@BasilPuglisi

Content & Strategy, Powered by Factics & AI, Since 2009

Social Brand Visibility

Brand Blogs: Mashable

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Considered an internet news blog, Mashable was launched from Pete Cashmore’s very own home in Aberdeen Scotland in 2005. Its primary purpose is to cover the latest news in social media, but it also covers any new news and developments in entertainment, online video, web development, technology, mobile and other gadget reviews and information.

The site has reported as many as 30 million viewers and users in one month and has a vast following on a variety of different social networking sites. With over a million Twitter followers and a great Alexa ranking it seems to be continually improving and proving itself in the eyes of the search engines.

Mashable’s provide straight to the source information, reviews, blogs and other sources of great informative content that keeps users coming to check it out, and previous users returning when they need to get to the root of just about any problem Mashable addresses. Mashable is also gaining a huge following through sources like Facebook and Twitter users, which is continuing to be an influential demographic.

Awards and Recognitions

Mashable began at the end of 2007 to host an International Open Web Award contest that would give recognition to the best online services and other communities. Voting was conducted online and not only by Mashable but also by its twenty four blog partnerships. In January of 2008 Mashable’s announced their Open Web Awards winners that included Facebook, YouTube. ESPN, Pandora, Google, Twitter and Digg.

Mashable acquired Blippr, a micro review service website, in March of 2009 and has only continued to rise in popularity among those who rely on blogs, news sites and reviews of technology to do their own related jobs. This process helps to keep a continual flow of updated materials that Mashable users know they will find when they head to their site for answers.

In 2011 Mashable CEO and founder Pete Cashmore was named one of the Young Global Leaders by the World Economic Fourum. The World Economic Forum, based in Geneva, Switzerland, is an independent international organization that aims to improve the state of the world by engaging leaders in partnerships to shape global, regional and industry agendas.

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Social Media & Brand Monitoring Part 4: Techrigy, Seesmic

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SM2 – Techrigy

When Techrigy, a Pittsford, N.Y Company, reached 1 Billion conversations, in Feb. 2009, it was posted all over the internet. In July of that same year, the company was acquired by Alterian, a British integrated marketing software platform and a leading marketing service company. Their product was labeled SM2.

The company provides brand monitoring solutions for social media. It provides tools to monitor and measure social media sentiment analysis, trend comparisons, geographic analysis, theme detection, authority measurement, demographic and classifications.

SM2 helps brand managers see what people are saying about their brand, who is saying what, how the competition is doing and what is said about them. It is an essential tool in market research and shows, analytically, how a campaign or new product launch is performing.

SM2 follows what was said on blogs, message boards, forums, micro blogs (like Twitter, Plurk, Indeti.ca), Wikis (user generated information sites), video and photo sharing sites (You Tube, Flickr) social network sites (Facebook, Ning, LinkedIn), classified sites and review sites.

All this vast information, categorized by topics, is delivered to their customers, aggregated and diced into graphs and pie charts so you can dig out the information you need and adjust your search to make it more accurate.

In comparison to Radian6, SM2 showed almost the same search results. The sentiment result was much better in SM2, but the interface is not user friendly. The initial set up time for each search also takes too much time. 

SM2 serves advertising agencies and PR firms like Abraham & Harrison ( working with Kimberly-Clark Healthcare, Lowe Worldwide, Sharp Electronics), Bader Rutter (GE healthcare, Pfizer) and Yamego (MTV, Durex, BBC).

Their pricing is compatible to Radian6 – plans starting at $500 a month.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC3L8XlMoCQ]

Seesmic

Seesmic, founded in 2007 by French investor Loic Le Meur, still operates out of San Francisco. It offers tools to monitor the activity on Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites, and respond in a timely manner from one centralized place.

In 2009 the company went through a re-launch from being mainly a video uploading site to aggregating content from other social networks. They have a few programs:

Seesmic Desktop – which allows you to manage several Twitter accounts, build groups and “Build your community”.

Seesmic Web – A web based version that allows you to manage a few Twitter accounts, on any web platform. The information is being stored in a cloud, not on your computer.

