SMCSTL

Most members of the Saint Louis social media community already have enough reasons to come to this month’s Social Media Club  - STL event, ranging from “I go every month because the networking is fantastic, no matter what the program entails” to just one word: “Beer.”

The group is gathering on Thursday night, 9/29, for a presentation by Jason Falls, and if you don’t know who Jason Falls is or if you are at all on the fence about getting your $15 ticket, here are 10 more reasons why you need to register today, and show up Thursday night for the fun:

In no particular order…

Reason #10: If you haven’t yet been to a Social Media Club event, or you haven’t made it to one in a while, this is the perfect time to get back into the network. On this brisk autumn night, head down to Soulard and enjoy a lively presentation and then mingle with a bright group of social media and marketing managers from BJC Healthcare, Fleishman-Hillard, Lumiere Place, Saint Louis Community College, Ronnoco Coffee, Missouri Botanical Garden, Webster University and Hardee’s - just to name a few!

Reason #9: Like you and me, Jason is from the Midwest!

I am an unabashed fan of the city of Louisville and state of Kentucky. If you have a connection to either, I may inadvertently play favorites. Sorry. Them’s my peeps.

Reason #8: Jason works for good causes:

I am a member of the Boards of Directors for both the National Center for Family Literacyand the Louisville Free Public Library Foundation. Literacy and libraries are passion projects for me. I do not profit from being involved with these organizations, but will pimp them gratuitously. If our society isn’t well-educated beyond the classroom, we will all suffer.

Reason #7: Jason is no clown:

“I’ve been famously quoted as saying, ’99.5% of social media experts are clowns,’ but watching Jason over the course of the last five years makes me feel pretty confident that he’s in the other .5%.”

–Gary Vaynerchuk, cofounder, VaynerMedia; author of The Thank You Economy

Some may disagree with the “no clown” part, but I guess we’ll find out Thursday night at some point, right? Probably after 9pm…

Reason #6: It’s a Thursday night…in Soulard…’nuff said?

Reason #5: You might win a sweet smart-phone!

AT&T will be hosting a raffle for attendees during the event. They want to know – what’s your favorite mobile app? To enter the raffle, tweet during the event about your favorite mobile app and use #SMCSTL and #ATTSocial hashtags. At the end of the event, they’ll announce a winner from the entries who will receive the LG Thrill.

 

Reason #4: Your job is to increase sales, profits, market share, and efficiency for your business…

You may think you “get” social media and you’ve certainly seen many “experts” present social media strategies, especially if you’ve been to a lot of Social Media Club events here in Saint Louis. But how is Jason different? This is his approach to it:

Identify specific, actionable goals. Apply business discipline and proven best practices. Stop fearing risks. Start mitigating them. Measure performance. Get results.

Reason #3: The first 100 people to register will recieve a copy of Jason’s book to take home with them – and get signed by the author himself.

Reason #2: It’s a guaranteed good time. Social Media Club STL has some of the best networking in Saint Louis. This group is fun-loving, energetic, driven, goofy, and above all else: social! Just take a look at the list of registered attendees so far.

Reason #1: You could pay to hire Jason, or you can come have drinks with us on Thursday night starting at 6pm, and get some low-cost advice from him, for the cost of the admission fee, and meet one of the most in-demand speakers in the social media, public relations and marketing fields, right here in your hometown.

Follow Jason on Twitter

Follow SMCSTL on Twitter

What is “Social Media Day” you ask?

The global event is a celebration of the technological advancements that enable everyone to connect with real-time information, communicate from miles apart and have their voices be heard. We invite you to celebrate by socializing with your online community offline!

The Saint Louis Social Media Club is having a meet-up in honor of Social Media Day on Thursday, June 30th at 6:00 p.m. downtown at Gio’s. Register here.

The event is free to attend, and there will be drinks and appetizer specials throughout the evening.

