How Des, Michael and Aaron Spent Labor Day Weekend: Brainstorming SMC Membership

September 9, 2008

A few weeks ago prior to Labor Day Weekend; Des Walsh , Aaron Strout and I (Michael Brito) were asked to brainstorm ideas about SMC membership and answer the following questions:

  1. How do we increase new membership of Social Media Club
  2. How do we increase engagement and generate excitement for existing members?
  3. How do we localize SMC chapters on areas with few members and a lot of miles in between?

So, went off to our little corners of the globe, literally, and this is what we came up with; while of course, enjoying our three-day weekend.

Increasing Membership:

Drive awareness of the organization:

  • Continue to drive awareness of SMC at traditional marketing/consulting events through sponsorships (my guess is that Barter will work)
  • Advertising on Facebook as well as on prominent board member blogs (barter where possible)
  • Consider submitting speakers at traditional marketing/consulting/technology events) under the “Social Media Club” name
  • Make sure that all board members and active SMC members include a badge on their blogs touting the fact that they belong to the SMC (e.g. “Ask me about the SMC – I’m a member”)

Clearly articulate value proposition

  • Consider adding free consultation sessions as part of membership (maybe monthly “member only” Skype or Conference calls with select board members) – if we each took a turn at this, we could get away with doing this 1-2/year/board member)
  • Create a clear list of discounts to things like:
  • If we thought about bolting SMC events onto things like SXSW, Web 2.0, Defrag, etc. (we may already do this), we could proactively invite potential members/companies

Co-marketing

  • Continue partnering with a number of organizations like BlogHer; and consider partnering with more organizations (especially traditional ones)
  • Agree to co-market events of more traditional groups to our base

Promoting Membership Engagement & Excitement

Engagement

  • Create a rotating welcoming committee
  • The goal would be to welcome (through email/phone/twitter) new members to SMC by reaching out to them and connecting
    • Twitter and blog “shot outs” for new members
    • Serves two purposes: engages existing members/welcomes new members
    • Connects local chapters w/new members
  • Facilitate monthly (or bi-weekly) conference calls / webinars (similar to Twebinars); facilitated by random SMC members
  • Provide coordinated speaking opportunities for all interested SMC members
  • Offer free 1:1 (30 minutes) blog training sessions for new members who are thinking about launching a blog
  • Provide sub domain blog hosting or existing members that do not have a blog (i.e. http://newblog.socialmediaclub.org

Recognition

  • Create a recognition program that recognizes existing members who go “above and beyond” for the SMC community
    • Badge
    • Monetary: gift certificates for Amazon, Starbucks, iTunes

Communication

  • Create a monthly newsletter with rotating levels of responsibility
  • SMC members will rotate managing editorial process, writing articles, etc.

Localizing Membership (making it more convenient to attend local events)

The model of SMC presented on the wiki is of a city-based group that has face-to-face meetings (language of the wiki is all about clubs based on cities).

Looking at the wiki and observing the current “State of the Club”, there seems to be little or no incentive for someone to join who does not live in a city, preferably one of the cities where there is:

  • something already happening regularly, or
  • a critical mass of people likely to be interested in forming a local SMC

In fact, the way SMC is presented on the wiki makes it look as if people not in a city with an active chapter and unable or unwilling to set up a city chapter need not apply.

If there is an openness to other models, here are some suggestions.

In working on member benefits (and responsibilities) consider benefits people could have who are not in a city with an active SMC:

  • for people who travel, this could be a regularly updated online guide as to what’s on and where
  • person nominated in each chapter to promote the chapter’s events to the broader membership and be “welcomer” for out of town visitors
  • for all, especially people more remote from the cities where there are active chapters, provide online resources, forums etc of value
  • various benefits listed in “How do we get existing members involved?”, especially self-identifying badges for blogs/websites

Re-write all the membership information to make it clear that there is an encouragement to join no matter where someone lives.

