Has the Vancouver social media community considered starting a chapter of the Social Media Club? I know it’s “yet another thing” for many people, but its whole mission is to have these conversations, both in person and online. It has benefited the Victoria community enormously for these reasons:
1) The larger organization is a wonderful space to share local discussions and “lessons learned”, and the arrangement is reciprocal, with wider discussions seeding the local level too.
2) It encompasses the full spectrum of social media – not just blogging, not just the “flavour of the month” – and many of our discussions are applicable across platforms.
3) It is becoming a recognized brand in itself. As a communications professional engaged in social media, I’d like to visit chapters in other towns. Are there great people visiting Vancouver who are missing connections because they don’t know where to look?

Since Paul Holmes and I founded the Victoria chapter (the first in Canada!) six months ago, I have been continually amazed by the quality of discussion and the building of community that takes place when we meet.  We’ve gone from 15 people to nearly 40 at the last event, and the momentum keeps building. We’re preparing for a very big event Sept 22nd, when we welcome n2y4 award winner Joe Solomon to talk about “Movement Building in a Connected Age”.  That deserves its own post, so expect to see more here about that talk this week.

At the same time, meetups, tweetups, an Open Coffee group and DemoCamp all add to our knowledge base and our contact files.  (For people who spend a lot of time behind screens, we sure like to meet!) At each event I’ve been to, I’ve come home feeling like I’ve shared a lot and learned far more.

I want to point out how useful and important it is to have a forum like Social Media Club for discussing strategies, tactics, “best practices”, smart solutions, slimy ones, product reviews, integration, aggregation, filtering and so on.

Go West, Young Marketer!
We’re at a juncture, it seems, in the social media “industry”.  The early adopters have cut a nice trail through the wilderness, and now the gold rush is on, with all the carpet-baggers, snake-oil salesmen, gurus, wide-eyed disciples and “best-kept secret” sellers jumping right in.    Or at least, that’s how the early adopters see many of the marketers that have appeared overnight on the major sites, especially Facebook and Twitter.

I’m a marketer, or a “connector” anyway, and my entry into this world was, frankly, because I followed the lead of other marketers.  In California, where Social Media Club started, the marketers were some of the first people to say “Hey, let’s meet and figure out some standards for how we work in helping our clients reach their customers using social media.”  They’ve been big advocates of the Social Media Club purpose.  And I am truly thankful, because the coder-ific early adopters are – to a certain extent – right.

LIONs and Tigers and Magpies?
Almost as soon as I landed in Twitter’s birdbath, I was asked if I wanted to “be a magpie” and sell 10% of my tweets (posts, or updates to the uninitiated) to people who want to pitch my followers.  Not long after that, I was told that I could get up to 20,000 “instant” followers by participating in some chain-letter-style Tweetergetter scheme,  if only I retweeted a certain little phrase.

For me, that crosses the boundary into unethical or ill-advised practice.  So does handing over your identity to a ghostwriting tweet – at least without disclosure that you are doing so.  But surely there are 100 wonderful, ethical ways to connect with people who want to buy stuff.  That’s why I’m excited about the Social Media Club.  I want a place to hash through these issues.  I want it to be local, as well as global.  I want the conversations to happen online and in person.   I want to learn, share, and connect.  And I want to take everything I learn and share it with business people, who are desperate to find better ways to listen to and serve their clients, more efficiently and cost-effectively than in traditional media.  (OK, the business people I want to work with are, anyway.  The rest won’t stay in business long anyway.)

So Kristie Wells and Chris Heuer, thank you for a great idea,  and for putting an excellent international framework together.  Rebecca Grant, thanks for being a terrific hostess and point-and-click facilitator.   Paul Holmes, thanks for grabbing my hand in this crazy crack-the-whip game of social media marketing.   Let’s all hold on tight and skate faster!

More Marketers Welcome
Oh, and if you are in communications, marketing, PR, social media, technology or just like this stuff, please join us in the David Strong building (room tba) the fourth Tuesday of each month.  We start promptly at 7 pm.  The coffee’s great.  The conversation even better.  And I really want the industry as a whole to get better, which means I don’t want to be the only marketer in the room.