Seesmic aim is to be the gateway to all your social services needs on any platform you are on, local apps and mobile phones. The nicely designed app, allows you to link your Twitter and Facebook accounts, you can add a Ping.fm account and automatically update all of them together with one post, or each of them separately.

In January 2010, Seesmic acquaired Ping.fm, a company that allows users to publish updates on many social media sites with a single click, and its ranged grew to over 50 social networks.

Users range from individuals looking to interact with their following, to big brand managers and social media experts. They do not offer analytics.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHoAcEAGsKQ]

SalesForce Chatter with: Android, iPhone, BlackBerry and Windows Devices

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNsVqB_V4S4]

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Social Media & Brand Monitoring Part 3: Sysomos, TruCast

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Social Media has given every one of us an equal voice in what is being said on the internet about a brand, and with that changed the way our entire world works.

The more saturated the world wide web becomes, with information geared towards making money, not always in an honest way, more and more searches are conducted through social media sites that can give a firsthand, personal experience testimonials using the brand.

That, in turn, changes the way companies are advertising and handling consumer’s complaints. It changed launching campaigns, and reshaped the way advertisers are learning what works and what doesn’t.

There are online tools to help brand managers and small business owners track, analyze and react to what is being said about them on the World Wide Web. They help control the visibility, what is being said and where, and enables real time reaction.

Sysomos

“Business Intelligence and Social Media” – that is how Sysomos labels itself. What’s happening online, what it means for your products or brands, and how to engage in the conversation, are some of the areas their software enable their customers to do from one centralized place.

They provide Social media analytics that gives you the tools to make the right decisions. Their database has an archive of data collected from forums, micro-blogging, videos, blogs and other social sites.

The company, in existence since 2005, employs logarithms to scan information in the form of crawlers (similar to what Google does when new pages are uploaded) and categorizes, breaks down and aggregates that information from all over the world. That includes sites that are not in English, with the help of a translating tool.

Sysomos prides itself for having a 4 tire security against spam, which is meant to produce a spam-free and true report, for being able to produce results in real time and for enabling you to reach and react to the information in a timely manner, any time of day or night.  It also has an automated sentiment report to make it easier to navigate through the information.

The site will give you analytics; who is talking about your brand and where they are located. You can compare the information to those of your competitors. You can choose to identify the influencers who are talking about your brand and start a conversation. All this can be done with the same platform and you can share information and assign responsibilities to other team members.

A spinoff of the University of Toronto research project, this Canadian company’s flagship offering –  “MAP” (Media Analysis Platform) was launched in 2007, and was aimed to serve corporations, marketers, public relations agencies and advertisers. Another program called “Heartbeat” was launched in 2009, and is a cost effective version of the program. In 2010 the company announced the third major product, “Audience”, in beta testing for social media ROI (Return On Investment).

In 2010, Sysomos was acquired by Marketwire, a press release distribution company. The company holds webinars to explain the benefits of their system. Their pricings start at $500 a month and go up to $1,000.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agVOpF1VtV8]

Facebook Page Central:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjJA5CWyFfg]

Trucast

The newcomer to the social media monitoring is Trucast from Visible Technologies. It launched in August 2010, and offers the ability to track, analyze and participate in forums, social networks, blogs and online communities.

It is aimed at advertisers, brand managers, market researchers and corporate customer service, public relations and communication professionals. It is built to handle massive amounts of information (they say it handles up to 70% more than competing companies) and you can follow up to 40 different topics. The company will categorize it and transform it to actionable business insights which show the purchase behavior of clients, which areas of customer relations needs to be improved and how to build brand loyalty. They say they dig deep into social media data as well as other industries and third party data sources like newsgroups, bulletin boards and online news sites.

Their clients include Microsoft, Panasonic, Hormel and Dell. Their statistics has shown that using their software, Dell managed to reduce the negative sentiment about them by 50%.

They do not publish their prices.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmaiZNRO884]

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YouTube Advertising & Channels

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Having a custom YouTube channel is kind of like having your own television channel. It will allow the user to upload their personal videos and to promote their own products or services via their video as well as URL linking on the custom YouTube channel page.

To begin you would simply need to sign up for a YouTube account and begin uploading your videos to their site. Once uploaded, users should than plan to ‘market’ their videos in various places online such as social medias, blogs, news articles and website content.

