Rss

Social Media Club Phoenix

January 12, 2007 - 5:09am

I attended my first Social Media Club meeting tonight. It's a networking group as well as a group to discuss social media. Wikipedia defines social media as "Social media describes the online tools and platforms that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other. " Some of the tools include blogs, wikis, podcasts, videos, etc.

Francine Hardawaystarted this group and talked tonight about Social Media Press Release. Basically, its a format to include social media (links to other content, video, etc) in a press release. I didn't learn anything new about social media, but throughout the discussion realized how much I already know. Admittedly, I take all this knowledge for granted. It just seems like stuff people know. Except that I have to remember that most of the people I know are certified geeks.

Tonight I did learn something new about traditional media. I got to hear about the press release process. Rex shared the process from his experience at a traditional PR wire company. Basically, press releases come across the wire, editors check them and correct as necessary, then they're passed to media outlets (like newspapers), newspapers look for interesting content that will sell papers, newspaper person reads a tiny part of the press release then calls the contact on the press release to get details to write their own story. Interesting process because I've never thought about it before. Most of my exposure to press releases has been reading the ones my company sends out.

Anyhow, the meeting was interesting enough. I think that as the group of people attending begin to know each other better, the discussion will improve greatly, is by having more people involved.

After the discussion, I stuck around a little while to network, but didn't stay too long because it was a LONG day at work. Some people/things that caught my attention...
Hello World - Vanessa Garcia
TerriMiller.com - photographer
Sprayblog.net
Jan Jacobson
Notes from the Toolshed - Matt Moran

Posted in:

Comments

Thanks for writing. People like you, who know all about social media, sometimes don't understand how slowly things change. Many PR people in the room didn't know a thing about it, and I was really trying to meet them where they are and bring them forward. Was it awful?
Posted by francine hardaway on January 12, 2007 - 9:35pm
Yes, your experience is demonstrative of the point of the Club's existence - to learn new things from each other. While you were not able to advance your expertise the other night in the way you had expected, you learned something new about the communications profession from someone you would not have met otherwise. This is the great thing about bringing together people from diverse backgrounds. Further, it seems you hit upon one of our key insights, represented in our tagline and my own experiences of laughing at traditional agency people who didn't get it back in 1995. "If you get it (seems like you do), share it!" If you understand why social media is so important, and the pontential impact it can have when handled properly, share those insights. Rather than seeing new entrants as not contributing value to the conversation, respect the fact that they are there to learn - from you! Perhaps look at it as an opportunity to teach them how to do it the right way - to let them benefit from some of your invaluable experience. I think you will really like the Social Media Cafe events that we'll be doing (1st one in SF on TUE) and some of the other topics we will be exploring. Hopefully we will get a chance to meet when I come down for the March 1 Conference Francine is organizing.
Posted by Chris Heuer on January 15, 2007 - 9:10am
Francine, no, it wasn't awful. It just wasn't exactly what I expected. As Chris pointed out, I learned something, which is the whole point. I'm sure a number of people there learned new things as well. I'm looking forward to more dialog from more people at the meetings, but anticipate this will take time. First, trust has to be built.
Posted by EricaLucci on January 15, 2007 - 3:47pm

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

More information about formatting options

CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.