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.

Cute illustration by Brandon Reese

Well, here it is: Follow Friday. Or as I should write it, #followfriday or even #ff. If you are new to Twitter, Follow Friday is both a blessing and a curse, because really – the fun doesn’t start until you have enough people you are following to make it feel like a party. So you want to follow good people, and by that I mean real, interactive people, not just the sales blasts masquerading as people.

A typical #followfriday tweet looks like this:

@wordspring: #followfriday @kk @robcottingham @hummingbird604 @mynameiskate @miss604 @awsamuel @trishussey @raincoaster @gillianshaw

Not pretty is it? Nor do you have any idea that these people are very active part-time or full time in Vancouver’s social media scene. We’ve got bloggers, reporters, teachers, software geeks, and actual full-time social media community builders on that list. But how would you know? Are these the best ones? The most “famous” ones? Or just the ones I’ve followed the longest? Nothing there to tell you, except their names.

You can click on a name or two, visit their profiles and see what they have to say. Then decide if they are a good fit for your Twitter stream. But wouldn’t it be easier if you had a little bit of context from the sender?

To that end, and because I live in Victoria BC, where the social media community is beginning to blossom, here is a more full introduction to just 10 of the dozens, even hundreds, of people active on Twitter right here in #yyj (which is just a short, airport-y way of saying Greater Victoria, and not getting it confused with Victoria TX, or the Australian state of Victoria)

Why ten? Because I would be here all week if I tried to make a more comprehensive list. Because 10 people is enough to follow in one shot if you are new, and because I can do 10 different ones next Friday, if I am inspired.

1. @mikevardy – Works at the Victoria Film Festival, is just back from his long-delayed honeymoon, is very funny and creative, and has the good sense to show us all a slightly warped persona of himself – Mike Vardy, the CEO of Effing the Dog and an “eventual productivity expert”.

2. @cpudan – Dan Parks is a transplanted Californian who thinks that Victorians are so laid-back, we are on a par with Hawaiians. His mind works at warp speed, and he comes to morning Tweetups with a hundred new ideas and at least a dozen new apps to try out. Bring a pen and a notepad. This guy shares good stuff. Full of joy, too.

3. @claytonstark – The VP of – hmmm, is it engineering? at Flock’s development office, Clayton is funny, passionate, very very bright, and turning me into a huge fan not only of Flock, but of Clayton Stark

4. @tpholmes – can’t forget my dear friend Paul (not to be confused with my dearly beloved Paul, who stays far far away from Twitter) He is amazingly proactive at learning and spreading about Social Media’s many business uses – see www.paulholmes.ca for details. And together we are boosting the Social Media Club which promotes media literacy, ethical behavour and best practices.

5. @lacouvee – Janis is a force of nature! She is Twitter’s welcoming committee in our city, and loves to connect people and resources. If you want to know where to find an elephant, or ANYTHING else, talk to Janis

6. @gilnamur – I’ve only known Gil on Twitter a week, but love that he is doing the “make the world a better place” thing you see a lot on Twitter… with the important difference that he isn’t just rehashing other people’s stuff. It’s his own wisdom and generosity coming through. Check his blog, www.synaptici.com, for more good stuff.

7. @b_west – Another fella! Really, I’ve made more male friends on Twitter than I have since I was treeplanting with a whole bunch of rugby players in 1984… but I digress. Chris Burdge is the social media mojo behind Suburbia Advertising. He’s been waving the flag for authentic interaction on the corporate web for at least a couple of years longer than most of his clients realize. Now they are starting to wake up and listen. When Chris has something to say, I pay attention, because it is always of value.

8. @vic_toria – By day, she is a hardworking government employee. But Victoria Klassen pushes herself way beyond those cozy publicly-funded walls. She’s running half-marathons, volunteering to teach spin classes at the Y, climbing mountains, or at least mountain-like structures. And that’s just her workout! More important, she is an excellent writer and communicator, and has her finger on the pulse of social media. Follow her, and try to keep up.

