Join us on Wednesday, October 26th at Gannett Local for Social Media Camp – hosted by SMC Phoenix. Social Media Camp is designed to help people and businesses harness the power of social media. This camp will last 2 hours (from 6:00pm – 8:00pm)  Please keep in mind this event is designed for novice users with some experience with social media.

Space is limited. To reserve your spot RSVP HERE

Below are the topics we will cover:

I. Developing your personality –you opened a Twitter account, started a blog or created a Fan page on Facebook; it’s time to start getting active. SMC Phoenix will guide you through the posting process, helping you create an online persona that speaks to your business or personal brand.

1. Defining who you are
2. Integrating SEO terms
3. Putting words online
4. Questions

II. Gaining Followers—creating post isn’t fun if you don’t have any followers. We’ll give you tips and guidelines to help you attract followers on your Twitter and Facebook pages.

1. Like and follower campaigns
2. Facebook ads
3. Marketing your page
4. Questions

III.  Snapshot of Facebook—it’s a behemoth of a program. Navigating through Facebook can be challenging and confusing. We’ll give you the ins and outs of applications, touch on basic rules and more to help you get started with your page.

1. Apps that help you manage your page
2. How to increase your impressions
3. How to generate engagement
4. Questions

IV. Twitter Refresher Course—Twitter is a way to quickly inform your followers about what’s going on in your world. We will give you tips, information and a general snapshot of what the Twitterverse looks like.

1. Understanding the Twitter lingo
2. How to join other conversations
3. Questions

V. Resources—It’s important to do you homework. We’ll quickly recap and guide you to different sites, books, etc. that will help you navigate the social universe on your own.

Image via Wikipedia

Finding the right balance between work and your personal life is difficult offline, and can be even more challenging in the digital universe. As we move to network or brand ourselves as an expert in a subject, we turn to social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook to give ourselves a place to share our opinions.

Finding our voice without alienating personal or professional contacts, as we navigate through social sites, can be taxing, difficult and a game of trial and error. In July, Social Media Club of Phoenix held a Twitter Chat to discus this very topic.

What we learned during our Twitter Chat was that most people blend their personal and professional contacts via social platforms—especially via Twitter vs. Facebook. On Twitter people are providing information about the latest trends in their industry, local hotspots and events throughout their day.

Everyone agreed that the litmus test for a post is “whether you would share it with your parents or with your boss.” For example, @dragonflytweet said, “Social: I’m going out tonight Personal: I’m going out on a hot date and hope to get some.”

The positive side of sharing a personal side on your social pages is that your business followers can get to know who you are—allowing you to establish a stronger relationship. @CherylMarquez said, “Yes, my business followers would love to know what I have for dinner, I provide great restaurant recommendations.”

In the end it’s about carefully analyzing what is right for you, and how you are going to manage either separating or blending the two worlds together. Overall, it seems that SMC Phoenix encourages you to merge the two—just post responsibly!

Be sure to check out August’s Twitter Chat on Friday, August 5th at 2:00p.m. We will be discussing the hottest trend to hit the social space – Google +! Be sure to check our website for updates, we will be posting questions in advance. Plus you can always let us know what you want to talk about by sending a Tweet or DM to @dmoranjr or @CherylMarquez.

Image via CrunchBase

Whether you are using social media in your professional life or just in your personal life, we all struggle with posts that are appropriate for both worlds. Finding that balance can often be difficult, and a strategy to manage your social platforms can come from trial and error.

The Social Media Club of Phoenix is hosting a Twitter Chat on Friday, July 8 at 2:00p.m. on finding the balance between your professional and personal life online. Social junkies will come together to share their experiences, advice and problems—so be prepared to share!

We will be asking the group questions that include:
1. How personal do you want to get, and where do you draw the line?
2. Do professional followers really care about what you are doing or think is cool?
3. How do you find a balance between the two different style of posts?
4. Is it more strategic to have two separate accounts?
5. Does merging the two worlds together, make you more approachable and likable in the business world?

Date: Friday, July 8th
Time: 2:00pm – 3:00pm
Topic: How do you find a balance between your professional and personal life via social media?
Hashtag: #smphxchat
Co-hosts: Cheryl Marquez and Daniel Moran

You can also RSVP on Facebook. Please share this event with anyone you think may be interested.

Last week a new group of people met who will be working on Social Media Club in Phoenix to talk about the direction for the group and our upcoming sessions. The group included Jeff Moriarty, Andrew Knochel, Chad Swaney, Jerilyn Kruger, Daniel Moran, Cheryl Marquez, and Chris Lee. We want to take greater advantage of all the great resources in the club and in the Valley, and get some farther reaching plans in place for content and meetings.