When you get to Gio’s don’t forget to check-in on FourSquare or GoWalla. Take an Instagram. Send out some Twitter love with a couple shout-outs about who you run into and what you’re enjoying chatting about, but be sure to use the hash tags #smcstl and #smday so everyone who’s there can see your tweets. There’s already a pretty healthy stream of awesome social media folks in Saint Louis tweeting with #smcstl. Most are about how giddy everyone is to get to the meet-up and see some of their favorite Tweeps in person like we all do at least once a month in this thriving online community. Others are just plain ridiculous.

If you haven’t been to an SMCSTL Meet-Up before, make sure you check out our Facebook page to see photos and details from past events. It’s a guaranteed good time! And in the spirit of the national Social Media Day project, SMCSTL continues to work to facilitate frequent gatherings of truly well-connected, technologically savvy, interactive professionals from across the Saint Louis area.

Read more about Social Media Day at Mashable.

The panel at our March SMCSTL Meetup (More Photos)

Last week, the Social Media Club of St. Louis held it’s March monthly Meet-Up at Moulin. We featured a panel to discuss social media implications on privacy, security and other legal concerns. Our panel was Craig G Moore (@CraigGMoore), Pete Salsich (@PeteSalsich) and Anthony Martin (@AMPrivacy). The panel did a great job, and we hope to have a recap and some video from the event posted soon.

Corporate social media policies and agreements came up during the discussion several times throughout the discussion. When asked about key elements of an internal social media policy, the panel advised that it should be customized to the organization type, size, needs and goals.

Brian Solis, an author, principal at advisory firm Altimeter Group and a significant thought leader in social media, recently published an article on his blog titled “The Rules of Social Media Engagement.” It’s a post examining some of the risks involved when you play in this space as an organization, but it also includes an excellent list of some key considerations for your social media policy. I saw a lot in the list that my employer has considered in crafting the policy we present to all of our employees who blog or tweet on behalf of the company. I’ve quoted the first 15 from the list here, but I encourage you to visit Brian’s full article for the full list and for more analysis.

The Top 25 Best Practices for Drafting Policies and Guidelines

1. Define a voice and persona representative of the brand’s purpose, mission, and characteristics

2. People expect to interact with people, be personable, consistent, and helpful

3. Keep things conversational as it applies to portraying and reinforcing the personality and value of your brand and the brand you represent

4. Add value to each engagement — contribute to the stature and legacy of the brand

5. Respect those whom you’re engaging and also respect the forum in which you participate

6. Ensure that you honor copyrights and practice and promote fair use of applicable content

7. Protect confidential and proprietary information

8. Business accounts are no place to share personal views unless they reinforce the brand values and are done according to the guidelines and code of conduct

9. Be transparent and be human yes, but also do so based on true value propositions and solutions

10. Represent what you should represent and do not overstep your bounds without prior approval

11. Know and operate within the boundaries defined, doing so protects you, the company, and the people with whom you’re hoping to connect

12. Know when to walk away. Don’t engage trolls or fall into conversational traps

13. Stay on message, on point and on track with the goals of your role and its impact to the real world business in which you contribute

14. Don’t trash competition, spotlight points of differentiation and value

15. Apologize where applicable and according to the established code of conduct. Seek approval by legal or management where such action is not pre-defined

More at Brian’s Blog…

Today marks the 5th birthday of my favorite social network, Twitter.com. If you’re not yet “tweeting”, then you can read the rest of this post, and hopefully my sentimentality will convince you to give it a try if its 190 million other users haven’t been reason enough. If you are on Twitter, please tell me about your foray into Twitter using the comments below.

Mashable commemorates the day with a few statistics for us:

It’s officially been five years since the very first tweet was sent by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. The message, which read simply “just setting up my twttr,” has since been followed by some 30 billion 140-character-or-less musings as Twitter has catapulted into the upper echelon of consumer web companies.

With a valuation said to be approaching $10 billion, the Twitter of today is very different than the Twitter of five years ago (or even one year ago for that matter).