Once you have an account you will find many options for customizing your personal channel. However, if you want more than just a custom channel for private use and have a good history of having great views on your YouTube content, you may need to apply for  a YouTube Partner account.

YouTube Partners

Becoming a YouTube partner will make you privy to specialized tools and customization options, including page analytics. This will absolutely help to generate far more revenue than simply using the regular methods of ‘getting the word out’ via social medias and bookmarking.

How Does YouTube Advertising Help?

When you use the phrase YouTube advertising this can mean two different things. YouTube does offer their own method for advertising your products or services via Ad campaigns through their web site similar to Facebook ad campaigns, where a user pays for a certain amount of views or clicks.

YouTube advertising can also mean the method where business owners or those promoting their personal services use YouTube videos as a means to help drive more traffic to their own website. Providing helpful YouTube video ‘How-to’s’, Tutorials and walkthroughs on products, services, internet tools and a vast variety of other things that can help bring one more viewer to a users site via providing helpful content in hopes that it will encourage the user to get help from the ‘pro’s’, which is hopefully what your YouTube video will make you appear as.

 There is no doubt that both of these forms of YouTube advertising can be effective. Even the smallest bloggers have had great results by utilizing links to and from their YouTube videos. The more videos a user uploads the better their chances of bringing more users to their channel.

Most YouTube advertisers also understand the what’s and why’s of why others are utilizing its capabilities as well, so are commonly known to help promote good content by sharing it on their own social medias, or by joining your channel or choosing to ‘favorite’ your videos. This type of ‘word-by-digital-design’ is just as helpful if not more so than traditional methods of advertising such as banner ads or affiliate linking.

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    Social Media Tools: ShoutOMatic

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    What is Shout-O-Matic? First it is the newly created product of Norm Levy, Michael Levy, Jim Robert and Chris Lawlor. This young team of developers learned a great technique for aggregating digital photos, videos, music and text with their LifeGoRound platform. Just over seven months old, ShoutOMatic it is already making a few waves on the net. ShoutOMatic is a collaborative collection of several web-based applications.

    ShoutOMatic enables users to send out audible ‘shouts’ or status updates in audio form. Much like a Tweet, users can record a quick greeting or message and send it out over the ShoutOMatic network, which can also be forwarded to your social medias.

    How to Use ShoutOMatic

    ShoutOMatic is incredibly easy to use and has many automated features that any social media user can truly appreciate.

    First you need to sign up. Once signed in check out your settings and be certain to connect your social medias, such as Facebook and Twitter, to your account. This way, when you send out messages, they can be ‘heard’ by anyone who clicks your ShoutOMatic link on your broadcasts.

    Not only will the program easily attach itself to your social medias, but it will also automatically attempt to detect your microphone and its settings to users’ great relief.

    This unique option in digital messaging has already involved some big names such as Chuck D, from Public Enemy and Danny Bonaduce from The Partridge Family, who are now selling their voice-over services to those who want to include the stars audio messages as a part of their marketing plans. Artists, Athletes, Celebrities, Comedians and other personalities are encouraged to offer their fans the ability to buy personal shouts from them.

    How Can ShoutOMatic Benefit Your Business

    Dependant on your products or services of course, you can attempt to find a popular representative willing to sell you a great Shout in promotion of your product. Additionally, ShoutOMatic is also likely to take on the niche of allowing many disabled users to create their own Shouts, with far more simplicity than even Twitters simple interface offers.

    *Special Thanks to Jennifer Tinghitella for brining ShoutOMatic to my attention for the blog.

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    Social Media & Brand Monitoring Part 2: CoTweet, HootSuite, TweetDeck, TweetAdder

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    Being able to monitor what is said about your brand on the internet has become a very important part of doing business these days. Social Media has the power to make or break brand names, and web visibility should be monitored.

    Hand in hand with finding out who is talking about you and why, there is the possibility of actively engaging in the conversation. Advertising on the internet have become advertising on social media platforms as well, and keeping track of all those, especially if you have more than one brand, has become very time consuming. However, some web programs are designed to help you monitor and be active on social media platforms from one central location.

