Is everybody doing it?

Is everybody doing it? Why or why not? And what are the business cases where it might not make sense to participate in social media?

Last week’s San Francisco / Silicon Valley chapter event drew a packed audience and featured Forbes “Web Celeb” Violet Blue (@violetblue), Cisco’s social media enthusiast LaSandra Brill (@lasandrabrill), social media coach and author Janet Fouts (@jfouts) and Realty World’s social media expert Erin Robbins (@texasgirlerin) on a panel led by A-List Podcaster Jennifer Lindsay (@jennifered).

The panel discussed the hesitancy that many companies still have with getting involved in the social web, and used the adult industry as a prime example of an entire business segment of companies that are reluctant to “go social.”

Not all industries have been so reluctant of course, so the panel looked at examples of companies that are doing well with embracing the potential of the social web, including the Red Cross and Southwest Airlines. In the adult industry specifically, Kink.com and Suicide Girls have done well with integrating social into their promotions, but even they fear user-to-user sharing–the lifeblood of the social media world–due to the potential of lost revenues.

Another issue that has recently come into the spotlight is the balance between personal brands and professional brands, such as the decision by Forrester Research to have all of their analysts blog on Forrester-controlled channels. Employees need to decide if their relationship with their employer is going to be symbiotic or parasitic, because there are benefits to working with your company to build both brands. At the same time, companies need to be willing to embrace the brands that their employees are creating for themselves, because if they’re used properly, they can be beneficial to both. Watch the video clip of this part of the discussion on Michael Brito’s blog, britopian.com

Privacy was another key topic for the panel and audience, and one that companies and content creators are increasingly aware of thanks to sites like PleaseRobMe.com. With the recent increase in geo-location services and the constantly changing privacy landscape, users are having a difficult time managing exactly what content is getting out into the social world, who will see that content, and what the implications of that information sharing will be.

Lastly, the panel looked at how the social web allows companies to create a personality for themselves, and how that personality gives customers something that they can relate to. This will be especially beneficial to the customer service side of businesses, which have struggled to humanize their efforts while providing their services in an economically feasible way. For companies, one of the issues that they need to consider is where they choose to participate, since your channels dictate who consumes you, and how you’re consumed.

Big thanks to our video crew Rich Reader and Arnie Clomera. See a video clip and read more about the event on Rich’s blog

Special thanks to our sponsors for the February event: Spigit, Automattic and Stag’s Leap.

Save the date!  Next month’s chapter meeting will be March 23rd in Santa Clara. More details coming soon.

Social Media Camp SF Schedule ++

Big thanks to all the early participants who signed up on blind faith and to all the sponsors who are subsidizing our participation costs (especially for the lucky few who got one of the $5 tickets). We have been working hard to build a great single-track Social Media conference that will be the backbone of a strong ‘camp’. Each of the sessions below are designed to be 45 minutes with 15 minute breaks in between. Due to the layout of the building and proximity of the rooms to one another, we will be sticking to this schedule as best as possible.

In under a week, with the support of our Social Media Camp Gold Sponsors (Biz360, IDEA, SAP), social media leaders, community organizers, and many friends, I think we have something that  will be highly valuable – in fact, I would say its the equivalent of a much higher price conference, or better in some instances, but hey, I will let you decide for yourself. (there are only about 30 tickets left!)

8am – Registration, Breakfast, Networking

9am – Opening – Three 10 Minute Keynotes
Chris Heuer, Camp Director, will open the day and introduce what he believes are the most important things necessary for Social Media to continue to be relevant and to continue to grow.

• Keynote 1:  The Synaptic Web, Khris Loux, Echo
• Keynote 2: The Art of Tummeling, Kevin Marks, BT/Ribbit
• Keynote 3: Personal Voice, Personal Storytelling, Cathy Brooks

945am – Planning the Camp Sessions
F0r 30 minutes, participants will be able to offer up suggestions for an additional session that they will lead in one of the two other rooms we have set up. In total, we will have to collaboratively plan 10 sessions the day of the event.

1030am – Measuring What Matters: Social Media AND Metrics (Moraga/Main Room)

This discussion will be lead by Maria Ogneva from Biz360 and is geared towards social media professionals / marketers within their organizations, but is suitable for everyone working to prove the ROI of their investment in Social Media. The central premise is that we all need to better understand what matters most (and what doesn’t matter at all).

• Maria Ogneva, Biz360
• Rick Klau, Google
• Jaime Schiller
• Sudha Jamthe, PayPal (just added!)

1130am – Rethinking Communications: Social Media AND Marketing (Moraga/Main Room)

Tap into cutting edge thinking and insights from this group of experienced professionals. After their presentations, ample time will be provided for group discussions and a rigorous Q&A before heading to lunch.

