Social Media Workshops
May 2, 2007
Today, Social Media Club will announce “Starting the Conversation,” our first series of day-long business workshops, at SocialMediaWorkshop.com. The first will be June 11 at SAP headquarters in Palo Alto. Then we move to New York City on June 19th; Boston, June 21 and Austin June 26.
Consultant-writer Shel Israel, co-author of Naked Conversations, How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers, has agreed to be host-moderator for the entire series. Shel has been a frequent and well-received keynote speaker on social media issues to business audiences in Europe and North America.
In each city, guest instructors prominent in social media will join us. They will be announced as we get closer to each event. These workshops are designed for mid and upper level professionals who are interested in not just getting the big picture of how social media is fundamentally changing business, it is for people who want to understand real and actionable tactics for bringing social media media programs into their work environment, without fear and based on programs that will show co-workers the value of social media. (More information on the agenda page.)
Tickets are on sale now, with an early-bird discount for those who purchase seats soon. Also available is a package where attendees can purchase membership to Social Media Club and obtain the member discount of 10% off the advertised price. (Existing Social Media Club Professional, Small Business and Corporate members can also benefit from discount code SMCMEMBER). We hope to see you there.
Technorati Tags: socialmediaworkshop, socialmediaclub, shelisrael, blogging, education
Thank You, Boston and good night!
January 13, 2007
Thanks very much to the folks at Social Media Club in Boston for allowing me to present the other night. Special thanks to IDG Network World for hosting the event, and to Todd Van Hoosier and the folks from Topaz Partners for organizing the event .
As part of the meeting Computerworld Senior Online Projects Editor Ian Lamont showed us Sharkbait, which is a user-generated content site (or a forum, depends on how you view it) where readers of ComputerWorld can submit items for discussion about “tech tidbits”, difficult situations, crazy bosses, and those zany users (you know, the ones who use the CDRom drive as a coffe cup holder). There are some interesting anecdotes there already, and the site just went live a few weeks ago.
Ian also noted, based on a question by John Kass, that Computerworld writers who blog are also responding to comments on non-IDG, non-Computerworld blogs, and are finding info from user blogs and highlighting them on their own site. In otherwords, they’ve joined the discussion. Good to know.
Several folks have blogged about the event. John Kass wondered first if Boston Companies have the zing for Social Media. He follows up his own piece with more data here.
David M. Scott reviews the discussion of the Social Media Release at his blog.
Boston organizer Todd Van Hoosier recorded the full audio of the meeting in these two blog posts - part1 & part2.
As promised, here is a link to a PDF of my slides from the other night.
Someone asked me if I would post my raw notes of Todd Defern’s talk on the Social Media Press Release. I’ve included them below. They are in draft form - done for my use, and errors are my own. The good thing is, if you want to really hear this, you can listen to the meeting in the posts above from Todd Van Hoosier.
More info about the SM Release here.
Sm Release
Todd Defern, Shift Communications.
Everyone hates press releases. But 3k go out a day.
Of the thousands of articles a day published in the media, <3% come from press releases.
Die Press release blog post by Tom Foremski at Silicon Valley Watcher.
Basic Principles for the Press release SMR
- to democratize access to them. Most people who can get full content are credentialed journalists with access to Marketwire or PR Newswire.
- But you may want bloggers, etc. to read your release, or hobbyists, or etc.
o Remove the barriers to access
- Ensure accuracy
o Pfizer drug launch
- Embrace Context
o Anyone writing about you will search, digg, del.icio.us,
• If you were a company you could put a delicious site out there and put your own opinion about this stuff
o Tagging – word of mouth client, they bookmarked every one of the articles about w of m, and tagged them, and collected them.
