Lenovo Live @ CES 2010

Social Media Club members are invited to join Lenovo along with other leading journalists and bloggers for Blogger Nights @ CES. Tonight’s event is sold out, BUT if you are a card carrying member of Social Media Club, a registered member of the gdgt community or an attendee of Social Media Jungle, all you need to do is show your credentials to enter. We will be at AquaKnox in the Venetian from 9:30PM to 1:00AM.

If you missed last year’s Ultimate Blogger Dinner, you don’t want to miss Lenovo’s Blogger Nights @ CES 2010. We have incredible food from one of the best restaurants in Las Vegas (according to last year’s reviews), and an open bar with premium wines, cocktails and beer.

Lenovo’s Blogger Nights is a chance to relax and unwind at the end of the day with your colleagues, to share stories and to create some new ones for your readers/viewers/listeners (and some that will stay in Vegas). This is one CES event you won’t want to miss.

Lenovo’s Blogger Nights is co-hosted by Social Media Club, gdgt and Social Media Jungle. During Blogger Nights, Mitch Ratcliffe will be live streaming each night, interviewing attendees to discuss the most interesting news from each day. If you would like to pre-schedule an interview, please email mitch@ratcliffe.com.

Be sure to check out Lenovo Social, a great portal to find recent news on Lenovo and things happening here at CES.

Social Causes: Tweets For Boobs.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month and my dear pal, Josh Strebel, has rolled up his social cause loving sleeves and launched the Tweets For Boobs website to support the efforts of the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

The goal is to raise $10,000 for breast cancer research.

First off, the site is pure genius, and a great example of utilizing social media for fundraising. The integration with Twitter, Facebook, etc. is well done and I love how easy it is to pledge.

All you have to do is include #tweetsforboobs in a tweet through the month of October and with every tweet you are making a $1 pledge for donation.

Follow @tweetsforboobs and at the end of the month, we’ll give you your pledge total so you can make a donation to Susan G. Komen Foundation for your total pledge amount.

They have raised just over $1,000 over the last two weeks. We’d like to lend our support for this cause, and would love to see everyone in the Social Media Club community tweet just once using the #tweetsforboobs hashtag. Commit to $1. Let’s rally together and help make a difference. Do it for the boobs people.

SMC San Francisco/Silicon Valley Chapter Seeks New President/Team Lead

It has been a good ride over the past three years, but the time has come for me to resign as the president of the San Francisco/Silicon Valley chapter*, and hand the baton on to someone who can really devote the time and attention needed to ensure the chapter continues to serve the needs of the local community.

My current time commitments – president and acting COO of the global Social Media Club organization, my contract with Ribbit and helping to manage our Agency, AdHocnium, are requiring more of me these days, which leaves little time for anything else. I want to stay involved, but in a much lesser role (see below) – note, we also need a Production Director.

The local chapter has been loosely run, with a fairly large group of 15+ people volunteering as time allows. I think going forward, it would behoove the new local president/team lead to reduce the core organizational team to six people, each focused on one main task, and then have a larger group of ‘general managers’ supporting these six roles to ensure things run smoothly.

• President/Team Lead – Event project management, locks in schedule and ensures events actually happen monthly, works with Directors to complete projects assigned. Oversees all accounting records. Fills in where needed. Open position
• Programming Director – At the heart of the Social Media Club is great interactive events. The Programming Director manages all aspects of the activity calendar for the San Francisco /Silicon Valley club by determining topics to be discussed and speakers to present. Confirmed: Jennifer Lindsay with support from Chris Heuer and anyone else who wishes to submit topic ideas and/or speaker suggestions
• Production Director - Securing venue for each meeting, managing on-site signage, video, audio and lighting, working with Partnership Director to coordinate food and drink with event sponsors and/or venue, ensure supplies are provided at each event (name badges, pens, markers, etc.). Open position
• Digital Scribe(s) - Responsible for recording the discussion and producing a blog post/video/podcast that will be posted to the socialmediaclub.org website within one week of the event. Confirmed: David Libby, could use 1-2 more volunteers here.
• Promotions Director(s) - Managing the local chapter calendar postings on the socialmediaclub.org blog, wiki, Facebook group, Upcoming and other related forums. Confirmed: Janet Fouts and J.J. Toothman
• Partnership Director - manages the relationships with the national Social Media Club parent organization, other important related organizations (both national and local), as well as with local businesses and organizations interested in sponsoring or hosting upcoming activities. Confirmed: Kristie Wells (also acting Secretary/Treasurer)
  