• Kevin Barenblat, Context Optional
• Chris Heuer, AdHocnium

1215-130PM – LUNCH BREAK

Box lunches, with vegetarian options, will be served

130pm – Customer Service As Marketing

It’s been said that customer retention is the best form of customer acquisition. In this panel, we bring together people who know this first hand to discuss how and why customer support has transcended its traditional position as a cost to be minimized to become a valuable marketing investment.

• Chris Pitre, Idea
• Thor Muller, Get Satisfaction
• Kristie Wells, Ribbit/Social Media Club
• Bliss Dake, Mighty Leaf Tea

230pm – Rethinking Collaboration (a ‘fireside chat’)

I once heard an employee of a really big company say “you can have my email when you pry it from my cold dead fingers” referencing an initiative to bring Enterprise 2.0 tools into their company.  The fear of change often prevents people from adapting to new ways of working, making collaboration more of a human issue then a technical one.  As technologies, and our concepts of how we use them have changed in the face of ’streams’, what’s it going to take to not only rethink collaboration, but to make the new workflow a simple to use reality. As we move from static depositories of documents into work ’streams’ collaboration wont only be within one tool, but across many. What does that world look like and how will it come into being. [this is a deep, rich topic for us to explore, expect the conversation to move around a bit from this description]

• David Meyer, SAP
• Chris Heuer, AdHocnium

330pm – Facing the Reality of Real Time

Real Time is the new black. Its mentioned everywhere, and it seems straightforward enough, but what does it really mean. How are you supposed to manage a brand in the face of real time onslaught of customer complaints, market developments, events, news and everything else that is going on. In diving into the reality of real time, we will explore the topic from a technical, humanistic and organizational marketing perspective, with a lot of time devoted to group discussion with all participants.

• Jeremy Toeman, Stage Two Consulting
• Brian Zisk, Collecta
• Jolie O’Dell, Read/Write Web

430pm – Closing Remarks (15 minutes)

Chris Heuer will wrap up the day with a synthesis of the key themes and ideas presented across all of Social Media Camp and discuss his vision for future Social Media Camp’s that will be held across the country in 2010.  This is also a chance for all participants to share their big a-ha moments from the day and to discuss all the other great events happening during the rest of Social Media Week.

Some of the titles and speakers above may change slightly, but the focus is in place and we are confirming additional speakers each hour…

For those of you attending, who may see a topic that is just not interesting to you, remember, its not just a conference, its also a camp… soyou have a chance to help program 10 additional sessions that will be hosted throughout the day.  I will be writing a separate post on how we will run the camp shortly.

We have a great day planned out, with a ton of great people, in a nice venue.  While the Presidio Officer’s Club is not the Ritz Carlton or a Class A Conference Center, it suits our purposes of getting together, learning from each other and making valuable new connections. We have a great caterer bringing in a continental breakfast, an array of boxed lunch choices and sodas, waters, and coffee throughout the day.  We also have very limited WiFi it would seem in this building, so I have to ask you in advance to expect we will have some wifi problems – in fact, if anyone has some Mifi hotspots or something they could bring, that would probably help a little bit.  As a camp goes, this will be a great, high energy event with a ton of great speakers, ideas and insights.

So bring an open mind, tough questions and big challenges to Social Media Camp next Monday and help us kick off our first Social Media Week in San Francisco with this great unconference hybrid. If you haven’t registered yet, you can still do so now, but get it soon, there are only a few tickets left.

See you on Monday!

Reality Check: How Are You Really Using Mobile Video?

Mobile video is here to stay, and the Social Media Club San Francisco / Silicon Valley chapter met in October to discuss how mobile video is being created, deployed, and consumed. As part of the Reality Check series sponsored by Real Player SP, the event was designed to examine how the technology is really being used.

The first segment focused on the technology of mobile video, featuring panelists Rishi Mallik from Qik, Justin Kan from Justin.tv, and Lacey Kemp from RealNetworks. Chris Heuer drove the conversation as moderator, prompting questions and answers from both the panelists and audience.

How do you want to access mobile video? How do you best engage an audience? What are real people using mobile video for? What would you like to see?

• Engagement
  Engaging in meaningful conversations when there is a large audience is a concern. This is acknowledged as a problem by technology providers, and one of the issues they are trying to address says Kan.
• Access
  Users want to have access to video content on the go, but they want a smooth, consistent experience. Spotty coverage from service providers, combined with small screens on mobile devices, make for less than ideal conditions. In a perfect world, live video conversations could take place on mobile devices seamlessly.
• Ease of Production
  “What video do you have on your mobile device right now?”

