SMCEDU Needs a Grant + Our Purpose, Our Goals

First, thanks to the members of SMCEDU for creating a strong foundation for a real community, and a real global initiative to improve the quality of social media education in our school systems. We have some wonderful stories of on campus successes, some great resources have been pulled together and most importantly some wonderful connections have been made between teachers.

In short, for being an idea, staffed by a hard working but part time intern (big thanks to Yong C Lee for making this possible), SMCEDU is an early success. But there is much harder work to be done and there is a real need in the overall academic community for the type of support we are seeking to provide.

So today I am writing to seek your help in finding a volunteer grant writer and some foundations to get funding that will take this SMCEDU initiative to another level and help us hire Yong C Lee as a full time program manager. We need $250,000 so we can hire Yong, a “curriculum curator” and another part time program manager to work on developing specific initiatives with our teachers and administrators from around the world. We can start with something as small as $50,000 so we can at least hire Yong full time but we need to go for more so we can expand our efforts and do it right.

So that the vision is a bit more clear, here is a current draft of what I have set out for the program goals

• Develop a set of resources and links to resources that reside elsewhere which professors can use to help them get social media related classes approved in their schools and offer the best social media focused education possible – ie, case studies, syllabus, courses, suggestions for getting past no, etc…
• Build the most comprehensive directory of teachers offering social media globally and become the source for schools looking to see what people are offering. This requires building out additional resources on top of the Ning network, ie coding/programming
• Develop and encourage the development of Open Courseware programs that are Creative Commons licensed and available to other teachers to use and improve upon (using non-comercial share and share alike licenses)
• Create relationships between local Social Media Club chapters around the world and their local universities so that we can create a path to professionalism for those seeking to be a social media professional, or merely those seeking a chance to use social media as a part of their chosen career
• To encourage the on-campus development of Social Media Club chapters, empowering students to create their own local communities that can be connected and supported by our global network
• Offer internship and mentorship programs so as to develop real world professional experiences to supplement the classroom education
• Develop and offer training for those teachers seeking to offer Social Media classes at their school and/or using social media as part of teaching other subjects
• To identify and review other social media education offerings outside of our domain
• Support and increase awareness for other important initiatives of interest to social media professors including but not limited to Classroom 2.0 and Social Media Classroom. To expand this global web of support and partnerships so as to form a network of similarly oriented initiatives for mutual benefit and support.

My recollection from my very early youth is that an education is supposed to prepare you to enter the world and be a valuable contributing member to society. Is that still true? If it is, then the goal of SMCEDU is straight and true. My purpose for SMCEDU has never been more clear – it is to prepare students to be better critical thinkers when it comes to interacting with the world around them, especially focused on a broad set of skills I reference as media literacy. It is also focused on preparing them to enter the real world of work, to provide current workforce literacy which means an understanding of how to interact, create value and leverage social/web technology for the purpose of the organization as opposed to the individual. More broadly, I hope to imbue a sense of community in students so that they see the interconnectedness of the world around them and can take that education to make their world, and ours by extension, a better place.

We could really use your help in securing a grant (or grants) in order to fulfill this mission. Please let us know your thoughts and help us if you can.

San Antonio Screams and Howls for Social Media

For those of you that remember the SeaWorld Summer Nights event, Social Media Club along with Social Media Breakfast and a few other local groups have been invited to be the special guest of SeaWorld San Antonio once again for their Howl-O-Scream event. As we approach Halloween, SeaWorld has a bevy of thrills and frights in store for all their guests and we’ve been invited to get a behind the scenes look at everything they’ve got planned.

Also, hear about our plans for social media for the rest of the year. The SeaWorld social media team will be on hand to answer any questions.

Come join us for a night of enlightened and scare-worthy fun.

RSVP HERE (RSVP by September 25th)

Host: Kami Huyse
Location:
SeaWorld San Antonio
10500 Sea World Dr
San Antonio, TX 78251
When: Thursday, October 1, 6:00PM to 10:00PM
Phone: 210-683-6776

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Happy Birthday SMCSA, Now One Year Old!

Well we’ve hit the first of what is sure to be many milestones, our first year in the city of San Antonio and we’ve had the pleasure of meeting a great many new people and we’re honored to have them and all of our regular favorites share in this experience with us.