Have nation-wide and international online events to enable members to connect with one another beyond chapter boundaries.

If you have any other ideas that would help address the challenges we have or simply to share some other ideas; we encourage you to post a comment and/or connect with us directly. Thank you for continued support.

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Orange sponsors the Social Media Club France

August 28, 2008

Orange

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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Vote for the 42nd Interim Board Member

July 14, 2008

Wow! The response to our mistake has been overwhelming.  While we have much work to do, our first task is to figure out how to best harness this outpouring of energy.  We have enough work to do and projects that need help to get everyone involved who wants to be involved - particularly when it comes to educational initiatives and organizing collaborative projects.

Due to the size of the response, (38 34 potential candidates to choose from) we are altering the previously stated procedures slightly, but the integrity of the process I outlined the other day is intact, and the rules we laid out there are incorporated herein by reference (yay, a little legalese!).  Several people emailed me directly to throw their hat in the ring, but did not submit their names to the comments of the blog post as I requested and are therefore not on the list - sorry folks, gotta follow the rules intentions. We will be following up with everyone on this list shortly.

Procedure Notes:

We will be holding this vote open until Thursday July 17, 2008 at 11am PST - essentially 72 hours. At that time, the top 3 will be put to a runoff vote that will stay open from Thursday afternoon until Monday July 21 at noon PST.

The Candidates:

The group is diverse, smart and very active in the broader community.  It includes those that are well known and relatively unknown.  There are international candidates, people we know well and people we have just met.  I won’t say anything here about any of them individually, but I will say that we are quite pleased and grateful that so many people are willing to help us build Social Media Club into the pre-eminent force for good in the area of social media.

So without further ado, please vote for the person you think is most qualified to contribute and make a meaningful difference in our efforts.

Cast Your Vote for the Missing 42nd Interim Board Member
View Results

Update:  Ann Handley, Gavin Heaton, Gennefer Snowfield and Siobhan O’Neil have withdrawn from the election process (they are not suprisingly going to be spending more time with their family ;) just kidding, each has their own reasons and we are going to find other ways to work together in the near future for our common community goals

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Social Media Club Forms Interim Board To Chart Strategic Direction and Advance Its Goals

July 9, 2008

Charting a new direction!The Social Media Club (SMC), a new media and advocacy organization focused on social media, today announced that 42 well-regarded industry leaders have volunteered to form an interim Board of Directors.

The new interim board has been charted to address several key organizational and strategic deliverables, including development of membership goals, acceleration of local chapter development, increase in adoption of industry standards and implementation of a new legal structure to enhance future growth.

New interim Board Member and Adjunct Professor of Social Media at University of Miami Alex de Carvalho said “Social Media Club is an important industry organization that has been working to establish social media standards and ethics. The voluntary participation of such noted industry leaders to further its mission is a clear indication of the Social Media Club’s value and contributions. I look forward to collaborating with the new interim board to progress the Social Media Club from being a ‘big idea’ to serving the community as a prominent agent of change.”

According to Chris Heuer, founder of Social Media Club and Partner at The Conversation Group, “The Social Media Club is honored to have so many accomplished and well-regarded industry evangelists come forward to lead the organization. While the interim board will focus on charting the organization’s future direction, our core mission will remain the same: promotion of media literacy; support of industry standards efforts such as Creative Commons licensing, Microformats, Data Portability and OpenID; discussion and promotion of ethical behavior; and sharing our knowledge among our members and the industry community at large.”

Co-Founder and Social Media Club President Kristie Wells added, “We are grateful to have received so much support from around the world over the past two years. With nearly 200 paying members and over 500 open members - we are deeply appreciative of the volunteer efforts to make the Social Media Club a success. With leading corporate members, such as Business Wire and SHIFT Communications, as well as dedicated individual professionals, the Social Media Club will continue to gain momentum and serve the greater needs of the industry while sharing our lessons learned along the way.”

