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.

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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

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Requesting the end of Auto DMs

This is a post I have been trying to write for two months. Typical me wanted to do some research, poll our community, do more research and then write this really thoughtful piece about the pros and cons of auto DMs, and I finally realized today…I just need to get it out there. It won’t be perfect, but at least I will have said my peace.

I am not a fan of the auto DM and I want people to stop sending them out. Please.

What was once a feature being used to tell people a little more about you has now become nothing but a promotional tool and a total annoyance. On any given day, the Social Media Club account sees 50-75 auto DMs that range from ‘get rich quick’ to ‘get 18,000 followers in two days’ to someone simply saying ‘thanks for following me!’.  None of these have value to me.

The first two are spam, the latter is sweet, but honestly – I would rather you not send that auto DM as it doesn’t tell me anything about you. I understand your desire to recognize the follow, but all it did was cause me to spend an extra minute in the day hitting the delete button. Multiply that by 50 tweets a day with the same message and it has suddenly become a big annoyance. I don’t like it and it seems I am not the only one feeling this way based on the feedback we got when we asked our community in February (just a little sampling):

• Jason Finch: I treat auto-DMs to follows as spam, the spammer then has to do a lot more to get my further respect and trust.
• Anthony Stevens: If social media is about conversation, how can bots take your place? They can’t.
• Jens Schroeter: Since I believe in Social Media as a great opportunity to foster meaningful conversations I don’t believe in any tool to do so. I love tools to search and analyze, but I don’t see any value in auto-responding.
• Andrea: As I see it, the primary issue with auto-responders is that they are impersonal, highly subject to misuse and can be easily turned into another spam tool.
• Kimberly: I think a lot of people using them miss out on opportunities to legitimately connect with new followers through a sincere, personalized hello message. They tend to think that the automated response has made that connection on their behalf, which is just untrue.
• Sue James: When I follow you it’s because I’ve taken the time to browse your tweets, Twitter page and website or blog and appreciated something in particular that I’ve read there. So unless you are prepared to do the same and actually engage with me in some way, don’t send me an auto DM! And also don’t feel you have to follow me back.

As the Twitter community grows so does the number of auto DMs we receive. What was once manageable, now requires 10-15 minutes a day culling through our DM ‘spam’ trying to find the real messages someone actually took the time to pen PERSONALLY.

It makes me wonder if there is some secret ‘getting started with Twitter’ handbook being passed around to everyone signing up for a new account that says the auto DM is a good idea. Trust us, it might have once served its purpose, but it is nothing but an irritant to most people now (see above bullet points and the related post that has more great feedback).

So please, I beg of you. Turn the auto DMs off.

If you are really interested in getting to know me/us, how about we go a little ‘old school’ and do the following:

• Reach out personally 1:1 and let me know a little about you.
• Learn a little about me before you reach out. If you do, you will know that I don’t like to receive ‘get rich quick’ DMs (and I am starting to block people who send those out).
• Understand I am not going to promote something you did just because you asked me to.
• I am not going to click on a random link from someone I don’t know – no matter how enticing the tiny url looks.

And please know I do appreciate the thought of you thanking me for following you, but let’s both just do this telepathically and save me wearing down of my delete key.

Please.

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I want to Tweet your Blood…

On March 3^rd, SMC will team up with Blood Centers of the Pacific for the first San Francisco Blood Drive Tweetup. Walk-ins are welcome, but appointments encouraged!  To register as a donor, visit bloodheroes.com, click “Donate Blood” and use the sponsor code “Tweetup.”  If you have not donated with BCOP before, it will ask you to set up a new login that asks for name, date of birth and email address. Then you can select the appointment.

Then join us at the Elephant and Castle at 424 Clay Street from 4-8 pm to hang out, save lives and claim your free post-donation burger.

We are also looking for volunteers for the big day, so if you can chip in a few hours let Kristie know by sending an email to kristie [at] socialmediaclub [dot [org].

For more info please visit:

• Upcoming link: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1746451/
  
• Twtvite link: http://twtvite.com/2ra6ds
• Also an event on our Facebook page: http://tinyurl.com/BCPonFacebook
• Official tag for this event is bcopsf1

So please come on by, roll up that sleeve and donate a pint or two!