Can you believe it’s been 1 year since San Antonio joined the Social Meda Club family? In that amount of time we’ve seen our club grow from the early-adopter geek crowd to include business, non-profit and media types.

We’ve got a great speaker planned for this event who will share with all of you the key points to social conversion. Brian Massey who is otherwise known as the “Conversion Scientist” will be joining us as our amazing guest speaker for this big event and we’re hoping that Brian can help you figure a way to turn that community of yours into something big. Brian’s topic: “Social Conversion Rate” is sure to be as informative as it is entertaining.

You can also catch Brian’s amazing wisdom over on his website The Conversion Scientist, but don’t blame us for your success!

Time: September 10, 2009 from 6pm to 8pm
Location: C4 Workspace, 108 King William, San Antonio, TX 78204

Photo Credit hfb

Putting Social Media Education Into Focus: A Community Proposal

For over three years, Social Media Club has worked to promote media literacy and connect people to share what they are learning about Social Media. Today, we are launching a new project to bring together the education and professional communities to further the development of social media curriculum in our schools. The #SMCEDU project seeks to ensure that graduates from every college/university are media literate and are able to competently understand and apply the emerging lessons from social media in organizations. It has always been the goal of Social Media Club to create what I think of as a “path to professionalism” for citizen journalists, story tellers, video producers, communications professionals and engineers.

We will support existing social media education efforts such as PR Open Mic, Classroom 2.0, Social Media Classroom and others while also seeking to coordinate efforts with school administrators and local professionals. Initially we expect a lot of participation coming from the US and will focus our efforts here (though I hope UBC in Vancouver also gets involved early), but we are most assuredly thinking globally in our long term scope.

Key to our success will be connecting the local Social Media Club groups more closely with their local universities to co-create a combination of mentoring programs, internships, professional development opportunities and a repository of Creative Commons licensed Social Media curriculum. As such, we are seeking local Social Media Club chapters with existing professors and ties to local schools to join our efforts to create some pilot programs. If that is you, please join our working group or at least join the SMCEDU Ning site we created for the project.

We are initially focusing on foundational research on what exists and identifying who is already teaching social media in colleges and universities. You can find a list of Social Media Teachers on our project Wiki which we have built from twitter replies so far (please do add to the list if you are or you know someone teaching social media).

We are now moving quickly to form a working group of interested Social Media teachers and local Social Media Club leaders to refine the parameters of the project. Join us for the kickoff conference call next Tuesday July 28, 2009 at 8am PST (more details under events on Ning). Our second conversation is seemingly to assess the state of Social Media education in universities in order to understand where we can provide the most value together. I think a weekly community podcast lead by the working group is in order…

Social Media Club has always promoted the importance of community, and in so doing has created relationships with other community organizers that are invaluable in manifesting this effort. It is going to be us, together, that will make this a success, not any individual company, group or organization. In fact, the impetus behind the current effort towards improving social media education in schools was inspired in large part by Steve Radick, the Social Media lead at Booz Allen Hamilton. Mr. Radick reached out to us in June about what we might be able to do to improve workforce literacy in social media and the SMCEDU initiative is the outcome. In talking with many people over the years, and even more recently, the time to undertake this effort really is NOW.

We understand this is a pretty big ball we want to get rolling, and the momentum we’re hoping to create will need the contributions of teachers, professionals, students and administrators. Connecting social media teachers to local members of Social Media Club is a top priority and something each of you can start to do today to improve the quality of education our schools are providing around social media and emerging technology.

Ultimately, we would like to formally connect our local chapters to universities, but initially we are merely seeking better informal relationships so we can determine together how to best proceed. Each situation will be a little different, but there will be enough commonality that we will all benefit immeasurably from collective action. We see Social Media Club as being able to facilitate numerous opportunities for students and teachers, but also see great benefits for local SMC leaders to coordinate with students and teachers on hosting social media training and more outside the classroom. In fact, developing a standard introduction to Social Media webinar / teleclass to be offered for free each week is a goal we are setting for October 1.