Heuer poses this question, point-blank, to various members of the audience. The answers are somewhat surprising. They all include user-generated content. Friends and family, car accidents, sales videos, awards presentations and product demonstrations.

JD Lasica mentions that recently, at Blogworld Expo, Leo Laporte declared that podcasting is dead. What does that mean for mobile video? It means that it needs to be simple for people to edit and share content, and it must be delivered in a way that makes it easy to consume in any format.

After a short break, Moderator Jennifer Lindsay shifted the focus to storytelling with mobile content, discussing an innovative user-generated video project with videographer Eddie Codel.

Codel, a pioneering vlogger and producer for Geek Entertainment TV, was one of five people chosen from around the world to work on an innovative film project with Spike Lee, entirely shot on mobile phone video cameras.

His advice for aspiring videographers?

• Use the best tools available. Align your goals with the quality of your equipment.
• Professional cameras are nice, but mobile devices are perfect for capturing real-action events.

Eddie shows a brief interview that they were able to do with Spike Lee. Lee confesses that the main advantage of going to film school, was to gain access to equipment. This equipment is available everywhere now, so his message is: “Just shoot.” Lee claims to be a fan of social media, but when asked about posting content on YouTube, he says that he wouldn’t put any ‘good ideas’ on the site.

As evidence of the power of video, there were over 1,000 viewers of the live video stream of tonight’s event on Justin.tv.

Tyson Foods Steps up to the Hunger Challenge. Again.

The San Francisco Food Bank, Tyson Foods and Social Media Club San Francisco are working together to increase awareness around the issue of hunger during the 2009 Hunger Challenge taking place this week:  September 20-26.

Tyson has graciously offered to donate truck loads of food based on our ability to use Social Media tools to  spread the word in support of our local food banks. 

From Tyson’s blog:

There’s a list of hunger facts below.  All Tweetable.  Tweet  or retweet any of them with the hashtag  #HChal and Tyson Foods will make a 100 pound donation (up to a total of 100,000 pounds) to the San Francisco Food Bank. Blog about this effort and we’ll donate 500 pounds.  Or comment to this post with your own verifiable fact (not opinion)  about hunger and we’ll donate 100 pounds.   That’s all you have to do. Let’s see how far and fast we can spread these facts out there in Twittervillle. If you’d like to make reference to this post, here’s a shortened URL:  http://bit.ly/sBE9x

Tweetable Facts About Hunger

• More than 35 mil. people in the U.S. are on food stamps–up 3 million since Jan.  #HChal
• App. 40% of families now on food stamps have “earned income”–up from just 25% 2 years ago.  #HChal
• For every $1 donated @SFFoodBank can distribute $9 worth of groceries. #HChal #hungeraction
• In San Francisco, 150K people are unsure where their next meal is coming from. #HChal #hungeraction
• 1 in 4 San Francisco children lack reg.access to food they need to learn, grow, & have a healthy start in life. #HChal
• 1 in 5 San Francisco adults can’t count on daily meals they need to lead healthy, productive lives. #HChal
• 1 in 4 San Francisco seniors lack the nourishment need to control chronic health problems. #HChal
• .@SFFoodBank distributed over 33.5 million pounds of food in the past year–nearly 8% more than the year before. #HChal
• 60% of the clients @SFFoodBank served last year come from working families.  #HChal
• In CA, the average food stamp recipient gets $4 a day to spend on food.  #HChal #hungeraction
• In CA, a single person can get food stamps only if their yearly gross income is $14,079 or less. #HChal
• 5.3 mil. Californians are living below the federal poverty line ($21,834 for a family of 4) #HChal
• The number of households participating in @SFFoodbank’s grocery pantry program is up 24% over last year. #HChal

Bonus Challenge:

Social Media Club would like to up the anty and asks everyone to donate $5 this month. Forget the latte for one day, and help feed a family of four. If you do not have the $5 to donate, the food banks could always use food – their most-needed foods include rice and pasta, canned fruits and vegetables, tuna or other canned meats, soups and stews, peanut butter, and cereal. You can find a local drop off center near you.

I hope you will help us reach that goal of donating 100,000 pounds of food. Would be awesome to raise $10,000 this month too. Can we do it?

The Power of Influence

“Eavesdropping isn’t influence, engaging in a conversation is”…leaked a speaker prior to the start of “The Power of Influence,” an assemblage of eclectic panelists at the Social Media Club San Francisco / Silicon Valley’s late June gathering at Eastwick Communications in Mountain View, California. Sponsors included eCairn Inc, Eastwick Communications, DiGirono Crispy Flatbread Pizza, Amazon Consulting, and Krause Taylor Associates.