The board will also focus on increasing its research efforts and strengthening relationships with other organizations such as the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) and the International Association for Business Communicators (IABC). The interim board’s work will be completed once the club reorganizes as a new entity, and holds an election amongst its members for a formal Board of Directors.

The newly named/appointed members of the interim board are leading social media analysts, bloggers and business leaders, and are as follows:

About the Social Media Club

The Social Media Club centers on the sharing of best practices, establishing ethics and standards, and promoting media literacy with a focus on the emerging discipline of Social Media. The Social Media Club brings together journalists, publishers, communication professionals, artists, amateur media creators, citizen journalists, teachers, students, tool makers, and other interested collaborators who create and consume media and have an interest in seeing the industry improve and evolve. The Social Media Club provides a forum for diverse groups and individuals to discover, connect, share and learn about social media and to play a role in its future evolution.

To find out more about the opportunities in social media and connect with other practitioners, visit: http://www.socialmediaclub.org

* Photo by Fabrizio Sciami, Creative Commons  Attribution-Share Alike License

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Social Media Club member kits are en route…

June 8, 2008

Social Media Club Member Kits

Chris and I spent most of the Memorial Day weekend printing welcome letters, laminating member cards and stuffing envelopes with stickers and shirts, to ensure the Social Media Club member kits were completed and shipped to their rightful owners*.

As Chris mentioned in the welcome letter sent out with the kit, we are seeing more and more corporations hiring people with Social Media in their titles. This means our work within, and around, Social Media Club becomes more important than ever. We will be working on a new members site this Summer that will promote your involvement and further our main goals, while helping to raise the professionalism across the industry. More news on this will follow in the coming weeks.

We are committed to our original mission of sharing best practices, establishing ethics and standards for technology and behavior, and promoting media literacy throughout our society. Things were moving more slowly then we would have liked earlier this year, but we have downed a couple of Red Bull’s and are ready to dig in…

More information:

* I am still staring at about 30+ incomplete welcome kits as I am awaiting on folks who paid for a Professional (or above) membership to send in their shirt size to me. If you are still waiting for your member kit, please check your email to see if you got a note from us asking for your shirt size -or- shoot an email to socialmediaclub [at] gmail [dot] com and we will track it back on our end.

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Pre-WordCamp, Social Media Club Brunch

July 19, 2007

Since we are back from our wedding and have not had a party in a while, we thought we should invite all of our hungover Social Media Club members and friends over to Brunch before WordCamp on Sunday - I love Brunch, its one of my favorite meals, so I figured why not put the chef’s hat on for a simple meal.  I will be cooking up eggs, bacon, granola and maybe even some French Toast to go with the Bagels, Toast and Muffins - there might even be a ’scone’ there for someone lucky ;)

Please do register here on Eventbrite so we know how many to expect.  There is no fee to join us, but if you want to kick in a few dollars we won’t be offended.  We will open our doors and start cooking at 8am and head out for the short 2 block wallk to Swedish American Hall a few minutes before 10, but please feel free to come and go as you need.  If you have not been to our house yet, we will be sending all registered attendees an email with the address on SAT - or see me at WordCamp on SAT for more details…

PS - I am planning on having a bloody mary or two, but you can have fun with the coffee or just juice if you would like.

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What’s this Knowledge Market Thing?

May 4, 2007

One of the things I have not written about much, but I talk about till blue in the face and running out of air, is this idea of a Knowledge Market, which is at the heart of my vision for Social Media Club.  It’s nothing overly odd, pretty much as you might imagine it based on common language usage – a place where people exchange knowledge – sometimes for free, sometime for money and always for reputation.  We donate it to non-profits, share it with our colleagues and occasionally sell it in the form of books or consulting.