• PR people giving CONTEXT around the things they’re writing
- Building community
o If you release with tags for technorati search. They won’t just see news about your stuff, they’ll see the conversation AROUND THAT TAG
• YOU’RE putting yourself out there and embracing community
- Be find-able
o Social media optimization
These releases end up as sort of mini-website, made accessible, given content that can be shared,
Novell did an SM release on a day with 10 releases – that release was the least newsworthy but got the most hits
Belkin, Symphony, Novell,
PR-squared.com
4 professors in schools are teaching SM Release
Other folks have put up similar but not same things, but almost exactly the same.
What’s the resistance to this? IR, Legal?
Todd: Most frequent question – should I put out both traditional release and an SM release? 2x cost
David scott – if you just want to reach media – do an old style one. If you want to reach buyers, be in search engines, etc – do an SM release.
Eventually will be called SM News Release or just ‘a news release.’
These new releases won’t go to many of the media company feeds, etc – in the current system.
Will this bypass trad. Media and bloggers and lose credibility –
Where will these releases live?
Client site, PR firm, wire services
Reaction –
Todd: overall positive from journalists, mixed from pr folks, bloggers and influencers – 250 posts about this, only 13 negative
Music and arts folks love this – they can put out clips of what they do as part of it
Where is Social Media Club?
January 11, 2007
Howard has been working on a Powerpoint pitch to tell people the story of the club, explaining why we think you should join us in making more of a formal community for Social Media practitioners and seeking financial support for our efforts in the form of paid memberships. He will post the complete ‘deck’ online after he has a chance to talk with our good friends up in Boston tonight at the SMC gathering there, but this slide really struck me.
In addition to the 13 cities that already have had events and are starting to convene regularly, we are in talks with people in Australia, Germany, Amsterdam, Michigan, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, Toronto, Montreal and numerous other cities around the states and around the world. Of course, it feels a bit like we are racing in the 24 hours of Daytona and building the car while we drive it, but that will change soon as more paid memberships translate into some full time staff, more basic infrastructure and the online tools we really need to create the world’s leading knowledge market for Social Media. (there is that phrase again, knowledge market - hmmmm, what does that mean)
So if you want to start a chapter in your local community, please do contact us and let us know you exist, share your thoughts on what you would like from us and we can work together towards making it happen for everyone’s benefit. You can leave a comment here or reach us through the contact page on this site.
To all of our friend’s out there, and especially the members who have given us their financial support, thank you for bearing with us through this stage of our growth. We are very blessed and thankful to be entrusted to this role in the community and are working hard to make SMC the sort of community organization in which you will be proud to claim membership. Every day I wake up excited about the potential we have to do great things together and inspired by the kind words of encouragement we continue to read about in blogs and in our inboxes!
Sphere: Related ContentSmall sacrifices, big rewards
October 29, 2006
A couple of days ago I received an email from a lad in Boston asking about the gathering next Thursday, and whether or not there was room ‘to squeeze him in‘.
Thinking back to past events, I know there is always a handful of folks who sign up, but end up not attending. Nothing you can do about it really, it is simply the nature of a free event. So I told him the law of averages is on his side, and to plan on joining us. At which time he said ‘thank you’ as he was giving up Death Cab for Cutie tickets to come, so he was happy there was room. Now that is big. That shows a level of commitment to deeper learning. Wow. I won’t name names, I will simply say ‘thank you’ right back to him for wanting to share his night with us, in lieu of the band. Oh, but if those tickets are still available…no,no. Just kidding. I would much rather be in a hotel room discussing New Media than to be hanging out with Ben and the boys. Really.
So, I now find us with 94 people registered. How we got another 11 after closing down registrations I don’t know. Oh wait - I do know…I have a hard time saying no. But we really need to cap it. I am sorry, but if we don’t, I am going to be on the fire marshall’s naughty list.
I promise your Boston organizers will host another event quickly. We just need a venue (speaking of, can someone out there help with that?). If so, shoot an email to kristie@brainjams.org. And remember there is always Friday, November 3rd as Chris and several others in town hit a pub or two in support of ‘Blogs and Beers‘. So if you can’t make it Thursday night, come play with us on Friday.
Sphere: Related Content