There are unique challenges in offering courses in areas of emerging practices and technologies. The rate at which technology is changing is overwhelming – what’s useful today will ultimately be overshadowed by a better method tomorrow. We hope to help school’s keep up with that change by offering an open, and ever changing, repository of social media curriculum, available through Creative Commons Non Commercial Share Alike licensing. Educational institutions often time considerable time to update their curriculum, so rather than waiting for a global change in university policies, we think we can help by offering free online webinars to students and teachers alike. If you join us in building this new community around #SMCEDU – one that allows advancement through sharing, contribution, and collective effort, I know we can be successful together.

Why do this? Besides it being core to our purpose, we see the world as having an economy largely based on knowledge, meaning ongoing education is not only a competitive advantage, but also key to our ability to thrive as a global village. We can leverage our knowledge of how the tools work, together with our relationships to teachers and professionals who know even more then we do to make a difference. We can provide students with the tools they need to get better jobs and in so doing provide organizations with a better prepared and media literate workforce.

The younger generation is tech-savvy, to be sure…but how many see the value of Twitter as more than just a way to broadcast what you had for lunch? How many utilize the learning power of iTunesU? Although today’s college students grew up in a web world, the way organization’s use social media is quite distinct from what they know. Social Media for organizational or social advocacy purposes or the development of public media and citizen journalism are all things that need to be experienced to be understood.  Ultimately, SMCEDU will provide opportunities for students to have those experiences and for everyone to be the better for it. The better prepared students are to enter the workforce, the more value they can provide and the more opportunities they will have to make a difference.

We’re excited about this project and hope that you are, too. If you’re interested in participating in this project please join our new SMCEDU Project Community on Ning. If you want to be a part of the working group that will lead the project, please just request to join the SMCEDU Working Group on the Ning site and join our conference call next Tuesday July 28 at 8am PST.

Of course, you will also want to follow the blog posts here on Social Media Club. The principle blogger leading the project is Yong C. Lee (@yongclee) who is interning with us this summer and perhaps a little beyond to help shepherd this project forward. In addition to blogging, he will be organizing the research, handling community relations on Ning and essentially running the project with a little guidance from me.

So if you want to improve the quality of social media education being offered in schools, please join us to improve social media education in our schools today.

Social Media Camp #IWNY Wrap-Up

Social Media Club’s Social Media Camp was a great success thanks to the over 120 people who participated! Social media Camp was held in the Roger Smith hotel last Thursday, June 4 2009 during Internet Week New York. The camp had over two dozen sessions throughout an eight hour day, with well known social media professionals, small business folks, professionals and corporate communications teams learning from and teaching each other. There has been some great feedback from those who attended and a good amount of sharing from the people at the camp too.

Some of the comments on Twitter

• VegasBill @pepsico The info packed sessions @ #smcamp 4 #iwny look amazing. @ChrisHeuer is a dynamic social media role model. Have a great time:)
• stevecherches RT @MellieBe: Check out our top social media marketing tips from Social Media Camp#smcamp http://tinyurl.com/l7dqm3 (Great post)
• deanmeistr @danzarella bummed I couldn’t do graphic recording of your talk at #smcamp - I dig the concepts/content of your talk–maybe next time!
• LesBlatt Smart idea seen at #smcamp yesterday: some attendees put their Twitter names on their conf name badges. Made it easy to follow them.
• chttrbx99 please retweet – Thanks to @howardgr & @chrisheuer for a great day at #smcamp NYC yesterday some great conversations
• SocialSteve @chrisheurer and @howardgr did a great job on #smcamp (Social Media Camp) at #iwny. Check them out at socialmeadiacamp.org
• Amver @chrisheuer Not only did I find #smcamp valuable I would love to join SMC. Hopefully our paths will cross again.
• SocialSteve Last week’s participation in #smcamp (Social Media Camp) and #iwny (Internet Week NY) has spawned tons of activity.
• craige @chrisheuer et al: Thanks for a fabulous event! I feel so inspired after attending #smcamp.

Differing slightly from a typical BarCamp, Social Media Camp not only offered open space for participants to create their day together, but also a “Social Media 101″ series planned out in advance to allow for those who are new to Social Media to learn some of the basics. These sessions were all streamed live and are available as an on demand episode from Livestream, a partner for Social Media Camp. This 5 session series was lead by Howard Greenstein and myself, Chris Heuer.  The links below take you to the blog post about each session, along with the SlideShare presentations used during each session.

1. What is Social Media Session
   
2. Creating a Digital Identity
3. Social Media Tools, Services and Networks Session 
4. Using Social Media for Job Searches Session
5. Marketing Through Social Media Session

Dean Meyers did some great visual notes, capturing the concepts and resources from the Social Media 101 Sessions. It was a lot of fun. More importantly, it seems we help many and created more questions in a few, so overall a success, but definitely just the beginning of the conversation and the process of learning how to use social media. The complete schedule for the day from the Open Space sessions is available on the blog.

 

Some of the other topics that were discussed were power of suggestion on Twitter, basics of strategy in social media marketing for businesses, social media tools, measurability, and marketing through social media. One session in particular struck a lot of conversation. Social Media Marketing triggered thoughts upon building relationships with the market, the importance of trust in marketing/branding and how companies are using social media to market their businesses products and services. 

“Companies in general don’t value social media marketing as much as they should. They’re afraid of it; they don’t understand it; and therefore, they just don’t do it. Yet it’s the most cost-efficient way of marketing there is.” – Ayelet Noff, Blonde 2.0.

Many different tools and tactics were taught, then they were put into play. One of the most compelling part of the sessions was the group involvement and peer to peer knowledge exchange. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, and were not scared to interact with one another. Among the ideas and information exchanged, relationships were built.

“I just love social media and Web 2.0…. I really want to thank the Social Media Club folks for having such a great event: Howard Greenstein, Chris Heuer and Kristie Wells…. The last session was really interesting. The topic was retweets on Twitter. Dan Zarrella from Hubspot crunched some numbers that gave a bit of insight on how people are behaving on Twitter.” – Regina, Volunteer at SMCamp

Well, we love doing it too, and Howard and Kristie and I are blessed to be able to do this sort of work and so happy to help people.

Other blog posts and photos from the event are below, please share yours in the comments:

• PepsiCo Blog
• expatJane’s Blog (Volunteer)
• Les Blatt’s Rambles
• SMC New Haven Blog Post
• DMDInsight
• ReadWriteWeb

Social Media Camp Photos:

• SMCamp room kickoff
• Social Voice from Livewworld
• Flickr from Courtney Crosslin
• Flickr from Howard Greenstein
• Flickr from Chris Heuer

How Can We Use Social Media To Foster Voter Education?

Educating yourself on the various initiatives hitting our ballots today can be a daunting task as you try and  cut through the emotion and muddied language around each issue. The standard voting guides do a decent job trying to share the pros/cons of each initiative, but more times than not, I find myself asking people around me – in my online and offline network – what their opinions are, to help bring more light to what that initiative actually means TO ME and to those I care about most.

It begs the question – what else we can do with the technology of today to capture those conversations and help inform others asking the same questions?

Join California Secretary of State, Debra Bowen, on Wednesday, May 27th at 7pm in San Francisco, CA for a brainstorming session where we dig into this topic in an effort to find new ways of engaging and informing voters using Social Media.

Contribute your thoughts ahead of time on socialvoter.org (use the form on the right sidebar to contribute), or you can tweet/blog your thoughts using the #socialvoter tag.

There is no fee to attend but they would like you to register so they know you are coming. Simply click ‘Attending‘ on the Facebook event. We plan to live stream the event for those who cannot participate in person. We will also be capturing some of the conversation on our SMC San Francisco Twitter account if you would like to follow along that way.

I am happy Social Media Club can play an active role in government 2.0 discussions. Earlier this month, our San Antonio chapter was asked to participate in covering the mayoral race using the Social Media tools at hand. There are several programs in the works, locally and nationally, where we will be extending this dialogue – so stay tuned!

Online Community Unconference: SMC Member Discount

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

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

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

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

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

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

Le premier Social Media Workshop in Paris, France

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

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

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

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

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

Workshop leaders and sessions will include:

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

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

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.

#SMCQ5 Bloggers: Facts & fallacies

Blogs are full of opinion, insight, fact and fiction… and bloggers can tend to fall in one of a handful of camps:  watchdogs, troublemakers AND authorities! This all, of course, renders the blogosphere such fun and eye-opening reading. However, the SMC Editorial Board wonders, is there an equivalent of ‘journalistic integrity’ in social media? We’d like to hear from YOU.

Our Social Media Question of the Week:
Are bloggers responsible for getting the facts right?

Please tag  your comments, tweets and posts #SMCQ5 and look for the conversation results on Thursday.

SMC San Antonio Meeting: Money Talks, Even Online

Social Media: Who’s getting it?

• GlobeHop: Vendors that get social media are the ones who can break out of the lingo and use plain speak to tie it into client’s business goals.
• hifivelounge: Important to be able to talk simply and clearly about SM without resorting to buzz words. Also value in humility and perspective.
• hifivelounge: @Kimber_Regator that can happen with “experts”. We like to listen first & learn from a client as we roll up the sleeves….
• GraemeThickins: “How do you know your vendor understands social media?” I say if they don’t ask, “Why would you share your knowledge on Twitter?”
• Francine Hardaway offered up some other tips on vetting your vendor to see if they truly understanding social media: “Do you see your vendor on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, other social sites? That’s the bare minimum. Read your vendor’s blog or his Tumblr, or his comments on the blogs of others. Is s/he a valuable member of his/her community? Engaged? Respected? Thoughtful? Social media is a very quickly evolving space, and new tools come out every day. Does your vendor evaluate them? Write about them? Understand what they do? Only after you’re sure your vendor is actually a user of social media do you ask the questions you would ask of any marketing consultant.”
• And finally, SMC Board Member Kimberly Turner found a wealth of posts on the topic, as well as offering up her view: “What I do know for sure is that too many corporations tend to forget the “social” aspect of social media and treat it like just another way to broadcast their rigid message into the universe. I also know that you should not only look at a vendor’s previous results but also make sure that their approach will work well with your company’s individual goals.”

Social Media Club Workshop Series

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

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

The six cities in this first leg are:

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

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

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

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

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

Social Media Buyers Guide Ver 1.0 Sneak Peak

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Coopetition’ in Action: Responses to SMC Question of the Week 1

Social Media Club’s Question of the Week kicked of 3/15/09 with the question “How can we best support our social media community and our peers knowing full well we’re often competing for the same clients and client money?”

We were pleased to have our social media community respond with a variety of comments, tweets and posts. True to form, members called for a combination of professionalism, collaboration and social innovation. We’ve highlighted some of the responses below.   

“Sharing what has worked and admitting where strategies have been punked is invaluable to our collective knowledge base,” @mollyrobben

“The only way to advance the profession is through collaborative efforts by social media professionals.”  — Pete Codella, http://www.petecodella.com

“If you look for a natural fit; a totally symbiotic relationship – it isn’t competition so much as finding what’s right.” @hhotelconsut

“So, if we are to pursue our individual passions and interests we need to know who else is doing neat things. The active use of social media in this regard leaves the other options in the dust. Without interaction we’re only as good as our individual thinking,” wrote Anthony Power at http://apowerpoint.blogspot.com. “Social media has one confounding problem,” he also noted. “it’s not only a tactic we can apply to client, it’s also the vehicle by which we communicate with one another.”

“After all, social media is a set of tools. I use them. I may help others learn to use them. Why should I even think of myself as competing with my colleagues? There are about 25 million small businesses in the United States alone, all of whom can benefit by learning to use social media. I will never reach them all.” —Francine Hardaway, http://blog.stealthmode.com 

Listen in Sunday, March 22, to hear the Social Media Club Editorial Board refine the second Question of the Week and check infor a post on the call so you can comment, blog and tweet your thoughts. After all, as Leslie Hawk at Life is Better with Lipstick wrote:

“Sometimes I find that if I am in a project too long, I only see what I want to see. I might miss a new angle or new avenue that we could explore that would benefit our clients. If I ignore what is being said about my project, client etc in the social media world, I am limiting myself as to the heights I can reach. I would say then that cooperation fosters competition – it breeds success!” —http://lifeisbetterwithlipstick.blogspot.com/

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