Special request: We would appreciate any help you can give in spreading the word by retweeting this text to your pals on Twitter:

Please RT: Help BCOP and SMC save lives! SF Bay Area Blood Tweetup on March 3rd! Roll up your sleeve & donate a pint! http://bit.ly/bcopsmc1

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Member Survey: To Auto DM or Not To Auto DM…

There are several services available today such as Twollow and SocialToo that help Twitter* users send an automated direct message (DM) to anyone who follows them. Some people use this auto DM this to say ‘thank you for following me,’ while others provide links to their websites or information they feel their followers would be interested in - some purely self promotional, others not.

Some folks love the auto DMs, some folks hate it.

It has been a hot issue on Twitter recently, so we thought we put together a quick poll (online or click on green ‘vote’ button on top right of map below) for YOUR thoughts, then write a little summary post and share the information with the SMC community. Answer away, we can’t wait to see what you have to say (note, we made it either love it or hate it to keep answers pure and easier to track for the purpose of this post - also, you do not need to be registered on ask500people.com to place your vote, but need to have an account if you wish to leave a comment).

*If you have not heard of Twitter before, it is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to post and read updates from other users. We encourage you to check out this swell video our friends over at Common Craft put together to explain it in a little more detail.

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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.

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The Big Story: New Member Site Coming (finally)

Update from SMC Founder Chris Heuer

We have been hard at work rethinking what it means to be an association in the era of ad-hoc groups, smart mobs, tweetups, barcamps and other group activities that don’t require any institutions.  To this end, we have developed a plan for our online membership community that brings together the best in Social Media with the best aspects of traditional associations.

Our member site will serve many of the same purposes of typical ‘industry’ associations: to grow the industry; to look out for the better good; to discuss legislative concerns and advocate if appropriate; to educate the general public; to separate the signal from the noise; and ultimately to promote its members. With the rise of Web 2.0, there is also the added potential to leverage collaboration technology in entirely new ways, which we fully intend to do in what we think are several innovative ways.

The new Drupal based member site will serve three primary purposes.

1. Connecting members in local groups with others from around the globe to learn from each other, to collaborate, to socialize and to transact business.
2. Collaborating with each other in exploring, discussing, researching and ultimately creating informative media that furthers our understanding of social media and its application in different situations.
3. Promoting the Social Media Solutions offered by members (products, services, time, books or even workshops) within a respected website where buyer’s turn to find the solutions they need.

In addition to local group sites which will be 10x better then Facebook groups IMHO, we are expanding on our Social Media Events Calendar and launching several new blogs which will be open for member contributions. Of greatest interest to many of you will be our Social Media Directories - a Member’s Directory, a Speakers Directory, a Solutions Directory and a Service Provider/Consultant Directory. In support of this new member site, we are also launching a new editorial effort which is detailed below.

We now have the resources in place and the confidence in the community support we can get to undertake this important step forward knowing we are not alone in our quest.  We believe this is not only beneficial for us, but hopefully for other groups and associations struggling with similar issues.  We hope we can help light the way for some other organizations who are figuring out how to make the most of this Social Media and Web 2.0 technology for their members.

We are working with Samuel Rose out of Canada as the lead Drupal developer - in addition to being recommended by Michele Wolverton, Sam worked on the Social Media Classroom Project with Howard Rheingold (which we hope to support in some cool ways).  It will be several months before all the pieces are in place to complete the full vision. As with any well intentioned Web 2.0 project, the process will be open to feedback from members and continuously evolve as we literally redefine the purpose of member associations.

Bold claim? I think not because I am in shock that more associations are not using these collaborative technologies for the benefit of their membership. We will launch the beta during SxSW with a limited alpha starting next week seeking your input and suggestions.

So what’s in store for members? Stay tuned… or better still, would you consider joining Social Media Club as a professional or business member? We haven’t really made an appeal such as this directly, but today we are launching our first fund raising drive so we can afford to develop this new member site and put more administrative staff in place to keep the trains running on time (which I clearly can’t do on my own despite having a great wife and partner like Kristie Wells). The cost is just $100 for a Professional membership, $250 for a Small Business membership or $2,499 for a Corporate membership.  The benefits mentioned above are just a few on an ever growing list.  Please join us on our mission to improve media literacy, promote industry standards, share best practices and encourage discussions of ethics and become a member today.