Moderator and Principal of Eastwick Communications’ Barbara Bates kicked off the evening giving the floor to panelists including Dominique Lahaix, CEO of eCairn; Jeremy Thomas, Partner and Director of Global Brand Planning at Collaborate; Scott Hirsch, VP of Get Satisfaction; Jennifer Leggio, ZDNet social business blogger; and Ryan Calo, academic fellow with the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School. Eastwick Communications’ Jennifer Lindsay, Director of Digital Services and Social Media moderated the conversation on Twitter.

“We all know the old model of communication and the power of influence has changed dramatically, but whom and where are the new influencers, and how can you find them? How do we apply a scientific approach to identifying influencers online? How is brand influence changing? What is the power of peer influence? What is the role and influence of media/bloggers in the new communication world order? How can we use technology to persuade and influence?”

Ready, set, go.

ECairn’s Lahaix led talking about connecting with bloggers on a one by one basis, measuring how many times people talk about his Company and finding out what they (bloggers) are saying. Technology isn’t measuring human behavior – it’s measuring how people react to messages.

Get Satisfaction’s Hirsch profiled “Sally” who is in many places online, but still can be measured by her behavior across his entire network – by the Phd’s the Company hires to evaluate the complexities. The audience chuckled. Hirsch – personally – doesn’t think that Twitter is influential because its just another broadcast channel, and you can listen to your customers and broadcast out a response. Or, if conversations were threaded, Hirsch adds, you could track a conversation. Hear part of Scott’s conversation in this video shot by Rich Reader.

As “Social CRM,” influence could be a social layer around customer relationship management, realizing who’s out there online. If you could ask their permission to make their information transparent, then you – the company – could get something in return. Mint he said sells the private financial information of others, yet never reveals whose information it is selling. The Mint customer gets a lot in return for giving away private information, yet both Mint and its customers walk away as winners.

In terms of also “crowd sourcing,” Hirsch added, if you enable your customers to talk to one another, you’ll get value out of it by eavesdropping and so will the customers, but to get the best value you should engage in a conversation with them.

Social networks don’t do engagement well, Leggio stated. There are ways to engage with customers. There are true customers on Twitter. There are threaded conversations through the salesforce.com Twitter tool (soon to be released). However, there is too much focus on the tool – which is a really dangerous path to go down because if you get too focused on the technology, you’re not on the engagement.

It’s about the brand, Jeremy Thomas states. Brands do matter. “There’s an idea that eyeballs can be seduced and ‘how to build the brands’ have been forgotten in the process. The brand has to learn how to adapt in so many more contexts than before. How can an identity form itself? It is going to follow the conversation and be relevant. It will not just be noise. We can do more with brands because the canvass is larger. We’re doing a lot of educating on the principles of branding. The channels are taking the focus off of going back to the wisdom.”

“Big consumer brands are intuitively entering into the conversations via social media,” Thomas added. “Technology brands are pushing messages into conversations (B2B) when they do not flow into the conversation. It all comes back to human needs and desires, the conversation is still the same, back to face to face, understanding what your customers want and responding to that. Word of mouth is still our great friend, and what’s bad is really bad and what’s good is really good.”

The truth is out there.

“The conversations are happening whether you’re aware of them, participating in them, or not,” Leggio adds. For example, she told, a company wanted to launch a corporate blog, but not open comments. The company just wanted to field comments through email. Leggio calls that the “marketing page on the website.” You have to have those (comments) open. You can choose not to engage nor invite those conversations in, but are “really doing yourself a disservice, and you should take on those conversations.”

Lahaix says that the companies who win with social media are the brands that have built trust with their customers, especially after a crisis situation has happened. Leggio agrees, and says if you’re waiting to get out there, you’re too late (post crisis). You have to have a crisis communications program in place, so you don’t create those situations (where you will miss out).

Ryan Calo asks, what does technology really change? “It changes the circumstances under which you can get to a crisis,” he answers. “Technology changes who the influencers are and who the important people are. It also creates opportunities for control. It allows you to refine and change your message. The technology that allows people to target can help you get your message out to particular people. If you talk to people about their experience in social media, women say it’s very different than men. There are these techniques to refine your message, but ways in which consumers can also respond – in unique and different ways.”

Is technology short circuiting the conversation?

“We used to waste messages on 60 percent of the audience,” Leggio adds, “but today we can get that targeting right down to the nose, and the message has to be better.” Ads in the UK used to be shown in theatres as a “reward” and theatergoers would “boo” not because there were ads pre movie, but because they were bad ads.

What’s surprising about how influence is happening today?