“Happy 5th Birthday, Twitter” by Adam Ostrow

Mashable’s story is brief, but I thought I’d make my virtual birthday card a bit more personal for Twitter. Almost exactly a year and a half ago, in September, 2009, one of Twitter’s co-founders, Jack Dorsey (@jack) , returned to his home town of Saint Louis to tell us all about how Twitter got started and where it stood at that time. He spoke at Webster University, and  I blogged about it.

I wanted to share some of my favorite quotes I heard from Jack during that speech. I personally believe they speak to the magic of Twitter in a lot of ways. Some of these quotes explain “why Twitter makes sense” to me as a communication medium – a method for connecting, engaging and be-friending.

• “If you have immediacy, it’s a lot easier to inspire transparency.”
• “The greatest lesson that I learned in all of this is that you have to start.” “Start now, start here, and start small. Keep it Simple.”
• “I am burdened every day by email. It is a nightmare. I will go back tonight to 500 emails which are, basically, TO DO’s that I hvae to work through. This is an area where we’ve lost the idea of keeping a singular focus and a way to be effective. There are times that I have to give up because I can’t keep up with it.”
• “Twitter is one of those things that’s easy to get into and also easy to get out of….it’s more of an information network…completely recipient controlled.” Because it’s 140 characters, you minimize the canvas size.

In 2009, when Jack gave this speech, and when Twitter was just 3 years old, I used Twitter primarily for personal purposes. Ironically, the same month Jack appeared in Saint Louis to tell us all about his monster of an invention as it was shooting up in user-base, I took my first job as a social media marketing strategist at a Saint Louis based IT consulting firm, Perficient. Since then, I have learned first-hand, and in an incredibly exciting way, just how effective Twitter can be for growing your business. I’ll save the details for a later post about how Twitter really does drive sales and leads for my employer. For now, here’s a big Happy Birthday to my favorite social network.

Twitter has….

• Helped me to land my job at a fantastic company, @Perficient
• Strengthened my relationships with existing friends, such as @steinburglar and @lisackeller.
• Gotten me speaking opportunities and engagements, such as at @IMSummit and @ConversionConf
• Given me opportunities to make money on the side through consulting and contract work, such as with @socialexecs
• Allowed me get to know my co-workers, such as @lizasisler and @bnunnally, in a unique and compelling way, making it easier to work together on projects.
• Given me the chance to participate at the board level in furthering the efforts of excellent marketing clubs in St. Louis, including @smcstl and @bmastlouis
• Kept me in touch with my favorite charities, including @stlfoodbank
• Made it easy for me to reconnect with old coworkers like @amyjohnsonseo
• Keeps me posted when my favorite restaurants and local hangouts, including @vindeset, @kaldis_coffee and @arakarestaurant change their menus or offer a deal.
• Lets me know when my favorite music artists, including @blackkeysnews, @coldplay, @mumfordandsons1 and @FRabbits have a new album coming out or will be in town soon.
• Made my wedding planning a lot easier by surfacing to the top some of the best in the local wedding industry, including my wedding planner @katiesaeger (love her!) and an amazing photographer and fellow J-school grad, @joannakleine
• Made it super easy for me to find legal experts who work in social media — @petesalsich, @amprivacy, and @craiggmoore so that I could build our panel for this week’s SMCSTL event on Wednesday night!
• Gives me ongoing, free education on my industry (B2B marketing, social media marketing, online content, web design, SEO, PPC, online advertising, etc.) through fantastic blogs and news sources such as @forrester, @hubspot, @emarketer, @b2bmagazine and more.

I didn’t even come close to getting started on a list of the hundreds of excellent marketing professionals and all around good people who inspire me, make me laugh, lift me up, and teach me with their 140 words of wisdom every day.

If those aren’t enough reasons to love being on Twitter every day, then you’ll just have to put up with me being glued to my iPhone at all times– or you can tell me what you love about Twitter with your own little “Happy Birthday” note to Twitter in our comments.