SMC Seeking Executive Director and Summer Interns

Social Media Club (SMC) is now in its third year and continues to see consistent growth with an average of 10 new chapters launching every quarter. It has been loosely run by Chris and myself, with a handful of volunteers and an interim Board of Directors consisting of Serena Ehrlich, Howard Greenstein and Todd Defren.

In 2009, we began working to bring a little more structure to the organization - filing for our 501c3 (now turning into a c6), hiring a couple of assistants and building a new member site that will ensure our community can connect easier with one another and find the information you need faster.

Now the time has come to really kick the organizations into high gear. To do so, we need someone focused on steering the wheel; securing grants, selling sponsorships, building a membership drive, creating educational programs. All the things we need to ensure SMC’s success.

We need an Executive Director.

It will be a part time position to start, and the ED will need to bring funding sources in to help cover the salary costs (see more below in the Special Requirement section). We believe this is a unique opportunity to take a good global NGO and turn it into a great global NGO. The Executive Director is responsible for the successful leadership and management of the organization according to the strategic direction set by the Board of Directors.

One candidate has been presented for the role. The SMC board has motioned to open the application process up - for two weeks only. As an open organization we wish to have an open process for this and not a closed, ‘no-bid’ contract to ensure we provide an opportunity for all qualified candidates to apply for the position.

Submit your application online. The Board of Directors will review all submissions and an announcement will be made in early June.

Special Requirement:

The Executive Director candidate shall sell a predetermined amount of sponsorship dollars to help fund the position s/he will fill. Once the sponsorship dollars are secured, the Executive Director will start providing Executive Director services* (the scope of which would be mutually agreed upon) on a half-time basis, for a monthly fee on a month-to-month basis. The fee for such services is $5000/month for the first six months,
after which the parties will conduct an informal evaluation.

Primary Duties and Responsibilities (top 5 responsibilities…we have a few more things we need done, but we didn’t want to scare you off. Ha.):

• Oversee the planning, implementation and evaluation of the organization’s programs and services
• Monitor the day-to-day delivery of the programs and services of the organization to maintain or improve quality
• Develop sponsorship sales materials for SMC organizational and event sponsorships. The materials will be subject to SMC Board approval.
• Develop a sponsor prospect list and start making contact with the list after SMC Board approval. The Executive Director will receive sales commission of 5% for sponsorships closed from existing SMC prospects already contacted, and 10% for sales closed by Executive Director where s/he initiates the primary contact.
• Develop and promote paid membership program

Experience Preferred

• 1-2 or more years of progressive management experience in a voluntary sector organization

Again, if you are interested in the ED role, please submit your application online. The Board of Directors will review all submissions and an announcement will be made in early June.

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We are also looking for a Summer intern (or two) to help with research, events, audio/visual editing and community outreach. This is a great position for a student looking to get into Marketing/PR and wishing to learn about Social Media.

This position can be P/T or F/T and our preference is to have at least one person in the San Francisco Bay Area based on some of the project needs. However, if you are located outside the area, please submit your application as there is more than enough projects to dig into.

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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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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.

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Building out the Social Media FAQ

In talking with Chris Brogan recently (during his WordCamp Las Vegas presentation actually) I pointed out the fact that our RSS Streams don’t do much to help build our collective memory. In some ways, a tweet is like a shooting star, if you happen to be looking at the right time in the right place, you can see something brilliant on occasion. They serve as sparks for our imagination, but as with our real world conversations, it’s presence is often more ephenneral then permanent. Chris rightfully pointed out this is why he focuses so much effort on his blog, that there is deeper conversation and permanence in blogging (which is one reason why I am going to try to do more of it in 2009 like this).

In our back and forth, we discussed the fact that the online conversation that occurred in ‘the early days of social computing’ on mailing lists and forums often had significant (and generally misplaced) energy directed at people who joined the community and did not first ‘read the FAQ’ to discover the historically important conversations they had before you showed up. It included some cultural nuances, pointers to reference data as well as answers to questions from people new to the field or the industry or the community of interest or whatever the central topic was for the group.

So in thinking about our mission to further media literacy, our efforts to promote the Social Media profession and the widespread use of Social Media by different people from around the world, we are going to start a new project to build out the Social Media FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions). When launched during SxSW (good goal eh?) we hope that people will be able to send anyone interested in Social Media here as their starting point into the world of Social Media. If you have some ideas about what this site should look like or what it should do, please share them in the comments or write them up on your blog and send us a trackback.