Location, Location, Location

Since everyone liked it last time, we have accepted a very gracious offer from Gannett Local to host at their downtown offices through November. Parking, navigation, and after-meeting libations seemed to work well for everyone.

More #smcphxchat Twitter Chats

The topic for June 3rd #smcphxchat is When and how do you take your online social contacts offline. They happen the first Friday of every month at 2:00pm on Twitter. Cheryl Marquez and Daniel Moran are doing a great job leading these, and if you have an idea for a future topic let them know!

Upcoming Meeting Topics

We’re working to have a longer planning schedule for upcoming topics, both to let people plan further in advance, but also to let us do more to prepare for the sessions. We have some details for the June topic below, and main ideas for both July and August.

June 9th: Developing Your Online Persona or Brand — How to translate your own personality or the persona of a brand/company via social media. We will be addressing questions that include: What language do I use?

1. How do I “stay true to my personality” when I work for a conservative company?
2. How do I convey a brand/businesses’ personality online?
3. What are key problems or issues that can arise from taking my personality online?

Be prepared to share your stories and experiences, as we will be discussing ways to help your personality come across. You can also RSVP on Facebook and help share it with others you think are interested.

We’ve also set topics for our next two meetings, though we don’t have the detailed info and Facebook events created.

July 14th: Building Your “Guest List” in Social Media – Sure, you can learn “from those who came before you”…but don’t let that stop you from coming up with alternative ways of growing your social media tribe.

August 11th: Blogging Platforms Compared – WordPress vs. Posterous vs. Tumblr – Compare three blogging platforms, focusing primarily on
blogging for personal use. We’ll discuss the pros and cons of each platform, briefly touching on RSS, SEO, mobile blogging, and plugins.

Whew!

That’s a lot of info – I’m glad you made it this far! We have a lot of great stuff going on, so hope you made it to the Twitter chat and down for the June meeting so you can be part of our planning for the future!

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Image by Aidan Jones via Flickr

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A quick recap of the SMC Phoenix from last Thursday, because it was a great one. We were meeting at SkySong for the first time, and will probably be there a few more times until we sort out a permanent home.

We’ll be doing that sorting with the help of some new people, like Chad Swaney, who are stepping up to help run the group and organize regular events. We had an open session where we discussed appealing content, Twitter Q&A chats, book discussions, and having a group where people could ask questions of other members.

We liked the group idea so much we set it up on the spot. We decided to use Facebook, and you can ask to going the SMC Phoenix Members group if you’re interested. This is for members to interact and product and company promotion is what’s known as “verboten”.

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Image by kevindooley via Flickr

The April Social Media Club is meeting this Thursday, April 14th, at 6:30pm at a new location. We’re not sure this is our final home yet, but that’s one of the things we want to discuss this Thursday.

First, here’s the agenda for April:

Announcements & Info – Upcoming events and social media related topics from around the Valley.

SMC Phoenix – Where we are and what’s coming. An update on the plans for SMC for 2011.

SXSW Recap - A brief discussion of some of the trends and info from the South by Southwest Interactive conference in March. If you attended, we would love to have you share your thoughts.

Open Workshop – What social media challenges are you struggling with? The value of SMC has always been in the sharing of ideas and expertise between everyone in the group. Jeff Moriarty and Chad Swaney will lead an open workshop to take questions and challenges from SMC members and try to provide ideas from the entire group to help them out. Bring your challenges and your creative ideas to help out!

And to help you find us this month, here are the very important logistics:

Where: SkySong Center – 1475 N Scottsdale Road
Parking: Park in the North lot (uncovered)
Room: SkySong 1, 301 (Ingenuity)

Note there is NOT going to be an SM 101 session this month, but we hope to have it return in the future.

Since this news is going out a bit late this month, we appreciate any and all help in sharing, retweeting, or helping spread this around!

Image via Wikipedia

A few things are changing this month at Social Media Club, so please read this whole post. It’s not that long, I promise!

No SMC Phoenix in March

SMC would normally be held March 10th, but due to my and many other people being out of town for the South By Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) Festival, we are skipping this month. So there is no SM 101 and no SMC this month. Just a beautiful extra Thursday you can go sit outside and enjoying the weather.

If you’re going to SXSW from the Phoenix area, let me know and we can add you do our 2011 SXSW Phoenix Twitter List.