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SMC News: December 2008

In this issue:

• The Year Behind, The Year Ahead
• Getting All Official Like: Filing the 501c3
• Welcome New Members!
• New Website, Events Calendar (and more)
• Member Badge Now Available
• Local Chapter News
• Social Media Workshops: 2009 Planning Begins
• Conference Discounts Available to SMC Members

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The Year Behind, The Year Ahead:
Recently, during the Social Media Club South Florida meeting earlier this week at Yahoo’s Miami offices, Chris Heuer delivered his first annual ‘State of the Club’ address over Ustream. It was a last minute decision, which will be promoted further in advance next year so you can join the chat online as a dozen plus other people did. Some of the highlights are talked about in more detail below, but the big picture is this

• We have 33 active cities now with 37 more forming very soon
• We took in approximately $13,000 in membership fees this year and a little bit of money from our workshop in Hawaii and other smaller events – this was against approximately $20k in expenses, meaning Chris and Kristie are still funding some of the organization on their credit cards
• A lot of good things are happening soon, details below

You will be able to view the live discussion, which includes a look ahead at Social Media in 2009, on the SMC website [will update the post over the weekend], and you can follow along with Chris’s slides on SlideShare.

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Getting All Official Like: Filing the 501c3
Yes folks, we finally did it. We sent the paperwork and the check in to receive our 501c3 non-profit status from the IRS. We are told it could take months to finalize this, but it feels good to have that ‘in the works’ now. As such we will be seeking nominations for our formal board of directors as well as a few workgroup leaders at the beginning of January. The initial board consists of Howard Greenstein, Serena Ehrlich, Todd Defren, Chris Heuer and Kristie Wells. We are looking forward to having representative directors based on the wishes of paying members, so if you want to be considered, or would like to be part of the process – send an email to kristie [at] socialmediaclub.org and watch the Web site (or RSS feed) for more details in January.

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Welcome to our SMB and Professional Members:
We’d like to acknowledge our new Small and Medium Business Members and Professional Members here. Thank you ever so much for opening your heart, and your wallet, to support the mission of Social Media Club.

• SMB Members: J.J. Toothman and Holly Hagen (Shiny New Toy), Mike Volpe (Hubspot), Frederik Hermann (Jajah), Brian Flatow (The Ad Store), Tami Casey and Danielle Salvato (Kulesa Public Relations)
• Professional Members: Jennifer Lindsay, Charlotte Ziems, Sarah Mason, Dave Peck, Dahna Chandler, Erin Bray, Jean Shirk, Adam Hirsch, Eric Doyle, Steve Radick, Yvette Ferry, Shwen Gwee, Pamela Abbazia, Jeff Cole, Des Walsh, Peter Fasano, Antonio Viva, Jack Hadley, Simon Small, Lynn Miller, Chris Lynn, Sean Davis, Pierre-Yves Platini, Pete Codella, Dale Larson, Vanessa Rhinesmith

Each of the members mentioned above will receive a Social Media Club Member Kit that includes a membership card, t-shirt and stickers. They also get included in the SMC Member Badge, which includes a member directory, events calendar, and featured posts from all paying members ($100 level+). Also, members receive three free job postings on http://socialmediajobs.com/ with other benefits being added soon. We will continue to beef the kits up as time goes on with other promotional items, discounts and various other benefits, so stay tuned for further announcements!

It’s hard to ask for money in these economic times, but we would be honored if you were able to join as a paid member so that we can continue sharing our knowledge and bringing people together to expand our collective abilities. If you are able to support us financially to continue our work, please register here, and we look forward to welcoming you officially to the SMC family!

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New Website, Events Calendar (and more)…
November was a busy month for us as we launched our new website, events calendar and a shiny new member badge (more on that below) all in an effort to help you to connect with local chapters, social media practitioners and continue learning (and teaching).