Leggio just talked at a PRSA event recently, and shared that buying decisions are coming more and more from peer networks, and not from direction of traditional media. “When it comes to lead generation or getting involved in customer conversations – when they (customers) talk to one another – that’s not just for the sales team,” Leggio adds. “Regardless of your role in a company you need to get involved in those conversations or you may become ‘irrelevant.’”

“You’re trying to influence someone to do something,” says Calo. “Facebook saw Twitter coming and it wanted to get its status bar updating on a quick basis, and prompt people to respond to post their status. “You can do so much with queues and prompts. I worry that we’re moving in an opposite direction toward a perfection of design.”

Among many other questions asked across the hour, Bates closed with “how do you develop your own influence (as individuals)?” Leggio says she doesn’t think about developing her personal brand. She unapologetic about herself, and just lets people see who she really is, and let them in (though, not into her personal life). The role of authenticity is critical to influence adds Hirsch. “Community management as the new customer service. Treating people humanly unless they treat you un-humanly.”

Crediting the panel with stimulating dialogue, Social Media Club members and guests learned a lot on how to be influential with social media. Final takeaways included one must be versatile, share messages to teens with teens, define your targets, and behave yourself in your and someone else’s community.

Note: We shot a video of the event that is still being edited. Will post an update to this once it is ready.

Have bus, will travel…to Sonoma, CA!

• First stop – Keller Estate – Known for their pinots and chardonnays. The winemaker, Mike McNeil, says his wines are influenced by the fog and winds off the ocean, similar to the Carneros region and representative of the emerging Sonoma coast style-big complex flavors, rich and with a touch of sweetness. The estate is planted on the rolling hills of the “Petaluma Gap”. They have 86 acres with 13 different clones planted. This is definitely an artisan winery, no big production line here. They only do tasting by appointment.
• Second stop – Balletto and Dutton-Goldfield - Family run wineries with a passion for what they do. Both wineries sold their grapes to other vintners before starting their own. Dutton grapes have been sold to Kistler, Hartford and DuMol to name a few. Janet had a couple bottles of their Pinot Noir, and found it outstanding.
• Third Stop – Owl Ridge – Won “Best New Winery” at the Wine literary awards tasting in 2006. They’re new, but their wines won 18 gold medals in the last year at major competitions. Pretty amazing. They’ve got a lot of Cabs.  I believe it is their wines that we will be blending into our own selection to bring home, which should be a great way to end the day.

The Corporate Social Media Ecosystem

It’s an interactive evening at the Social Media Club, San Francisco / Silicon Valley, at Citizen Space. HP alum Ravit Lichtenberg of Ustrategy ignited the event presenting before dozens of the social media digerati on “The Corporate Social Media Ecosystem.”

“What are you?,” she asks. An expert, agency, first timer? Now, let’s get started. Companies have become collaborative with multiple customers, and those customers are interacting with other customers. One to one marketing from company to customer is a thing of the past.

The social media corporate ecosystem has also changed. What used to be a discrete relationship between companies and their customers; companies and their partners, has become a much more pliable system. Corporations now count on customers to inform other customers, and often partner with startups—not just established companies.  The corporation, customer and partner are all together having a ‘conversation.’ Corporations want to create relationships; customers want the interaction; and start-ups want the money. The “glue” between them all is marketing, business development, and capabilities.

Recap: What is social media again? The desktop solutions (and previous web apps) have changed the conversation – and people are overwhelmed. The focus used to be on the customers as eyeballs, but now those same customers have a face, an actual “voice that’s being heard.”

Over 60 percent of Americans regularly use social media (RWW/Cone research from Compete.com). Ninety-three percent of consumers believe a company should have a presence on social media sites. According to Forrester Research, people are open to most social tools from brand they like. Online discussion forums are on the rise, so are online videos while blogs and podcasts are coming down in popularity.

“Corporations care about social media!,” Ravit stresses. Cisco, Google, HP, Intel, Pepsico, Microsoft, eBay, and others are marking budget for social media, and making it part of their products, online and off-line.

The “gold standard” for social media use is marketing and collaboration – offline integration with online. And, brands are trying to get that right. HP spends 50 percent of its budget on marketing, and  brands who use social media spend 10-25 percent of their marketing dollars.

“Lots of money being spent on social media and some are getting it right…” Remember how Burger King asked you to sacrifice your friends? Burger King got 20,000 people to each sacrifice 10 of their friends for a total of 200,000 people engaging with the brand. Procter & Gamble’s “BeingGirl” is a location for what it’s like to be a young girl. And, then those girls go to the store for the first time and, it’s a Procter & Gamble product they’re looking at first, of course.