Thanks to the wonderful vote of confidence of a couple hundred paying members, we have begun to invest in building out the Club site on Drupal to make this vision a reality.  While the vision is much larger than the first humble steps that will be visible in the coming weeks, the heart of the new site will clearly provide value to paying members.  More importantly, I believe it will become a shining example of how things should be done within intentional communities of practice such as Social Media Club.

Very very soon, I will begin to talk about more details, and invite all members to join me in forming the tools we use to communicate and collaborate with one another…  In the meantime, if you have some ideas of what we might need at the heart of the community, or you have some Drupal experience with version 5.1 or you know of some great Drupal based communities out there like http://www.gimme20.com/ which we might be able to learn from, drop me an email to chris [a-t] social media club dot com.

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Social Media Club Events 2007.1

January 9, 2007

Welcome to the first issue of Social Media Club’s ‘Calendar of Events’ for 2007. Here we will bring you updates on all the latest gatherings happening around the world that will connect you ‘live’ with other great people who are also interested in Social Media.

In this issue:

  • Social Media Club Gatherings (now in 13 cities)
  • Social Media Workshop Announcement
  • Discount for Social Media 2007 Conference ($100 off normal registration fee)
  • Social Media Club Membership

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Social Media Chapter Gatherings

In the fall of 2006, we launched Social Media Club round tables in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Boston, London, Phoenix, Washington D.C., Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver. We are gearing up for the Dallas launch this month, Austin next month and will be announcing additional cities shortly. If you are interested in organizing Social Media Club in your town, please contact kristiewells [at] gmail [dot] com for more information.

We start the New Year off with a bang with gatherings taking place in the following cities:

  • Boston: January 11, 2007
  • Phoenix: January 11, 2007
  • Portland: January 15, 2007
  • San Francisco: January 16, 2007
  • London: January 18, 2007
  • Dallas (Launch): January 23, 2007
  • New York: January 23, 2007
  • Los Angeles: January 25, 2007
  • Washington D.C.: January 25, 2007
  • Atlanta (Launch): January 29, 2007
  • Austin (Launch): February 22, 2007

We are working on dates for the South Florida, Seattle, and Vancouver groups and will post to the site once these events are locked in. These three locations are in need of a venue. If you have any recommendations, please contact kristie [at] brainjams [dot] org.

Register for any of the above events or learn more about other Social Media events happening around the world on the SMC website.

We have also set up an email list for each chapter of Social Media Club. Feel free to join the one in your town, or, if you’re not in a town with a chapter yet, join the more general purpose SMC-List. To join a list go to http://lists.SocialMediaClubMail.com/, click on the title, and follow the instructions of the form to join that mailing list.

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Social Media Workshop

One of the first events we want to announce for this year is the Social Media Workshop – a day long workshop that provides a great introduction to Social Media concepts and practices for every business. The topics range from tagging, to social networking, to blogging, to podcasting and more, all geared towards practical applications for making the most of the tools and technology while being a good member of the community.

If you are already a seasoned veteran on such topics, than we could probably use your help in making the workshop an extraordinary experience for others. We are currently accepting proposals for introductory level workshop sessions that will complement our planned agenda.

The initial dates are being finalized along with the venues, expect to hear more shortly…

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Social Media 2007 Conference Discount!

We are pleased to announce that Social Media Club has partnered with Business Capital Edge to offer a discount to SMC members for the Social Media 2007 conference being held on January 30-31, 2007 at the InterContinental Buckhead in Atlanta. SMC members can attend the conference for $500 ($100 discount!). To register and receive the discount, please call +1 (847) 993-5946 and reference code MC34. More information on the conference can be found at http://www.socialmedia2007.com/

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Social Media Club Membership

If you are not yet an official member of the club, please do register today at http://www.socialmediaclub.org/membership/. Open membership is free for all, but please consider supporting our efforts to serve the community by joining as a Social Media Professional or as a company member.

We hope you can make one of the many events taking place and look forward to sharing and learning with you.

Cheers!

Kristie Wells, Diva of Details
Social Media Club and BrainJams

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