We still have some work to do on the website, but are happy with the progress being made.

Want to know what Social Media related events are happening in your neighborhood? Make sure you check out the new Events Calendar that highlights the local chapter events, and other conferences and seminars we think you might be interested in. Even better is the ability for you to feature any Social Media related event members should know about by filling out the form offered on the bottom of the events calendar page.

We are always on the lookout for interesting content to share with our community, if you have a video or an article you would like help promoting, please send us an email to socialmediaclub [at] gmail.com and we will work to get it up on the website. Likewise for any good presentations or video on teaching social media we might be able to feature on our home page.

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Member Badge Now Available
We released the Social Media Club Member Badge to highlight those who folks within our community to help promote you and the work you do. They way it works is every day we go through all of the blog posts written by members and select the best posts on Social Media, which then get featured inside the badge. The badge also has a member’s directory of professional members ($100 level+) and an events calendar that we also just recently launched. It also features a book store of the most interesting books written by members and friends of Social Media Club.

We would like to thank Chris Carfi and his excellent team from Cerado who developed the badge for us. There are going to be some even better developments put into the badge during Q1 we think you will really appreciate.

To get your SMC Member Badge, go to Cerado’s site where you will find both mobile versions as well as a code snippet for your favorite dashboard service (netvibes, iGoogle, etc), web site or blog.

<ad-sponsor-request> If you are interested in sponsoring the badge and the various mobile versions of it, we are currently getting around 2500 views per day on it and seeking a monthly sponsor for $1,000 which is around a $14cpm, but distribution is growing as is page views. </ad-sponsor-request>

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Local Chapter News
Fall 2008 has been a busy time when it comes to chapter launches, and it doesn’t look like it is going to slow down in Spring 2009 either. We are still working to get some stronger organizational tools in place before launching more cities, but found…sometimes…you just need to let it happen and worry about the details later. J If this has been frustrating for you, we would like to apologize, but we only have so much time in the day and have been doing this as a labor of love as opposed to doing it as a paying job. We appreciate your patience and your continued support of our growth, hopefully in a city near you soon!

Here is what has been happening and what is being planned (that we know of):

OCTOBER:

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

NOVEMBER:

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

DECEMBER:

• Chapter Launches: London (UK)
• Planning Meetings (preparing for launch): Greenville, SC (USA) - Orange County, CA (USA) – Seattle, WA (USA)

JANUARY:

• Chapter Launches: Greenville, SC (USA) - Salt Lake City, UT (USA)
• Planning Meetings (preparing for launch): Detroit/Ann Arbor, MI (USA) – Hamburg (Germany) - New Orleans, LA (USA) - Orlando, FL (USA) - Portland, OR (USA) - Tampa, FL (USA) - Toronto, ON (Canada) - Tucson, AZ (USA)

To find out information on your city launch and/or planning meetings, please visit the SMC Wiki and click on the city nearest you. The great thing we have found is that you too can start an SMC chapter in your town – so just add your city if its not there and review the ideas and insights on the wiki about what you can do to be more successful with your efforts.

We are also hosting a weekly chapter call where we answer questions around what is needed to launch Social Media Club in your local city, how to develop awareness campaigns, discuss topics/conversations that have worked well in other chapters, securing sponsorships, and so much more.

The calls take place every Wednesday, and alternate weekly – at either 8am PST or 5:30pm PST - an updated schedule is available online in the Social Media Club events calendar. The conference call dial-in number is (269) 320-8400, and the access code is 509633#. These calls are recorded and will be posted shortly on the SMC website.

We do ask that you review the SMC Chapter Guidelines (scroll down to the bottom of the post) before you jump on the call and if you have time, you might check out this 30-minute podcast SMC Founder, Chris Heuer, did with SMC Louisville Chapter Leader, Jason Falls, on Organizing a Local Social Media Club. Take a listen.

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Social Media Workshops: 2009 Planning Begins
We are starting to plan for the next year and are looking at bringing the Social Media Workshop to several cities around the world.