    CoTweet

    CoTweet is a social media engagement, management and reporting site, which aims to help companies of all sizes track and analyze what is being said about them on the two most popular social media sites: Facebook and Twitter.

    Built with an emphasis on the needs of businesses, their Standard edition and Enterprise edition, help customer support and marketers manage the daily social media conversations from one place, solve customer service issues, manage marketing campaigns and maximize brand visibility. It enables businesses to engage in proactive marketing and other customer service activities.

    In March 2010, CoTweet was purchased by ExactTarget, a global provider of on demand e mail marketing solutions, and CoTweet now includes monitoring of multiple channels including e mails and mobile phones.

    It is ideal for multiple account management and multiple users. An application which allows you to invite other people to manage the account with you, and delegate assignments also exists.

    Users of CoTweet include Starbucks, Microsoft, Sprint, Coca-Cola and even Tweeter itself.

    HootSuite

    HootSuite allows users to organize the use of social media tools, launch marketing campaigns and distribute messages across multiple channels in a targeted fashion.

    It scans the activity on Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, WordPress and other social media platforms and is accessible via web on desktop applications or mobile platforms.

    But HootSuite is more than just a monitoring tool; it is an account management software as well. Users have the ability to optimize delivery by choosing the best time and date to reach their target audience, fine tune the response team by assigning responsibility to a team member and monitoring responses and progress. It enables the user to effectively join in the conversation, in real time.

    Users can update their profile from one place, track click-troughs, deploy timed updates etc. and its mobile version is available on iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows Mobile as well. You will never be out of touch with your customers.

    Launched in 2008 by Invoke Media, it is growing in popularity and is used by government (The White House), Martha Stewart Media and Zappos for example.

    TweetDeck

    Tweetdeck is a real-time browser that can help connect a user to Google Buzz, Twitter, Myspace, Facebook, Foursquare and other social networking sites. This helps users to keep in touch with what is happening now, all across the board. Users can customize their TweetDeck experience by creating columns or groups as well as saving searches so that users can stay up-to-date as effortlessly as possible.

    Responding to what Twitter users or Facebook fans are saying about you and your product or service is easy and real-time management no longer requires incredible multi-tasking skills to accomplish.  Sharing your photos, videos and links across the board also becomes a whole lot more simplistic.

    With support for desktop computers as well as Google Chrome and Android means this is one extremely versatile tool. It will also soon support iPhone and iPad.

    TweetAdder

    TwitterAdder is available on Linux, Windows and Mac OSX. Its Automated Tweet Search feature searches out specific keywords previously tweeted which helps a Twitter user to find those fellow Tweeters who are interested in, or marketing, in the same niche. This takes the guesswork and the time sink out of building a legion of Twitter followers who already have an interest in the product or service you market. Profile data and location searches get you one step closer to mass marketing locally if your business is based largely in your own community.

    TweetAdder also supports multiple Twitter account management and a wide variety of support options for Follow and Unfollow configurations. Automated Tweeting and direct messaging wraps up this all-in-one tool. With a healthy dose of current and historical trend research, you really can’t ask for much more in one single program that can manage your Twitter account from day to day, all by itself.

    Video Resource: This was the best video I could find that covered an array of tools. If you like it please share your thoughts with @ErinBlaskie or email Erin at erin@bsetc.ca or erin.blaskie@gmail.com, I personally was very impressed with her coverage of such a variety of tools, perhaps we can get her to do short tutorials for each one individually in the future.

    [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ifuq4XZssU&hd=1]

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    Social Media & Brand Monitoring Part 1: Radian6, Scout Labs, FlipTop

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    Social Media has, in many ways, taken the place of the generalized web search. Personal comments, posted by happy or disgruntled customers, can have a tremendous impact on the reputation of a brand. It doesn’t take long before a social comment creates a chain of complaints, and if it goes unanswered can damage any business. There is no vacuum in the world, scientists tell us, and if you are not present on social media, your competitors can take advantage of your absence.

    With so many social media platforms, and new ones joining all the time, the amount of users and comments on social media platforms has overtaken the amount of search engine queries, and by doing so have turned social media into a prime target for advertisers. Where the clients are, that is where advertisement should be.