But, most brands don’t get it… More than 50 percent of brand campaigns fail. Worst ad campaigns were HP Pay Per Post, Subway, Walmart Across America, as outlined at SXSW this year (SXSW blog and Forrester Research). These brands were unable to articulate and show ROI.

Startups know there’s a need. Facebook created a global need. Yammer’s another good example. Some succeed and others don’t. Some are generic or too customized, can’t get a handle on the business model, don’t share consistency or dependability, need integration and a quality interaction, need to show better understanding of customer benefits, and have to reach the right decision makers.

“So now what?”

Each player in the ecosystem cares about different things. How to measure ROI, what tools are best, how to get IT’s buy in, are the old ways best? Customers want to know what they get out of all of this: What do I get, why should I spend time here, will I have control over privacy? Start-up / partners are asking will we get a deal, will we beat our competition, are we creating a need to fill?

To turn the corporation social…

They need to move from “selling to caring!” Focus on relationships, get to know the customers, go to where the customers are, develop meaningful communication, make it easy for them, give tools to the advocates, reward the enthusiasts, turn boring into excitement, enlist the right subject matter experts, and bring on board the right solutions.

And, of course, corporations must have a STRATEGY!

Agree on the business objectives, understand customers’ objectives, identify the relevant channels, establish relevant metrics, have right people on board, align with ongoing marketing strategy, prioritize, develop a plan, identify the right tools, then…IMPLEMENT!

AND NOW (DRUM ROLL)

Ravit mobilizes the audience with an exercise. We’ve got to develop a strategy that we can take to a corporation. We break into groups and start to work..

Here’s what Ravit’s tasked us to do…

1.    Choose a sector: technology, financial, or retail
2.    Identity a product you’re passionate about
3.    Identify a set of customer needs
a.    What’s important to these customers?
b.    Where do these customers spend time?
c.    How do they like to get information?
d.    What do they like to talk about? With whom?
4.    Identify corporate objectives
a.    What does the corporation want to achieve?
b.    Determine the decision maker in the organization
c.    They’re looking for a solution…what’s important to them?
5.    Envision a social media strategy
6.    Propose it to the organization

To see the rest of the photos from this event, please check our Flickr album.

Ravit’s perspective?

I wanted people to leave with two key takeaways. First, that Social Media is about much more than getting on facebook, twitter, or having a blog. Just like traditional marketing, for Social Media efforts to succeed, it needs to be treated as strategy with objectives, metrics, and implementation plan. Second, for a Social Media strategy to succeed, it needs to speak to the corporate ecosystem and to the needs of each of the ecosystem players.  Without this holistic perspective, any Social Media initiative will face significant barriers to success.

I greatly enjoyed seeing how people took to these concepts and worked together to create Social Media strategies. We went from a strategy for a local bank focused on small business lending, to a Social Media strategy for the Flip camera, to cloud storage, to turning the boring Dr. Scholl insoles to a sexy Executive-in-Hills campaign. It’s not hard…but it does require a shift in the way people think of Social Media. With sessions like the ones the Social Media Club organizes we are getting closer by the day.

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

The Corporate Social Media Ecosystem

It’s an interactive evening at the Social Media Club, San Francisco / Silicon Valley, at Citizen Space. HP alum Ravit Lichtenberg of Ustrategy ignited the event presenting before dozens of the social media digerati on “The Corporate Social Media Ecosystem.”

“What are you?,” she asks. An expert, agency, first timer?

Now, let’s get started. Companies have become collaborative with multiple customers, and those customers are interacting with other customers. One to one marketing from company to customer is a thing of the past.

The social media corporate ecosystem has also changed. What used to be a discrete relationship between companies and their customers; companies and their partners, has become a much more pliable system. Corporations now count on customers to inform other customers, and often partner with startups not just established companies. The corporation, customer and partner are all together having a ‘conversation.’ Corporations want to create relationships; customers want the interaction; and start-ups want the money. The “glue” between them all is marketing, business development, and capabilities.

Recap: What is social media again? The desktop solutions (and previous web apps) have changed the conversation – and people are overwhelmed. The focus used to be on the customers as eyeballs, but now those same customers have a face, an actual “voice that’s being heard.” Over 60 percent of Americans regularly use social media (RWW/Cone research from Compete.com). Ninety-three percent of brands believe a company should have a presence on social media sites. According to Forrester Research, people are open to most social tools from brand they like. Online discussion forums are on the rise, so are online videos while blogs and podcasts are coming down in popularity.

