Our June meeting covered a requested topic from our Uservoice forum: Comparative SM Models. We were asked to take different types of companies and delve a little deeper into how social media could be used to address their specific needs and challenges. To that end, we created four very different business profiles, which you can review here, defined their goals and explained their challenges for our panelists.

Our first business was a start up looking to not only expand their business but also expand their customer base into a different demographic. Pat Harter gave us some tips and tricks to get a fledgling business off in the right direction; how to manage your web presence and maintain your identity and how you could use YouTube and internet based radio program to implement a focused communication campaign.

Next up Heather Herr took us through how you’d approach a new brand being test marketed locally. Heather’s solutions focused on not only building brand awareness and achieving the test marketing goals but also positioning the brand for its next stages of release; how to use Facebook as a primary portal, creating outreach programs to build brand ambassadors and how a video platform such as 12seconds could be used to capture consumer thoughts, opinions and testimonials.

Our third business on the agenda had a different problem – how do you use Social Media to create a community based program for a larger corporation to effectively change public opinion. Jenn Maggiore discussed how best to tap into LinkedIn to build partnerships with local municipalities and how traditional public relations strategies can be combined with tools like Twitter and Facebook to reach your audience, assuage fears and educate the population about your business.

We closed out the evening with a non-profit organization looking to build awareness of services, increase their volunteer base and donations. Chad Swaney gave us some strategies to meet all the needs of this non-profit; using Facebook as a content tool to reach potential clients as well as volunteers, focusing your event based organizing around Twitter and build additional event buzz in the community by leveraging geolocation applications like Foursquare to generate interest through event check-in’s and badge rewards.

We covered a ton of ground on how to take your marketing strategies and apply them through the use of social media tools. While no single tool is the panacea for all businesses, matching the right tools with your goals will make all the difference on how successful your strategy is. Many thanks to our panelists for providing us with a wealth of ideas and taking the time to explain the thought process behind their solutions.

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Image via Wikipedia

Some people say that everything should evolve naturally, that whole ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ mentality. Those people wouldn’t be us. While we do base each monthly topic on suggestions from you via our Uservoice forum, giving us a level of confidence that the content is somewhat of value, we decided to test our perception and devote some time to collective rumination. To that end we decided to host an open house at SMC Phoenix in May to gather feedback, have an open discussion, and hopefully discover a few new ideas to improve the group even more.

Topic Panels

Pretty strongly everyone liked the panel format and wanted it to continue. We heard that the exchange of ideas hits just the right balance between panelists and audience alike sharing their experiences and knowledge and learning something new. Our less than formal format gives people the feeling that they can ask questions and not be embarrassed whether they are beginners or just not as skilled in a specific area. Creating an environment conducive to open discussion and collaboration is what we aim for and we’re happy to hear that we’re hitting that mark. We will be shifting the structure a bit to ensure we’re not limiting a great presenter by making him moderate, but other than that we won’t be changing much structurally.

We will be looking for attendees to be part of the panels, so will start announcing the upcoming panels at each event and ask for volunteers.  We’ll then talk with everyone after the event and put together a good, balanced panel. Not everyone can be on every panel, but we want to rotate as much as possible.  Here’s what’s upcoming:

• June Panel: Comparative Social Media Models – How does SM work differently for a non-profit, a business, a brand, etc.
• July Panel: Social Media Monitoring – How do you tell if your efforts are effective?
• August Panel: Security, Privacy, and Legal Issues – How to protect yourself and your business online.

Member Involvement

Our level of member involvement could use some adjustment. We can and should make things more interactive but the Google group just isn’t going to cut it. We’re going to start building out our site by using the blog more frequently, having guest bloggers talk about their experiences and up and coming tools and provide more content on what is going on locally. We’re also looking at creating an opt in member directory where people can go to find the resources they need.

Announcements, Events & Meetups

From here out, we are going to limit announcements to social media related events, like Social Media AZ conference, WordPress Camp AZ, etc.  If you have something you want to mention, let us know before each meeting.

The recent tweetups with Jason Falls and Jay Baer were a lot of fun, and we’ll try to either coordinate more or just pass on the word when one is going on locally. People indicated they would like to connect more than just at the regular meetings.

Guest Blogging

We’d like to start having local social media people write about relevant topics on our blog. These don’t have to be massive, weighty topics, and we would love for them to have a local tie in some fashion.  If you’re interested in participating, let us know.

Odds & Ends

We had a lot of good ideas come up throughout the night. Mentoring pairing was suggested, as was trying a debate format some nights. Having a annual or bi-annual “Social Media Bootcamp” came up as a way to cover a lot of introductory topics for new people at regular intervals. Teachers for the Bootcamp could come from the group.  We also had a request for a “This Month in Social Media” recap at the start of the sessions. We’ll be giving some of these a try as we work out the kinks.

Thank you!