We will be contacting local chapter leaders shortly to see about interest in hosting one in their city, and welcome your thoughts on where these should take place too. Please send your suggestions to events [at] socialmediaclub.com and we will publish the list shortly. Plans include both a US and European ‘tour’ with the possibility of adding in Australia and perhaps China. Stay tuned for more details

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Conference Discounts Available to SMC Members
I am pleased to pass along discounts provided to members of the Social Media Club (SMC) community for the following events:

• Blogwell: January 22, 2009 in Chicago, IL (USA) – Discount is 15% off ticket price. Just mention SMC when registering.
• Social Networking Forum: March 9-10, 2009 in London (UK) – Discount Available: 15% off ticket price. Please register using this special form to ensure you receive the discount.

Other conferences happening around the world we think you might be interested in:

• Social Media Jungle: January 7, 2009 in Las Vegas, NV (USA)
• Chicks Who Click: January 9-10, 2009 in Boulder, CO (USA)
• SoCon09: February 6-7, 2009 in Atlanta, GA (USA)
• SXSW Interactive: March 13-17, 2009 in Austin, TX (USA)

Also, keep on the lookout for more details about Pool 2.0: The Ultimate Tech Pool Tournament which will be held on Sunday, March 15th in Austin TX at Buffalo Billiards from 8-midnight. Paid SMC Members get in free, while others will pay a small fee to offset the costs of the free beer, live music and charitable tie-ins. If you want your company to field a team - check out this post on the event and then contact chris [at] socialmediaclub.org for more details.
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Be well you Media mavens.

Cheers,
Chris and Kristie
Website - http://www.socialmediaclub.org
Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/SocialMediaClub
Facebook - http://www.new.facebook.com/pages/Social-Media-Club/13521448764
FriendFeed - http://friendfeed.com/rooms/social-media-club

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Social Media Now 12.7.08

Here’s what’s been going on in Social Media over the last week or so. Missing something? Email me or add your news in the comments section!

• Jeremiah Owyang points out Five Ways Web Professionals Should Be Proactive In a Recession.
• Chris Brogan tells us why Twitter Needs Two Channels.
• Patricia Skinner wonders if social media is really right for everyone.
• Everybody’s talking about Facebook Connect, and Shiv Singh shares his thoughts.
• Pownce was Acquired by Six Apart, which prompted Doug Haslam to write this post: Social Media Top 5: Goodbye Pownce, PR Still Not Dead, Mapple
• Scoble wonders if paying the crowd will be the new business model, like Dave Ingram is doing with Brownbook.
• Lee Odden gives some excellent tips from his Twitter followers in his post, Get Social Media Smart with 26 Tips on the Social Web.
• Jason Falls points out 10 Promotional Mistakes of New Bloggers.
• Last but not least; Lidija Davis tells us what President-elect Obama has to say about the internet and economic recovery.

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Social Media Club: Chapter Launches

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

Join us on our weekly chapter call where we answer questions around what is needed to launch Social Media Club in your local city, how to develop awareness campaigns, discuss topics/conversations that have worked well in other chapters, securing sponsorships, and so much more. The calls take place every Wednesday, and alternate weekly - between 8am PST and 5:30pm PST. An updated schedule is available online in the Social Media Club events calendar. We know these times are not ideal for the International crowd, so feel free to email kristie [at] socialmediaclub.org to schedule an alternate time as needed.

The conference call info is as follows:

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

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

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

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

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

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

OCTOBER:

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

NOVEMBER:

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

DECEMBER:

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

JANUARY:

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

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

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Social Media Club: Weekly Chapter Call

Want to launch Social Media Club in your city, or have you started, but would like some advice on how to growth or manage the group?

We are getting requests daily to launch chapters in cities around the world, so we are scheduling a weekly call series for every Wednesday at 8:00am PST to review what it takes to launch a chapter and how to ensure success when you do.

As I mentioned in an earlier post today, one of the goals of SMC is to encourage the sharing of knowledge between the cities - I want Paris to know what is important to Chicago, London to know what Austin is talking about, New York to keep tabs on Kansas City, etc. - so you should keep in mind we are building infrastructure to help you not only manage the local chapter easily, but also to connect with the other cities and members. It is coming, I promise, but for now - things are done a little manually across various platforms (wiki, Facebook, Ning, the main SMC site). We will also invite local chapter leaders from existing Clubs to join in each week to share their insights of what has worked best and guide you along the way.