Looking for a new home and new people

Starting in April, SMC will be at a new location. The great people at Jobing.com have been gracious hosts for several years, but they are no longer able to offer us the use of their community room on Thursday nights. I want to thank them for all the support and resources they have given us until now, especially Greta Suda and Holly Schor!

Both Terralever (Mill Ave) and SkySong (Scottsdale) have offered to host us starting in April, and we’re working out the details and should have an announcement by the end of the month. If you know of any other locations that can reliably hold 40-ish people, has technical/wifi infrastructure, fairly centrally located, and can commit to the 2nd Thursday of every month, please let us know.

We’re also looking for people who want to get involved in running monthly sessions. Not just speaking, but helping to schedule the meetings and line up content. SMC is very much a community supported group, so please consider helping out. If you want to get involved, drop us an email.

Image by SnaPsi Сталкер via Flickr

The October 14th topic is going to be a discussion about the best ways to develop a social media strategy.

Social Media Strategy – If you don’t have a plan, how do you know if you succeed?

Having a strong strategy is critical to executing a successful social media program. Strategies identify goals and provide the framework for achieving those goals. It’s easy to get distracted with the latest, coolest social media technology – a plan is the roadmap that puts that technology into context and helps brands and businesses determine which tactics are most important for them.

Moderator:

• Jeff Moriarty, Director of Social Media Strategy – Sitewire/Chair – Social Media Club Phoenix, @jmoriarty

Panel:

• Jennifer Maggiore, Founder and President – Maggiore Consulting & Marketing / Locals Only: Video blog show – Co-Host, @jenn_ex
• Chris Sietsema, Teach to Fish Digital – Owner, @sietsema
• Michael Barber, Lucid Agency – Strategist / Energy Advisors, LLC – Partner, @michaeljbarber
• Jay Feitlinger, StringCan Interactive – President / ShopTab – Co-Founder, @jayfeitlinger
• Katie Van Domelen, Off Madison Ave – Social Media Manager, @ktvan

The panel starts at 6:30pm.  Please help spread the word, and if you have specific questions you would like us to cover, leave a comment here.

Social Media 101 – Social Media Mistakes

For those of you who are new to defining SM Strategies, Social Media 101 has just the thing for you at 5:30 — sharp! This month we are leading into our Social Media Strategy discussion with Biggest Mistakes You Can Make In Social Media. If there is anyone with more experience on this topic than Evo Terra, I would be afraid to meet him!

Because we only have about 45 minutes for the class plus a Q & A session, please be on time. The class will end at 6:15, giving everyone plenty of time to make it to the main SMCPHX meeting that starts promptly at 6:30.

Both discussion are open to anyone interested, join in at the Jobing.com offices!

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The emergence of The Social Family is bringing a whole new set of efficiencies to communications between family members, and making it easier to keep in touch across long distances. It is also not without its own set of challenges, from the common “my kids won’t friend me on Facebook” to more dangerous issues such as child safety, cyber bullying and online stalking. With every increase in the level of public disclosure we make about our lives, we are at once becoming more connected to our broader community and providing potential evil doers with insights into our homes and our family life.

To discuss some of these issues, we’re excited to build on our previous Social Media for Parents sessions and support a panel discussion on this topic here in Phoenix, hosted by Chris Heuer from the national Social Media Club.

This is part of the national SMC + Family, A Dad’s Perspective tour, and is facilitating a conversation among insightful dads who blog and among the local social media community to discuss if and how social media is bringing dads closer to their families and keeping families more connected, or making their lives more challenging.

This session should be a great resource for all parents, not just dads, so please join us for an educational, engaging, and important evening.

Register To Attend SMC + Family in Phoenix

Register at the SMC + Family Eventbrite site and join us for the event.

Where: Hotel Valley Ho in Scottsdale (map)

When: Thursday, September 30, 2010 from 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM

Cost: Free for members of Social Media Club, otherwise a $10 requested donation to Let’s Cure CP.

You can also RSVP on Facebook to let others know you’re attending.

Dads Who Lunch

If you’re a dad and a blogger, and interested in discussing some of the online challenges you face in a group,  Chris is also hosting a “Dad’s Who Lunch” session. There is limited seating, but you can request an invite on the Dad’s Who Lunch site.

Spread The Word

Unfortunately, a lot of parents who would benefit from this session are not engaged in social media actively so may not see news about it through our normal tools , so please help us spread the word about this event.  Email it to friends, schools, and anywhere you think parents might be interested.

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