“Corporations care about social media!,” Ravit stresses. Cisco, Google, HP, Intel, Pepsico, Microsoft, eBay, and others are marking budget for social media, and making it part of their products, online and off-line. The “gold standard” for social media use is marketing and collaboration – offline integration with online. And, brands are trying to get that right. Brands who use social media spend 10-25 percent of their marketing dollars. “Lots of money being spent on social media and some are getting it right…”

Remember how Burger King asked you to sacrifice your friends? Burger King got 20,000 people to each sacrifice 10 of their friends for a total of 200,000 people engaging with the brand. Remember the McDonalds virgin campaign? One was on YouTube, the other was on Facebook. Procter & Gamble’s “BeingGirl” is a location for what it’s like to be a young girl. And, then those girls go to the store for the first time and, it’s a Procter & Gamble product they’re looking at first, of course. But, most brands don’t get it… More than 50 percent of brand campaigns fail. Worst ad campaigns were HP Pay Per Post, Subway, Walmart Across America, as outlined at SXSW this year (Forbes, SXSW blog and Forrester Research). These brands were unable to articulate and show ROI. Startups know there’s a need. Facebook created a global need. Yammer’s another good example. Some succeed and others don’t. Some are generic or too customized, can’t get a handle on the business model, don’t share consistency or dependability, need integration and a quality interaction, need to show better understanding of customer benefits, and have to reach the right decision makers.

“So now what?” Each player in the ecosystem cares about different things. How to measure ROI, what tools are best, how to get IT’s buy in, are the old ways best? Customers want to know what they get out of all of this. What do I get, why should I spend time here, will I have control over privacy? Start-up / partners are asking will we get a deal, will we beat our competition, are we creating a need to fill?

To turn the corporation social…

They need to move from “selling to caring!” Focus on relationships, get to know the customers, go to where the customers are, develop meaningful communication, make it easy for them, give tools to the advocates, reward the enthusiasts, turn boring into excitement, enlist the right subject matter experts, and bring on board the right solutions. And, of course, corporations must have a STRATEGY! Agree on the business objectives, understand customers’ objectives, identify the relevant channels, establish relevant metrics, have right people on board, align with ongoing marketing strategy, prioritize, develop a plan, identify the right tools, then…IMPLEMENT!

AND NOW (DRUM ROLL)
Ravit mobilizes the audience with an exercise. We’ve got to develop a strategy that we can take to a corporation – choose a sector, identify a product, identify a set of customers – and we are the corporation. We break up into groups and start to work – and are tasked to develop a social media strategy to present to the whole group. Let’s put this to the test…

Here’s what Ravit’s tasked us to do…

1. Choose a sector; technology, financial, or retail
2. Identity a product you’re passionate about
3. Identify a set of customer needs a. What’s important to these customers? b. Where do these customers spend time? c. How do they like to get information? d. What do they like to talk about? With whom?
4. Identify corporate objective. a. What does the corporation want to achieve? b. Determine the decision maker in the organization?  c. They’re looking for a solution…what’s important to them?
5. Envision a social media strategy
6. Propose it to the organization

Ravit’s take-aways from the presentations?
I wanted people to leave with two key takeaways. First, that Social Media is about much more than getting on facebook, twitter, or having a blog. Just like traditional marketing, for Social Media efforts to succeed, it needs to be treated as strategy with objectives, metrics, and implementation plan. Second, for a Social Media strategy to succeed, it needs to speak to the corporate ecosystem and to the needs of each of the ecosystem players. Without this holistic perspective, any Social Media initiative will face significant barriers to success. I greatly enjoyed seeing how people took to these concepts and worked together to create Social Media strategies. We went from a strategy for a local bank focused on small business lending, to a Social Media strategy for the Flip camera, to cloud storage, to turning the boring Dr. Scholl insoles to a sexy Executive-in-Heels campaign. It’s not hard…but it does require a shift in the way people think of Social Media. With sessions like the ones the Social Media Club organizes we are getting closer by the day.

Government 2.0: February 2009 SMC SFSV Meeting

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

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

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

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

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

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

Social Media and SEO: January 2009 SMC SF/SV Meeting

Last week in San Francisco we kicked off 2009 #SMCSFSV with an excellent gathering at the offices of Zannel where we discussed Social Media and SEO, with presentations from some great people who are deserving of the title ‘expert’. It was one of our biggest events in a while locally, reflecting the interest around the topic as well as the growth of Social Media Club, with about 90 people attending. As is usually the case with our events, there was a great mix of developers, pr folks, community managers, web 2.0 entrepreneurs, real estate agents, non-profits, social media consultants, media makers and others.

As promised, though a few days late, we wanted to share the knowledge and insights from our evening together here. In fact, Kristie Wells is a woman on a mission, focused on trying to find more ways that each local group can better share their conversations, insights and recommendations. She has been incessantly nagging me to get this post done since last Wednesday morning, so that we can serve as an example for others. So let’s all do our best to publish our lessons the next day after a meeting, but no more then a week later. In fact, we should have a dScribe (a digital scribe) responsible for capturing all the media from each event and getting it organized on the site.