9. @yuleheibel - Many people in Victoria have seen her columns on urbanism in Victoria’s Focus magazine. And how many of us even knew there was a field of thought and study on urbanism until Yule returned to her hometown about 5 years ago? Yes, she’s been a prof at Harvard. Yes, her whole family’s brainpower could light a small city for a month. But be neither fooled nor intimidated. Yule and her husband @wernerbahlke (slipped a bonus one in there!) are good listeners, thoughtful conversationalists and humble at heart. And community spirited, too!  Check their amazing Victoria blog aggregator, www.metrocascade.com I’m very glad to know her, and hope to get back to the Ogden Point Open Coffee groups soon. Like, a week Tuesday.

10. @jodie_nodes I’ve only known Jodie Gastell for about a week too, but I sense some major common ground between us. She has given over a whole room in her townhouse to teach blogging, with 10 netbooks and a super business plan. She also has one of the best avatars on Twitter. I’m going over for a tour and a chat next Tuesday, because really – Twitter is just a jumping off point for more extensive conversation and community building where you can do it.

There you are, new-to-Twitter people! I challenge each of you to get blogging on a 10-person sample of your Twitter stream. Tell me when you do it, and I’ll come read it.

social media logos

It started innocently enough – having written my way down to part-time status with my main client, I found myself with some time on my hands, and a burning desire to “get good at something specific” in marketing. And I’d learn it over Christmas.

Diving into the social media pool
I decided that something should be social media.  After all, here I am – a marketer that spends considerable time writing web copy.  Why not check what all the fuss is about concerning using Facebook for business, Twitter and LinkedIn?

Freshening my Facebook
Facebook was easy – sort of.  I’d been on for a year and a half, collected way too many silly applications and a whole bunch of friends (ok, a hundred or so) representing a lifetime of moving around and trying to keep in touch.   First thing I did was grab Facebook by the scruff of the neck, turn off all sorts of notifications, and get it to stop bossing me around… at least long enough to invite a few more friends and make a page for my business.

Blogging for branding
Next, I took a look at my baby blog – started so that I could muse about ADHD, but named for my business.  OK, so I was having an identity crisis.  ADHD is still an abiding interest, but I’d have to blog about it elsewhere.  I’m still too swamped in the social media learning curve to have started that blog up, but if you joined me then and are wondering when I’m going to get around to blogging about coming “out of the fog” again, well, bear with me.

So the blog has made a right turn, and now it’s my repository for social media thoughts, especially for people who are new to it.  Because really, most people are new to it!  (I mean, if I can become the top of the Twitter elite for Victoria BC in less than a month, then you know that we’re still in the infancy stages of this stuff!)

Taking on Twitter
Then I cranked up Twitter, attached it to Facebook and Facebook to my blog, and badda boom badda bing, we have social media visibility!  Except that still, nothing looks quite the way I want it to.   I’ve just found a theme that I like on my free WordPress blog, so the upgrades are coming.  Once that’s done, can embedded YouTube videos and Flickr photo galleries be far behind?  They’re all complementary ways to connect…

LinkedIn, too…
Oh, and I fired up my LinkedIn account too, because after all, I am a business woman, and this site has wonderful connecting functions for people in business.

Learning from the Pros
As all this was happening, I was finding interesting, savvy social media people to follow on Twitter, and they’ve been educating me every single day about the best ways to connect with mentors, with potential clients, and with people who are just worth knowing.  Checking on TwitterGrader, I went from a fair-to-middling-for-a-newbie score of 54 (out of 100) in mid-December to over 96 a couple of days ago.  And 435 people think I’m interesting and relevant enough to follow.  Imagine!

Racing up the learning curve!
The thing is, my head is still spinning from jumping onto this merry-go-round so quickly.  Clients are starting to ask how they can use social media effectively, and I’m putting together proposals that will help them take advantage of the relationship-marketing heart of social media… without causing them to lose sleep or productive working hours.  I’ll do that for them!

And to be sure, there are wonderful tools to help sort all the posts on all the sites – like Ping.fm, TweetLater, TwitterFeed, Tweetdeck, and so on.  As well, I’d like to thank some amazing social media professionals, pro bloggers and simply fine people I met on-line who are my role models, like Mari Smith, Nancy Marmolejo, Sherman Hu, Chris Brogan, Maria Reyes McDavis, and Michele Price.

Do I feel ready to pass along what I’ve learned to the 99 percent of Victoria business owners who know social media is “out there” but don’t know how to make it work for them?  As ready as I’ll ever be…