A big thanks to all that attended and provided their valuable opinions and ideas. Growth can’t sustain in a vacuum and any club is only as great as its members. If you’d like to watch the entire session online, Stephen Murphey has posted the video it in its entirety.

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As promised, here is the second part of our Tools and Trends Meeting Wrap Up

Blogging

WordPress 3 is out in beta now. The release date is scheduled for May 2010 but you can find plenty of feature overviews on the new features. WP Beginner

Posterous: Is an incredibly simple and flexible blogging platform. Post can made via email, mobile devices and through integration with a few dozen other tools.

Tumblr: Very easy way to blog, especially for audio, videos, or photo, just about anything from just about anywhere.  It does not rank, though.

TweetMeme: Very simple add on to any of the popular blogging platforms, making every blog post you create sharable. Must-have! 

Content

Formspring: Open yourself up to questions from the masses, literally – once you have an account people can ask you questions anonymously. You can choose which to answer, of course and which applications it integrates with.

BizGreet: A platform for hosting personalized web video that is customizable to the person viewing it based upon their browser, hosting environment or customer data.  

Twitter

Interfaces:

Tweetdeck Seesmic Tweetie2 (iPhone) Tweetie

Management:

 Hootsuite Cotweet: Multiple users can manage accounts, schedule updates run RSS feeds automatically through it and you can “assign” tasks and mentions to other people.

 SocialOomph: Very powerful tool for managing multiple accounts across multiple platforms.

 Friend or Follow: Manage your followers, and the people who aren’t following you back. Good optimization tool for your social graph. 

 ManageTwitter Easy way to manage your followers and those you follow with great statistics on their usage. Also has a great unfollow tool that is in danger of being shut down.

Measurement

Twitter

Statistics on users

Twitalyzer Klout Twitter Grader Twittercounter: Good for competitive research or finding “influencers.” Twitalyzer can also be integrated with google analytics for reporting purposes.

Statistics on Tweets

Tweetreach: How far a particular tweet “reached” via retweet and the subsequent networks. Good for measuring results.

General

Sysomos MutualMind Ubervu: Excellent suites of business intelligence tools for measuring effectiveness across multiple platforms. Ubervu also includes sentiment rankings.

 Research and Monitoring

Knowem Howsociable: Figure out where your business or competitors already have social profiles at a glance. Howsociable will try to “score” that presence while Knowem just lets you know if the username is available.

Radian6:  An enterprise level tool that you can use to collaborate with team members and collectively monitor for mentions of your brand to respond to.

Meltwater: A cheaper version of R6 that can be good for reporting but not as robust for real-time response.

Socialmention: A search engine where you can get quick stats on a brand name. You can also use RSS feeds from Twitter search, google search, blog search, Yelp review page, etc and route them through Yahoo! Pipes to watch that way, for free.

Did I miss something? If you have another tool, site or category that you’d like to add to this list, simply put them in the comments section below.

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We intended April’s meeting to be a bit of departure from our typical format and we were quite successful. The panel was focused on Tools and Trends with a special nod to what was hot at South by Southwest. I captured a small novel full of up and coming sites and the hottest trends in the social media arena and will be posting them in a serialized fashion over the next week.

Social Media 101

Evo Terra kicked off the evening with an in-depth presentation, Dispelling SEO Myths, focusing on the fundamental concepts of great web design, content creation and effective implementation that will get your site noticed. You can find more information and view the presentation on his site A Simpler Way.

SXSW Hot List

Geo location based services were predominately featured. Tying your physical location to your virtual communities through an application where individuals can post locations and activities out to their own network, and businesses can gather data about their customers.  These check-in based applications are quickly becoming platforms, and with companies like PayPal announcing an API for mobile applications these platforms will be very soon be transactional, if they aren’t already.

Suggested sites: Whrrl Gowalla Foursquare

QR codes or Quick Response codes because they are read quickly by a mobile devices by scanning the code through its camera. They can store all kinds of useful bits of information on just about anything from products to people in the form of links, videos, text, photos and more. Google has added QR support to their new url shortener, goo.gl, which will create a code for any website by adding QR to the end of the shortened url (Chrome only for now) and Facebook recently created a stir by openly testing the ability for users to create a QR for your profile or status updates.

Suggested sites: Kaywa Goo.gl

Other Cool Sites

Venmo Exchange money with trusted friends via text messages.

Foodspotting Find and log specific dishes not just restaurants.

StickyBits Building social connections through bar codes by attaching digital content to any real world object.

TabbedOut Create and close your bar tab on your iPhone using a stored credit card at any participating venue.

Upcoming Events

SMC Parents

April 22^nd – MadCap Theater in Tempe

Raising Arizona Kids magazine is partnering with Social Media Club Phoenix to provide parents with information to ensure their children are safe online. Our panelists will break down the popular social networking tools so parents can understand each tools use, and how each can be used safely.