The conference call info is as follows:

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

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

Playback Number: (641) 715-3445
Access Code: 509633#

We are also working on an official chapter launch guide, and have started to draft some items on the wiki. We encourage everyone to review these BEFORE you join the call so we all have a baseline to work from:

• Wee if your city is already meeting, also some good info if you scroll down to the bottom
• Suggestions from active chapters on how to ensure success in How To Run a Meeting

SMC Founder, Chris Heuer, also interviewed SMC Louisville Chapter Leader, Jason Falls, recently on Organizing a Local Social Media Club. This is a 30-minute podcast, please take a listen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Social Media News: September 2008

In this issue:

· Welcome New Members!

· Member Benefits Package

· Social Media Workshops: Starting the Conversation

· Documenting Election 08 Using Social Media

· SMC Gatherings Around the World

· Conference Discounts Available to SMC Members

· Local Chapter Leader Conference Calls

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Welcome to our SMB and Professional Members:

We’d like to acknowledge our new Co-Founders, Small and Medium Business Members, and Professional Members here. Thank you ever so much for opening your heart, and your wallet, to support the mission of Social Media Club.

· SMB Co-Founders: Janet Fouts, CJ Brasiel, Patrick Sellers, Roxanne Darling, Shane Robinson, Lee Odden

· SMB Members: Bradley Silver, Tom O’Brien, Laura Chavoen, Aaron Strout, Heather Strout, Matt Shandera, Regan Fletcher, Karen Greenburg, Ted Morris, Ashirwaad Badami

· Professional Co-Founders: Jackie Peters, Patrick Reilly, Steve Banfield, Jennifer McClure, Scott Schablow, Stephen Collins, Alex de Carvalho

· Professional Members: Douglas Pollei, Joel Richman, Ayelet Baron, Jeanne Meister, Jim Nieters, Chris Ray, Crystal King, Beth Harte, Eric Rochow, Tucker Carney, Jason Falls, Cyril Simone, Janie, Graziani, Jason Kintzler, Ziad Kane, Jeff De Cagna, Te-ge Bramhall, Allen Mireles, David Naumann, Steven Fish, Tim Eby, Kathleen Ferretti-Gambale, Andy Sernovitz, Michelle Brusyo, Heidi Proctor, Zoe Korstvedt, Tessa Horehled, JoAnn Peach, Kyung Han

Each of the members mentioned above will receive a Social Media Club Member Kit that includes a membership card, t-shirt and stickers.  We are also happy to announce that for the next few months, new members will also receive an Akoha starter kit.  If you don’t know what that is yet, you need to check out http://akoha.com/ to see this great concept for yourself. We will continue to beef the kits up as time goes on with other promotional items, discounts and various other benefits, so stay tuned for further announcements!

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Member Benefits Package

We have been working behind the scenes to define the value proposition to attract new members (and keep existing ones connected) to Social Media Club and work towards building out the member benefit packages that are a little light right now.

The committee members are Michael Brito, Serena Erlich, Chris Heuer, Aaron Strout, Des Walsh and Kristie Wells and some thoughts have been shared on the SMC website on what we are thinking of and we would absolutely love your feedback on what you think the should be included in your SMC membership. Please post a comment and/or connect with us directly. Thank you for continued support.

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Social Media Workshops: Starting the Conversation

If you are trying to understand why Social Media is such a hot topic and what your organization should be doing about it, this is your chance to attend a workshop hosted by SMC professionals from around the world.  Each workshop has a slightly different focus and flavor, and each workshop is hosted by a different group of leaders, but each workshop is designed with you in mind, so you not only learn from lectures, but through conversations and interactions with the leaders.