In the meantime, please help us get started by submitting one or more of your frequently asked questions below. If you have an answer for the question, even better, but the value of powerful questions is what we are seeking here. Ultimately, the biggest questions will be explored as part of our new International Social Media Club program we are simply calling Question of the Week right now. So let’s get started and move to get all the information, knowledge and insights organized! Not only will it help people learn, it will enable practitioners and professionals to invest more time innovating and less time explaining the basics.

If you get it, share it.

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Recognizing the Service Contributions of Unconferences

This past weekend when contemplating today as a national day of service, it occurred to me how much value many of you have been contributing to our society by sharing your knowledge and insights.  In particular, it struck me that the volunteers, speakers and organizers of unconferences have received great local recognition for their work, but not enough as they truly deserve.

So I wanted to take a moment to thank all the great people who have tirelessly supported the unconference cause, bringing insights, knowledge, comraderie, problem solving and so much more to the world around us.  Unforutnately, when looking through the BarCamp Wiki, as well as some of the site’s from events we have previously put on, I realized that the record keeping around these events is so inconsistent, that this was impossible to do as an undertaking of any well meaning (albeit poorly funded) organization on its own.

Impossible that is, until I realized we could tap into the DIY spirit that made these events possible and ask for your help in compiling a list of everyone who has contributed to making an unconference possible.  If you have ever been a part of an unconference in any of the leadership roles, please take a few minutes to complete this form so we can recognize your contributions properly.

Though it is going to take several minutes to complete, and probably some research on URL’s, I think it will be worth your while to promote your service to the community.  As the nation turns its focus on being of service to the community and each other, its important to recognize those of you who have been participating in bettering society in this important manner.  Please also take a minute to retweet this URL, blog about it, tell your friends/colleagues who contributed previously and thank an unconference organizer today.

If you want to retweet or share the URL to just the form, you can use http://bit.ly/unconferenceform

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Social Media Club Salt Lake City Kickoff

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SxSW Party Planning Starts Now: Join us for Pool 2.0

We had so much fun at SxSWi, we were wondering if we could make it any better. While we don’t have the cure for the flu bug that went around last year, we do think we have a pretty good party idea for the next one….

Pool 2.0 is the ultimate tournament for Web 2.0, Social Media and Interactive startups. Originally inspired by the boys from Meetro (now LeFora) and their Bowling 2.0 league and our deep love of billiards and beer, we thought it was time for a gentlemanly competition to see who can really lay some heat on the table. We hope you will join us for a great night of partying and some serious playing.

Introducing: Pool 2.0

Sunday March 15th, 8pm-midnight
Buffalo Billiards, 6th Avenue, Austin, TX
Brought to you by Social Media Club and ????

We have the entire 2nd floor to ourselves (it’s pretty big).  We are bringing in some live music, providing free beer all night (looking for a beer sponsor too, and it has to be good beer) and there will even be some video game tournaments on the side. This is going to be the party of the week. We are even bringing in a special guest emcee and will be live streaming the finals to the world.

Here is the run down.  Web 2.0 or Social Media companies (hoping TechCrunch and RWW compete, but just seeing Facebook against MySpace may be enough fun) can apply for one of the 16 spots by filling out this application form.  The entry fee is $500 per company, with the competing companies essentially being sponsors of the event (though we still need a title sponsor to offset the cost of booze etc…).  It’s a double elimination bracket tournament with two person teams, but that may change if needed.

Companies will be playing for their favorite charity with $2,000 going to the winner’s favorite charity and $1,000 going to the runner up’s charity.

If you are interested in more details on how your company can participate, please complete this application and we will get back to you.

As with all SxSWi parties, space is limited.  Tickets will be given out starting in Janaury, so do keep a close eye on the Social Media Club site and our Twitter account.  If you are interested in other sponsorship opportunities, contact us through our web site.

We are really looking forward to seeing everyone back in Austin and finding out who the real sharks of the industry are. More details coming soon….

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Spammers be gone.

The Social Media Club (SMC) wiki has been getting hit pretty heavily lately by a handful of spammers (one in particular who I would like to wring his little toes - you hear me ‘marketing [at] travel-airfare-hotel [dot] com’), so we made the decision to ‘lock the wiki down’ as honestly, there is just too much good stuff to do to waste our time on cleaning up the bad stuff.

What this means is, now, to edit the wiki - you will need a PBWiki account (it’s free to sign up) and be logged in before you can make any changes.  NJust a small step that should help minimize the random acts of stupid brought by the spammers. They will still be able to sign up and get an account, but as soon as they throw in their silly links - we can have their account shut down which will make more work for them if they want to try again.