Know parents at your children’s school?  Neighbors?  Friends?  Please forward them this information and help spread the word about this valuable resource!

http://www.smcphoenix.com/parents/

PechaKucha

April 29th – Fractal in Phoenix

Phoenix isn’t lacking in designers. There are architects, gamers, graphic gurus, urban planners … the list goes on. New to the city is PechaKucha—an event designed as a sounding board for these creative minds lost in the desert sand. Drawing its name from the Japanese term for the sound of “chit chat”, it rests on a presentation format that is based on a simple idea: 20 images x 20 seconds. It’s a format that makes presentations concise, and keeps things moving at a rapid pace.

http://www.pecha-kucha.org/night/phoenix/

Big thanks to Stephen Murphey for graciously volunteering to record a video of the night for us.

Please take a moment to place your votes for future topics in the SMCPhoenixUservoice forum. We try to make each meeting topic one that the community is most interested in and your votes are instrumental to our planning process.

Up next…Blogging, Content & Twitter

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 January’s meeting was centered on Facebook and based upon the turn out I’d say it was an excellent topic choice.

The evening started off with Evo Terra leading SM101. He spoke at length about the recent Facebook privacy setting revisions, providing an excellent overview of how your data is made available to others and what you can do to ensure that you are only sharing what you want to share.

The Facebook deep dive panel, moderated by Jay Baer, dove right into the finer points of marketing using Facebook. We covered the details around the benefits and limitations of fan pages, the application developer ecosystem, search and the live feed and even spoke to the finer points of tagging. Of course, they also spent some time discussing how Facebook fits into your marketing strategy when it comes to brand loyalty and relationship management, providing some tips and tricks on content and connecting with your customers.

The detailed notes and contact information for the panelists and moderator have been posted in the SMCPhoenix Google Group – thanks Andrew!

Please take a moment to place you votes for future topics in the SMCPhoenixUservoice forum. We try to make each meeting topic one that the community is most interested in and your votes are instrumental to our planning process.

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The notes from last night’s great “Your Novice Is Showing” discussion are posted in our Google Group.  A big thank you to everyone who showed up and participated in a very lively discussion.

Many people had ideas on different tools they use – please add them to the message thread in the Google Group to share with everyone. Also, Chuck Reynolds is going to make a post of all the events we discussed last night – which will also be in the group.  So if you haven’t joined the group yet, now is the perfect time!

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SM101 got off to an auspicious start with Jeff Moriarty filling in for the esteemed but traffic challenged Evo Terra. Jeff gave the group of about 12 people an overview of WordPress, including; hosting options, widgets, plugins and themes then left the crowd in the capable hands of Evo who presented ‘5 Simple Things That Make Your Blog Better’.

The main event, “Old Media using New Media” was moderated by Michael Barber with a panel of local media representatives and journalists who have experienced firsthand the challenges that traditional media has faced in the last few years. We covered topics ranging from personal safety and ethics policies to the difficulties overcoming corporate resistance.

We ran the twitter-stream for #smcphx on a screen in the room, and the backchannel discussion was both interesting and a source of questions for the panel.  It worked well, so we’ll give this a try at future events.

The detailed notes and contact for the panelists and moderator can be found in the SMCPhoenix Google Group.  Where you can also find additional resources, ask questions and look for ideas.

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We had an excellent Social Media Club session, with Evo Terra's SM 101, then a panel on Educating Up The Ladder.

About
fifteen people showed up for the SM 101 session, and discussed how to
use social media to properly engage with customers, Facebook ideas, and
much more. Evo will continue to adjust the format and content based on
feedback, and will be offering it again before the August 13th SMC,
starting at 5:30.

The Educating Up The Ladder panel, moderated
by Tyler Hurst, featured representatives from a wide range of Valley
organizations discussing their challenges and issues in depth.
Highlights included which tools were being used, how governance played
a critical role, and what were the main concerns in each area.

For more detailed notes and contact information for the panelists,
please join the SMCPhoenix Google Group.  It is free, and a great
resource to ask questions and look for ideas.

Also please put in your vote for future topics in the SMCPhoenix
Uservoice forum. We're using this to help schedule future sessions that
are of interest to the community.

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Great meeting last night on the 5 Best/Worst of Valley Social Media. We tried a panel format that worked well, and we will definitely try again.  Big thanks to Chris Conrey (@conrey), Roger Williams (@halfacat), Michael Barber (@michaeljbarber), Evo Terra (@evo_terra), and Tyler Hurst (@tdhurst) for their input (although we had some technical difficulty with Tyler).

One change for next time will be "Social Media 101" that will run from 6:00 to 6:30 next month, immediately before the normal SMC meeting. If you or someone you know has questions about Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogging software, or other general items – come on down!

I took notes on the comments from the panel, which I am not posting here. If you want to read and comment on them, you need to join the SMCPhoenix Google Group. It allows for a much better discussion than forum comments.

We also had many great ideas for future topics, several of which I've added into our SMCPhoenix Uservoice forum.  Please visit that to vote for your favorite ideas, or add your own.

Thanks to everyone who came and participated!

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