In addition to the presentations below and the photos on Flickr (chrisheuer, ken yeung) you may also watch the raw/unedited ustream video from the SEO and Social Media presentations. This video still has about 30 minutes of pre-presentation noise in front of it (if anyone can edit the video and get us a better version, we would gladly replace this). Going forward I am thinking we might

The evening started off with an excellent overview of the interconnectedness of SEO and Social Media with a discussion of Rohit Bhargava’s 5 Rules of Social Media Optimization presented by Jose Nunez and Jacob Morgan from HiRank. The original 5 elements Rohit presented are:

1. Increase your linkability
2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy
3. Reward inbound links
4. Help your content travel
5. Encourage mashups

Jose’s presentation was very informative.

Next up was Daniel Riveong, from e-Storm who was sharing more tactically focused case studies.  Daniel was also sharing some examples of missed opportunities, where great social media marketing was missing the SEO elements that would have made it even more succesful on many different levels.  It’s a very compelling case as to why SEO should have a prominent seat at the social media strategy table.

It was clear from the quality of the content being presented that we needed to take less time for discussion and more time for presentation this night.  This was especially clear when Brent Csutoras started his presentation which really capped up a great series of lessons with the special insider insight that everyone needs to take their work to the next level.  You can download his presentation (and also access the video) from his blog post recapping the night.

It was a great way to kick off what is going to be an exciting, albeit difficult, 2009.  While there was plenty of food and beverages for all, the night was not without its glitches.  While Zanel has an incredible space, its clear that SMCSFSV needs to get some portable sound amplification and a better microphone setup for each event.  I also would have liked to have had more time for discussion, but I, as emcee, let each presenattion continue longer since it was valuable information and everyone was engaged.

So for next month’s event, we can really use your help.  Please contact us at smcsfsv —at— socialmediaclub —dot— org if you are interested in volunteering or have suggestions on how to make our time together more valuable. More information about upcoming events will be posted on our Facebook group soon, so stay tuned

Five For Sharing: Social Media Case Studies in the Valley

We have some terrific case studies that were submitted for our event in SIlicon Valley tomorrow night, Five For Sharing.  It was hard to choose, and indeed we had to pass on a couple of really great one’s just due to time constraints.  In the end, we have a great balance that will be really informative and entertaining.

In addition to Shashi Bellamkonda who will be presenting an overview of the integrated social media programs being produced at Network Solutions, we will also be joined by:

• Mike McGrath of McGrath/Powers will be presenting on how his agency used social media as part of a product launch for Nero
• Dave Peck will be sharing how he promoted this video on YouTube, how he drove traffic there and how they engaged in the conversation that ensued.
• Cathryn Hrudicka will be talking about the new social media program underway at Sutter Health about building a new medical center.
• Cory O’Brien will be talking about how they used social media for a Dwell Magazine conference.
• We also may have one other remotely presented case study, which I will simply call our surprise guest for now….

In short, we have case studies on the use of social media for: an event, a product launch, promoting content, engaging with community and as part of a broader marketing initiative at a high tech company. Wow! You just gotta love how we can all do things like this together.  Thank you all for agreeing to participate and share what you have learned.  So now that you know what we are going to be discussing, go register today so we can have an accurate head count

Five for Sharing: Social Media Case Studies Event in SF/SV

It seems that the one thing we never have enough of are case studies about how companies have used Social Media effectively and how companies have failed spectacularly. So for this month’s Social Media Club event in San Francisco/Silicon Valley, we are going to start working to remedy this.

Join us on Tuesday November 18, 2008 in San Mateo for “Five for Sharing” a night of five 10 minute presentations of social media case studies. To kick the night off, we are very pleased to announce that we will be joined by Shashi Bellamkonda from Network Solutions to share their experiences with social media and what they have learned thus far.

Other than this great kick off case study though, we haven’t selected the other four.

At this time, we would like you to submit your ideas for a case study you would like to present (or perhaps one you want to see presented) in the comments on the blog post. The local leadership group will make the final selections at the end of next week and get in touch with everyone to make sure they can make it. We will then make the final announcement for the case studies we will be seeing here on the blog, through Twitter and Facebook and everywhere else appropriate.

The event will cost $5 in advance or $10 at the door and is free for Professional or Business members of Social Media Club. It will take place at the offices of Re/MAX in San Mateo, located at 1700 El Camino. Complete details are available on EventBrite, where you can register right now. Due to the venue this event is limited to 70 people this month, so please do register early if you are planning to join us.