service’s use case or value proposition clear enough that I can explain it to others in my organization and they will immediately see the same value that I do?

If you would like to contribute to help other people benefit from your experience, please fill out the survey!

Also stay tuned for updates on the Buyers Guide presentation at Web 2.0 on Friday, April 3!

Finally, big thanks to William Gaultier and E-Storm for helping make this happen.  They have been excellent partners and friends throughout this process.

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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.

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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

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