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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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The December 10th topic for Social Media Club Phoenix is “Blogging Deep Dive”, taken from one of the user suggestions in our Uservoice forum. This talk assumes you already have a blog, and want to develop your skills and reach.  It will talk about the reasons and motivations for blogging. How to build a consistent voice on your blog?  Should you cover one topic or many? How do attract and retain new readers?  Do you cross-promote or advertise on your blog?

If you have specific topics you would like to cover, leave a comment here or on the Uservoice entry.  The panelists are listed below along with their blogs, so please check them out in advance so you can ask them about the choices they’ve made in creating them.

Blogging Deep Dive Panel

Moderator:

• Chris Conrey, Human To Geek Relations, Integrum – @conrey, Blog: http://www.chrisconrey.com

• Francine Hardaway, co-founder, Stealthmode Partners – @hardaway @azentrepreneurs, Blog: http://blog.stealthmode.com
• Tim Heuer, Program Manager, Silverlight, Microsoft – @timheuer, Blog: http://timheuer.com/blog
• Matthew Petro, Lead Analyst, US Airways – @matthewpetro, Blog: http://matthewpetro.name
• Stephanie Quilao, Blogger/Chief Storyteller/Founder, Thriving Media – @skinnyjean, Blog: http://www.backinskinnyjeans.com and http://www.noshtopia.com

Social Media 101

And for you noobs, Evo Terra will be hosting Social Media 101 at 5:30 — sharp! This month Evo will share with you the 5 Best Social Media
Tools You’re Probably Not Using For Your Business. You’re already familiar with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, but there are plenty
more!

Because he only has 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.

Feel free to come to either or both talks, at the Jobing.com offices!

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