    With that proliferation, business owners have faced a dilemma; devote many hours of the day to monitoring their brand name and engaging in personal advertising across many sites, or hire additional employees to deal with those issues. But help was not far behind. To make it easier to monitor and to use so many social media sites for reputation and advertising, a few companies have created tools to monitor social media presence and plan a quick response. These are tools that not only tell you who is talking about you, what he/she says, but give you tools to see it in one place and analyze the information.

    Radian6

    By far the most robust site and the most talked about it Radian6.  Formed in 2006, the site helps companies with social media monitoring that enables business owners listen to what is said about their business online, across a wide network of social site including Twitter and Facebook, through text, tweets, pictures (Flickr), Google Buzz, videos, forums and blog posts. Radian6 gathers all that information and gives the business tools to analyze, manage, track and respond in real time.

    Users of the software can choose any number of topics and keywords they want to track and get information within seconds. They can even compare them against each other to see which keyword gets the most uses in the social media circles.

    Radian6 is a desktop application built on Adobe AIR. This paid program (about $500 a month) is meant for marketing, communications and customer support professionals. It also allows assigning tasks to different team members, and planning engagement times. Users can customize the tracking grid and break down the information by broad or specific topics, by tagging customer lists or by media types.

    Radian6 was originally marketed to ad agencies. When the agency works with many brands, it could offer social media monitoring services for their clients. From there it expended to businesses beyond advertising companies and PR firms. They are probably best suited for medium to large sized brands and businesses.

    But by far the best feature of the site is its analytics; after some training, you can slice and dice the data you get any way you want; who is mentioning your brand, on what platform. You can get an “influencer report” – who is mentioning your brand and on what source. The workflow view of the site allows users to follow, assign and report on news in real time. You can even have it sent to you via instant messenger.  

    Watch a video presentation:

    [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqv_RuGxPqQ]

    Radian6 biggest customers include Dell, Microsoft, PepsiCo, Kellogg’s, Fujitsu and Sony Ericson.

    Scout Labs

     

    The company was founded in February 2009, after two years of testing and development. Priced at around between $99 and $250 a month, scout Labs will give the user, after an initial set up, charts and graphs for volume of mentions and compare it to the competition you have set up to track. An automated ‘sentiment report’ follows every search, so you know at first glance if the comments are good, bad or neutral. This aspect is manually scored on Radian6 and comes with the highest paid package. On Scout Labs it is presented right there and then. But, it requires you to trust the algorithms which are applied, to understand the nuances of the language.

    Scouts lab allows you to quickly scan all the social media sites for specific keywords or terms. Experts say it turns in more results from pictures and video than Radian6, and the ‘sentiment’ scoring makes it quicker to deal with problems. For $99 a month, their basic program is enough to handle a single brand or small business, and monitor 3-4 competitors. For $249, you get the ability to do more searches for competitors and divisions of your business.

    [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDtKahqGBuo]

    You get a better price point with Scout Labs but not as through analytics as you get with Radian6. The latter has internal project management software for quick response that the former has not. Whether you choose Radian6 or Scout Labs depends on the size of your company and the information you want to have. Both are useful and worth the time and money you’ll invest in learning how to work it properly. From there, it will enable you to see a clear picture where your business is, in the big scheme of things.

    FlipTop

    In its beta stage right now, this promising new Social Media Tool shows some amazing potential, while it offers analytical tools, Fliptop is setup to leverage relationships across the different platforms in such a way that tracking profile and demographic information from those platforms may make target marketing more effective both in, and outside of social media. This tool may not only have the pulse of the social media realm, it may have the pulse of each individual tool providing valuable insight to what is and isn’t working in each type of social media.  

    Early Estimates show that it may enter the market at a price point of $99 a month, which should make it very competitive with the existing market. However, don’t expect that price point to last long once they go public, as the suite of tools it seems to have in the beta are likely to get a lot of attention.

    I going to stay vague for now, as my beta to this tool was a leap of faith and I want to finishing using it for a little while. I also want to let my contact work with me on  this, but I promise you from what I have seen and heard from the FlipTop rep this is a very promising tool.