When the work is distributed as noted in these roles, I would imagine each role would require, between 1-4 hours per month administrative plus 2-3 hours the night of the event.

If you are interested in taking on one of these positions, please let us know as soon as possible – either leave a comment below or shoot me an email to kristie [at] socialmediaclub [dot] org. Fall programming is in full swing, we need to lock this new team in and start making plans for 2010!

*P.S. We have been alternating meetings each month – one in San Francisco, the next in Silicon Valley. San Francisco events see between 75-150 people each month, Silicon Valley between 50-75. There was talk of splitting the group up and forming two chapters again, but I would love to see it continue as one…at least through the rest of 2009.

Mars brings on the SMC #sweetups

Everything is better with chocolate, right?

We think so, which is why we partnered with Ms. Green and the fine folks over at Mars to send boxes filled with M&M’S®, Snickers®, Twix®, 3 Musketeers®, Milky Way®, and Dove® to 20* of our Social Media Club chapters around the United States as part of the Mars Real Chocolate Relief campaign.

*The boxes started to ship two weeks ago and will/have been seen at Social Media Club chapters located in Austin (TX), Boston (MA), Chicago (IL), Greenville (SC), Los Angeles (CA), Louisville (KY), Miami (FL), Minneapolis (MN), New York (NY), Philadelphia (PA), Portland (OR), Raleigh (NC), Richmond (VA), Sacramento (CA), Salt Lake City (UT), San Antonio (TX), San Francisco (CA), Seattle (WA), St. Louis (MO), Washington (DC), and Wilmington (NC).

For those of you not able to get to one of these 20 cities (or even if you do), bookmark the Mars Real Chocolate Relief website as every Friday between now and September they will distribute 250,000 coupons for a free full sized chocolate bar. Sweet.

We wish to extend a big ‘thank you’ to Mars and Ms. Green for making our events a little sweeter, and hope you will savor the taste of real chocolate this Summer.

The Corporate Social Media Ecosystem

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“So now what?”

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

To turn the corporation social…

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

And, of course, corporations must have a STRATEGY!

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

AND NOW (DRUM ROLL)

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

Here’s what Ravit’s tasked us to do…

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

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

Ravit’s perspective?

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

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

Social Media Club SFSV: Sonoma Bound on July 11, 2009!

Come join the Social Media Club for their FIRST ever wine adventure!

We know you’ve been slaving away all year, so isn’t it time to kick back and relax a little? We thought so too, so we got together with Barbara Drady (@WineEvangelist) from Affairs of the Vine to put together a Social Media Club road trip to Sonoma wine country!

Here are the details:

• July 11 – we’ll meet up at the Presido Bowl Parking lot in the Presidio, San Francisco, board the bus and leave at 9:30 AM sharp.
• First stop is Keller Estate Winery. We’ll have a tour of the winery, a guided tasting and a light lunch provided by the winery.
• Next is Baletto Vineyards for a guided tasting and also enjoy some cheese and snacks with Dutton-Goldfield’s wines in their shared tasting room.
• We’ll wind up the tour at Owl Ridge, where we will taste more wonderful wines, learn about wine blending and blend our own bottle to take home.

After the blending party, it’s back on the bus to San Francisco.  We are expecting to be back in the city by approximately 5:30 PM.

The cost of this event is $65.00, and there are only 40 spots available.  Tickets will be on sale until July 10 at 5 PM – assuming they don’t sell out.  Book your tickets today to avoid being left out!  http://sfsvjul09.eventbrite.com

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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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