We have two workshops coming up this year (with more to come in 2009):

Honolulu Hawaii - October 23, 2008

• $295 Registration ($100 discount if you register before October 10th)
• 8AM - 3PM @ The Hawaii Prince Hotel
• Workshop leaders include Roxanne Darling, Beth Kanter, Chris Heuer and Kristie Wells
• More information on the Hawaii workshop including the agenda is available on the http://SocialMediaWorkshop.com Web site
• Register Now

Northern California - November 8, 2008

• $395 Registration ($100 discount if you register before October 31st)
• 9am - 5PM @ TBD
• Workshop leaders include Erin Kotecki Vest (QueenofSpain), Lauren Fitton (Pistachio), Adam Metz, Jeremy Toeman, Kristie Wells and Chris Heuer
• Erin will be leading off this workshop with a keynote on her insights from the 2008 Presidential Election from the prior Tuesday.
• More information on the Northern California workshop including agenda and venue details will follow shortly

SMC Members in good standing (i.e., paid up on dues) can receive an extra 10% off by using a special discount code, which you can receive by emailing events@socialmediaclub.org.

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Documenting Election 08 Using Social Media

The SMC Boston chapter, to encourage more hands-on social media learning, built a social network for people to document Election 08 from a Social Media perspective. In a little more than a week, there’s been a lot of great content, and from some very cool and smart people in the Boston area. But it’s not just a Boston idea. It can work everywhere.

Add your thoughts now and join the conversation.

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SMC Gatherings Around the World

We have a fresh round of local events coming up over the next month and hope you can join us at one of them:

• Dallas, TX ( USA) - September 25th
• Paris ( France) - September 29th
• Boston, MA ( USA) - October 9th
• London ( UK) - October 9th (planning meeting)
• Phoenix, AZ ( USA) - October 9th
• Isle of Man ( British Isles) - October 16th
• San Francisco/Silicon Valley, CA ( USA) - October 21st

More cities to announce upcoming dates shortly. Keep watch online for a gathering in your local city.

As for growth, while we would like to build the organization organically and just blindly say ‘go do it’ – we also know the value of the Club will be finding ways to get the cities to work with one another, so we are intentionally growing at a slower pace right now as we implement the technology to ensure that happens.

If you are interested in launching SMC in your local city, please sign your city up on the wiki so we can start collecting names of other people interested in attending in your area, and seeking out venues to hold each gathering.  It will make it so much easier when we get ready to launch to know what the dealio is.

We also ask that you listen to the following podcast and read the wiki material on things to consider, and then jump on our weekly call held on Wednesdays, starting October 1st, to discuss the requirements for launching Social Media Club in your city, as well as receive advice and feedback to ensure your launch is a success.

• SMC Founder, Chris Heuer, recently interviewed SMC Louisville Chapter Leader, Jason Falls, on Organizing a Local Chapter (30 minute podcast)
• Best practices and items to consider provided in the How To Run a Meeting guide (on the wiki)
• Weekly call on Wednesdays at 8am PST. Conference Dial-in Number: (269) 320-8400, Participant Access Code: 509633#. These will be recorded for those who are not able to attend the live call. Playback Number: (641) 715-3445, Access Code: 509633#.

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Conference Discounts Available to SMC Members

I am pleased to pass along discounts provided to members of the Social Media Club (SMC) community for the following events:

• AMA - Viral Marketing - Is it right for your firm?: September 25, 2008 in San Francisco, CA - Discount Available: $15 off standard non-member ticket price of $50. Use discount code fall08.
• Social Media Marketing Summit: October 1-2, 2008 in San Francisco, CA - Discount Available: Passes available for $495 (onsite reg. $1,295). Use discount code w3ace2.
  
• SMX East New York: October 6-8, 2008 in New York, NY ( USA). Discount Available: 10% off badges at all levels. Use discount code smx10smc (case sensitive)
• Executing Social Media: October 15-16, 2008 in Atlanta, GA - Discount Available:  $200 off the registration fee. User discount code ESM08SM.
• Social Media Summit: October 20-23, 2008 in New York, NY - Discount Available: $200 off registration. Mention Social Media Club when registering.
• Forrester’s Consumer Forum 2008: October 28-29, 2008 in Dallas, TX - Discount Available: Call +1 617.613.5905 or email events@forrester.com and mention SMC to save $400 off the full conference rate. Discount applies to new registrations only and cannot be combined with other offers.
• Searchnomics Social Media Strategies Conference: October 29-30, 2008 in San Francisco, CA - Discount Available: $150 off registration. Use discount code smclub.
• The Marketing & Online Communities Conference: November 5 in New York, NY – Discount Available: $100 off registration. Use discount code smcmoc9.
• Social Media for Internal Communications: November 17-20, 2008 in San Francisco, CA - Discount Available: $200 off registration. Mention Social Media Club when registering.

Other conferences happening around the world:

• BlogOrlando: September 25-27  in Orlando, FL ( USA)
• NCDD 2008 Conference: October 3-5  in Austin, TX ( USA)
• Social Media for Social Changes: October 10 in Boston, MA ( USA)
• BlogHer Reach Out Tour: October 11 in Boston, MA ( USA)
• BlogHer Reach Out Tour: October 13 in Washington, DC ( USA)
• New Marketing Summit: October 14-15 in Foxboro, MA ( USA)
• Mystic Meetup: October 17-18 in Mystic, CT ( USA)
• PodCamp Pittsburgh: October 18-19 in Pittsburgh, PA ( USA)
• Web 2.0 Berlin: October 21-23 in Berlin, Germany
• MarketingProfs Digital Marketing Mixer: October 23-24 in Scottsdale, AZ ( USA)
• PRSA 2008 International Conference: October 25-28 in Detroit, MI ( USA)
• Blogwell: October 28 in San Jose, CA ( USA)
• Web 2.0 Summit: November 5-7 in San Francisco, CA ( USA)
• 3rd Annual Society for New Communications Research Symposium & Awards Gala: November 14 in Cambridge, MA ( USA)
• 3rd Annual Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference: November 19 in Phoenix, AZ ( USA)
• Web 2.0 Tokyo: December 3-4 in Tokyo, Japan
• SXSW Interactive: March 13-17 in Austin, TX ( USA)
  

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Local Chapter Leader Conference Calls

We are going to begin regular monthly conference calls with the SMC Chapter Leaders to ensure you are informed on the latest happenings within and around the Club.  Your feedback will ensure the Club grows strong and is meeting the needs of our members.

Watch your email for the details on each call.

Be well you Media mavens.

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Social Media RoundUp

I put a request out on Twitter earlier today asking for recommendations of the ‘must read’ articles that have been penned over the last week that focused on the use of Social Media tools.

You fine folks answered with the following:

• 5 ways to use Social Media to reach people who don’t use Social Media: by Marshall Kirkpatrick at Read/Write Web 
• 50 ways to take your blog to the next level: by Chris Brogan
• Are you conversationally tone deaf: by Connie Reece
• Disruption of cascading conversation: by Jay Deragon
• Growing use of Social Media Technologies in Businesses: by peopleperhour.com
• How Barack Obama Is Using Web 2.0 to Run for President, by Daniel Nations at About.com
• How to Use Yahoo Answers for your Social Media Campaign, by Vine at primaryeffect.com
  
• IBM’s Beehive social networking community: by Toby at Communitelligence
• Limiting, and watching, what children watch: by Lisa Guernsey at New York Times
• Twits on Twitter: by Rob Sellen
• Using Twitter for business: by John Jantsch
  
• You can do your job without Twitter: by Chris Brogan
  

Interesting tool found: flibfarb

Other: Collection of live streams by loremcast

Thank you to everyone who submitted an article to share with the community. We greatly appreciate your input and will start collecting these regularly to help spread the word about interesting conversations happening around the world.

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Social Media Breakfast

This morning 40+ folks interested in SocialMedia converged on Sears Fine Food for an early morning networking experiment overseen by the Social Media Connector extraordinare, Jeff Pulver.

Jeff has put together a toolkit to jump start conversations by taking an online tool (tagging) and bringing it into an offline format to help people meet one another through a very basic exercise. It’s beauty is in its simplicity.

This idea epitimizes everything we love about Social Media as it shows what the tools can do to help connect people - both online AND offline (muy importante to build relationships in both realms).  It is something we have believed in and promoted for some time now, and we are extremely happy to see Jeff ‘productize’ it to give it a giant push forward.

Thank you Jeff and everyone who came out this morning.

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