    [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JYkqwsQfiA]

    This is Part 1 of Social Media Monitoring Tools, Part 2 will be later this week.

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    Facebook Marketing Tool: Involver.com

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    Noah Horton and Rahim Fazal founded Involver.com in 2007 in efforts to provide a startup that can help brands begin to get a grip on managing their social media channels. Having grown from a company of a dozen employees to over sixty with many offices in areas such as Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Austin, and with more coming soon, it looks like Involver, is in fact, fully involved, with no plans of leaving any time soon.

    Involver has four main ways in which they help companies and organizations create rich and helpful experiences all across the social web.

    1. Involver helps to generate earned media by attracting attention from influential sources.
    2. Involver helps to get prospective customers engaged with your products and services through social networks.
    3. Involver can help to reduce marketing cost through a series of fully automated social networking services.
    4. Involver helps to maintain constant and consistent branding and advertisement for your products and services.

    This kind of brand management can be critical to a company and its ultimate success online. Those who use Involver will also want to take advantage of the features offered in the applications area.

    Flickr

    You can bring all of your Flickr photos to Facebook with the Flickr App from Involver. This will allow users to stream their Flickr photos displaying their entire album, or allows users to choose sub albums to categorize their photo streams.

    YouTube Channels

    You can set your video to directly deliver to your social networks upon uploading. This will help incorporate your YouTube videos into your active marketing campaigns.

    With so many more applications available there are bound to be at least a handful of ways to improve your social media interactions in Involvers many apps.

    • Facebook Stories
    • Social Catalog
    • RSS Feed
    • Promotion Galleries
    • Music Player
    • Polls
    • Coupons
    • Static HTML for Pages

    Many more apps available make this attractive and professional option in social media marketing and product or service branding an invaluable tool in the likely already full bag of marketers tricks of the trade.

    Get 10,000 Fans on Facebook

    “It was in November of 2010 that my train baseball fan page had reached 10,000 fans and I decided that I would finally start a business that aimed at helping other small businesses like you get off the ground using tools like Facebook. So this is where things sit today. I’m 24 years old, and get a pretty neat opportunity to help out small businesses make better use of facebook.”

    [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mFBa3QVD2Q]

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    Location Trends: Checkpoints

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    “When was the last time you got a reward for just showing up? When did you get a prize for something you do every day? Now you can, with Checkpoints” is the catch-phrase of a new mobile app called Checkpoints.

    Founded by brothers/ entrepreneurs Mark and Todd DiPaola, who put $1 million of their own money into forming a company in April 2010, the new product was launched about 3 months ago.

    What Checkpoints offers is product integration, a way to introduce new clients to products in a fun and interactive way.

    An example will illustrate it the best: You are about to go shopping for groceries. Opening the app on your cellular phone will show you which markets in your area are participating in the program. By going in and checking in there –pointing your cell phone camera at a bar code and taking a picture – you get some points.

    The app will also show you which products in the store they are recommending. By picking a product up and scanning it (again with the camera) you will also get points. You can do the same with any other establishment, and Checkpoints is a universal currency, meaning it is not tied to a brand or to a currency. The points you accumulate can be redeemed for products; from gift cards to new electronic gadgets and airline miles.

    For shoppers this app, available for all camera-equipped cell phones, is a fun way to interact with new products and get something in return.

    For manufacturers and advertisers, which have been tied to a specific location in their advertisements, Checkpoints offers the ability to expend to the product level and drive customers to pick it up and really look at it, in an interactively engaging way.

    Several brands have joined the program immediately; Belkin, Energizer, Seventh Generation, Tyson foods, 24/7 fitness center, and more. Just recently, Lionsgate, the movie production and distribution company has added Checkpoints to all their DVDs and Blu-rays. Customers are able to watch trailers and receive checkpoints for interaction with new movies. They will also have access to movie reviews and exclusive offers. “We know this technology increases the likelihood of purchase and we’re also excited by the sheer power of the experience and the brand engagement it creates” says Anne Parducci, Lionsgate Executive Vice President of Marketing and Family Entertainment.