So we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, but it was a step that had to be done.

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The Social Media Club Member Badge++

I am very excited to publicly announce this great new member benefit, which we produced with Chris Carfi and his excellent team from Cerado.  Chris calls it a “Ventana” but I think of it as a “nano-site”, being about the size of an iPod Nano, but also being smaller then what you would call a “mico-site”.  Some other folks think of it as a “site in a widget”.  However you think of it, we think you will call it cool.

As a benefit for Professional Members and business members, we are able to use this new member badge to help promote you.  In particular, we go through all of the blog posts written by members each weekday to select the most relevant posts on social media related topics, which then get featured inside the badge.

We also have included a members directory of professional members and above with links to each members blog.  In essence, it is a blog roll of our members, helping drive traffic to those who are working to support our common missions. If you have been holding off on joining as a Professional member, now is a great time to join us and help Social Media Club become the foremost organization of Social Media professionals and those seeking to learn.

Perhaps of greatest interest is the addition of our Social Media Club Events Calendar in which members can feature any social media related event you want to promote by simply filling out the form offered on the bottom of the events calendar page.

Finally, we are also featuring books written by our members along with a few other very important social media books that we believe every social media professional should read.

This is just the first of many more member’s benefits to come, and we think it is a terrific one that is right in the spirit of what we have always tried to do, work together to promote the good works of each other.

So if you want to stay up on all the latest and greatest from Social Media Club and our members, simply check out their sites.  Or if you prefer, you can read the best blog posts from our member’s each day on your iPhone by visiting http://iphone.socialmediaclub.org/

Members, please note, if your name links to an incorrect blog, please send us an updated address to socialmediaclub [at] gmail.com so we can correct - simply reply to the email I sent you last week with the correct info, or leave it here in the comments - this is why I asked for your current address a short while ago.

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Social Media Club: Chapter Launches

Are you interested in launching Social Media Club in your local city?  Need a little help growing your existing chapter? On the hunt for interesting topics?

Join us on our 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 - between 8am PST and 5:30pm PST. An updated schedule is available online in the Social Media Club events calendar. We know these times are not ideal for the International crowd, so feel free to email kristie [at] socialmediaclub.org to schedule an alternate time as needed.

The conference call info is as follows:

Conference Dial-in Number: (269) 320-8400
Access Code: 509633#

We will be recording each call, so if you are not able to join us live - feel free to take a listen when time allows:

Playback Number: (269) 320-8499
Access Code: 509633#

We recently launched an official chapter launch guide, and encourage everyone to review these BEFORE you join the call so we all have a baseline to work from:

• See if your city is already meeting
• SMC Chapter Guidelines
• SMC Founder, Chris Heuer, also interviewed SMC Louisville Chapter Leader, Jason Falls, recently on Organizing a Local Social Media Club. This is a 30-minute podcast, please take a listen.

We have seen a bit of of pick up in requests to launch Social Media Club chapters as of late, and we will start posting a monthly update on what cities are ‘in the works’ to keep everyone posted. To get us current, here is where we are:

OCTOBER:

• Chapter Launches: Chicago, IL (USA) - Indianapolis, IN (USA) - Las Vegas, NV (USA)
• Planning Meetings (preparing for launch): Charlotte, NC (USA) - Honolulu/Waikiki, HI (USA) - London (UK)

NOVEMBER:

• Chapter Launches: Atlanta, GA (USA) - San Diego, CA (USA)
• Planning Meetings (preparing for launch): Jacksonville, FL (USA)

DECEMBER:

• Chapter Launches: London (UK)
• Planning Meetings (preparing for launch): Detroit/Ann Arbor, MI (USA) - New Orleans, LA (USA) - Orlando, FL (USA) - Portland, OR (USA) - Tampa, FL (USA) - Toronto, ON (Canada) - Tucson, AZ (USA)

JANUARY:

• Chapter Launches: Salt Lake City, UT (USA)
• Planning Meetings (preparing for launch): TBD

To find out information on your city launch and/or planning meetings, please visit the SMC Wiki and click on the city nearest you.

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NO Local Chapter call this week

Based on feedback we received around the Chapter Launch Guidelines documents (at the bottom of the Local Team wiki page), we would like to make some changes to it before we jump on another call.

This means there will NOT be a call tomorrow (Wednesday, November 5th).

We will resume our weekly call schedule NEXT week, starting on Wednesday, November 12th at 8:00am PST.

We will post the new document to this site once it is ready along with the conference call information and appreciate your understanding and your patience.

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Feature your video or presentation on SocialMediaClub.org

Would you like to have your presentation featured on the home page of Social Media Club? We are looking for the best educational materials on all things related to Social Media (web 2.0, community, new marketing, pr 2.0 and other related materials). Please let us know it exists by adding a link to it in the comments below along with a short description.

When reviewing our media literacy program with Michael Brito the other day, we hit upon another potentially big idea for this important spot on the home page, a weekly course focused on a different strategy or tactic.  By this I mean that one week we could feature a new presentation/video each day on the same topic , such as Blogger Relations.  In this case, we would look for someone (hello members!) to put together an online ‘course’ on these topics that has five lessons in it.

What do you think? How might we do something like this best? Are there any pieces of free or SaaS software out there we could use in conjunction with this program? Please let us know!

PS - we are also starting to develop our webinar program and need help in selecting a vendor.  We will be posting separately on this program, but since it is related, thought I should mention that here as well.

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SMC Members: We need your current blog URL

If you are a paid member of Social Media Club (including student/non profit members), please go ahead and post your current blog below in the comments. We are doing something very cool to help promote each of you, but it seems that we don’t have blog addresses for everyone. If you don’t get it to us now, you can always update it later, but I think you will be happier if you do it now…

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Social Media Club: A short history, a long and bright future

When Chris and I started Social Media Club (SMC) two+ years ago, we understood growth was going to be more organically based as there were only two of us working on the organization on a part time basis, and we needed to set up each city with a baseline infrastructure to ensure we met our goals of sharing best practices, establishing ethics and standards, and promoting media literacy around the emerging area of Social Media.

We could have followed BarCamp by posting a wiki page and leaving it open to anyone to host an event, whenever - but we wanted to make sure these events happened more regularly (monthly), they were both informational and socially based, and at the end of the day - the learnings would then be shared back into our community for the betterment of all. We realized early on, we needed to set some guidelines and then oversee the chapters to ensure we were meeting our goals. We had to manage it.

Fast forward to 2008: we are now a handful of people managing the global organization on a part time basis, and actively working towards hiring full time staff as we file our 501c6 and push SMC further into the global space. Thanks to the efforts of our local leaders, we have grown to over 25 active chapters with 10’s of 1000’s of people gathering around the world. Woot!

Now, with all the woot! comes the reality we have fallen short on some of our goals - primarily, not connecting the chapters as well as I would have liked, and we need to ensure the knowledge shared at SMC chapter events is then pushed back into the system so all can utilize. A large part of this is the infrastructure behind the scenes. Wikis are tough for some, Ning and Facebook are not the best storage sources.

In order for us to continue to grow and show value to the community - we need to finish building out the new portal that will make launching new chapters easier, finding events in your local community faster, allow communications with other members, and harness the knowledge produced at each event.  The last piece (knowledge sharing) is critical to me - when chapters are talking about a certain topic, we need to ensure there are digital scribes in the room who are then responsible for bringing that info back into the portal so other chapters can then use it for their chapters or members can read up on what is hot in that community. This requires someone managing the global calendar and then following up with each city the day after to make sure this is being done - this is a primary role for me to fill, and I hope to have announcements on this shortly.

We are also working on our Four Missions Project and are gathering volunteers to drive them forward: Media Literacy, Sharing Lessons Learned, Encourage Adoption of Industry Standards, Promote Ethical Behavior. If you are interested in helping on one or more, please add your name to the wiki and the project leader will be in touch with you.

SMC has been extremely fortunate over the last two years to have people believe in the organization and support it via paid memberships to allow us to continue to grow. To all of you who have contributed so far, thank you, thank you, thank you.  It means the world to us.

Stay tuned for more to come. As Timbuk3 likes to sing - SMC’s future’s so bright, we gotta wear shades…

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Orange sponsors the Social Media Club France

Great news just arrived from Europe today: Orange is now officially the first annual sponsor of the Social Media Club France.
By supporting the French SMC chapter throughout the 2008-2009 season, and with several SMC active members coming from its ranks, Orange contributes significantly to the definition and the diffusion of best practices in the social media industry. Being now backed by a major organization, the Social Media Club will be able to accelerate its development in France and Europe: events will be organized on a more regular basis, intern or part-time worker will be hired, new projects will be launched,…

Again, many thanks to Orange for its trust and its support.

For any info on the Social Media Club France and its future / past events, please visit our wiki section or contact Pierre-Yves Platini (pyplatini at gmail dot com).

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