    Checkpoints hit the million check-ins and 600,000 bar code scans in January 2011, about 2 and half months after its launch. The brothers are now contemplating whether to continue in their boot-strapping operation with 13 employees or start a round of financing.

    [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXwHkpGlQ00]

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    Social Media Club

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    In March of 2006, Chris Heuer and Kristie Wells began Social Media Club. Their intentions were to provide a format in which to explore and offer solutions to common issues facing our society as technological advancements continued to shape the way we connected socially on many levels.Benefits of Social Media Club

    The global conversation on these issues has continued on to help build an organization and central location where a largely diverse group of people can continue to come together to discuss Social Media. SocialMediaClub.org can be beneficial to users in many ways.

    • All members will be able to sign up on Social Media Club’s email lists and social networks to connect with those who have similar needs and interest. This can also be based on geography if that benefits the member.
    • Members have access to publish in the Social Media Club Observer.
    • Members can receive discounts to the events organized by Social Media Club and its partner organizations and companies.
    • Members have the opportunity to be listed under the Speakers Directory and to receive invitations to members-only events.
    • Jobs in social media industries are also listed on the Social Media Club members section of the website.

    Perhaps most vitally, members will have the chance to meet with people just as themselves who are looking for an edge in managing their businesses or personal social medias. Members who are unfamiliar with all of the common aspects of social media will learn to confidently utilize and apply these technological advancements in communication to their everyday businesses.

    Members who have advanced knowledge of social media marketing will have many others to bounce their new and innovative ideas off of, those of whom already know their language and can respond in kind.

    Social Media Statistics

    It is a fact that we will likely never return to our parents, and their parents generations that flocked to radio and daily print to absorb our local or global news and information. Statistics regularly monitored in social medias only continue to grow in unfathomable numbers.

    In 2010, during the average twenty minute excerpt of time, there were 1,5870,000 posts to Facebook walls and 2,716,000 photos uploaded. 10,208,000 comments were also posted.

    Since April 2010, Twitter has increased their user list by 40,000,000 and have had a 62% increase in the use of mobile platforms.

    The average U.S. user will watch at least thirty minutes of video online each day, compared to around five hours of T.V. per day.

    Social Media Club Goals

    Ultimately, the goal of Social Media Club is to continue to provide a forum where individuals can work together for a universal common good. Part of that goal means to continue to build up and build on more local chapters for all members.

    Additionally, Social Media Club stresses that education, management and helpful tools and services are not limited to online availability and that offline events, meets and other knowledgeable networking functions are just as important as the time you spend utilizing them online daily.

    Social Media Club Long Island

    Founded in 2010 by Hillary Topper, Social Media Club Long Island has developed a following rather quickly in just under a year. The group received its official charter in early 2011 and features guest speakers at every meeting. Much like a Chamber of Commerce, the group gathers business owners and entrepreneurs alike.

    The last SMCLI meeting took place on March 4, 2010. I had the pleasure to attend as I recently joined the SMC as a professional member.

    The March 4 meeting featured speaker Steve Poppe, Managing Partner of What’s The Idea? (slideshare posted below). Sueanne Shirzay of SMCLI wrote in a follow up SMCLI  internal blog “Importance was put on the tremendous value of creating original content in blogs and websites, as only a paltry 8% of social media users currently do this. He described the creators or original content as “posters” and those who retweet the content or copy it as “pasters”.

    In addition to the poster and paster comparison, Steve also brought our attention to the format or content type we use in our posts when we do post. As Steve pointed out that we have all become heavy text based posters, this gave pause to the entire room with a moment of silence to ponder the possibility that even those of us that are creating original content or “posters” have mostly become text based. I took a bit of pride in realizing that I had caught this in my blogs and made the adjustment back at the end of Dec 2010. Yet somehow most of my other social media activities are still overwhelmingly text based.

    Social Media Week 2011: Social Media Camp NYC presented by Social Media Club

    SMC has networked itself right into the heart of Social Media activities, I recently presented at Social Media Week 2011 and Social Media Club was the organizing sponsor of the event. Clearly this organization warrants keeping an eye on, but clearly it’s something any social media professional will want to join.

    [slideshare id=7151078&doc=psomelisomeclub0304-110304112129-phpapp02]

    Sources: