On Monday, July 21, 2008, the Social Media Club Boston will be teaming with the AMA Boston to present a session on social networks. Join these two groups for “How to Build a Killer Social Network: Understanding and Optimizing Social Media.”

No matter how busy you are, you can network like a pro with our panel’s insightful, proven techniques. You’ll learn how to get the most from your membership in online communities, from Facebook and LinkedIn to MySpace and Twitter. Our keynote and panel, moderated by noted blogger and social media expert Chris Brogan, brings together some very smart people, including representatives from Facebook and LinkedIn (I’ve also been asked to be a panelist).

Their lively discussion will cover how to:

• Build an effective personal network based on relationships, not just numbers
  
• Manage the shift in media spending from traditional vehicles to online communities
  
• Keep pace with the rapid changes in the world of social media

The keynote speaker is John Moore, senior vice president and director of ideas and innovation at Mullen Media Hub, who has worked closely with MySpace and Facebook. In his presentation, he’ll outline the latest in social media and how it applies to today’s marketers.

Join us at Boston’s newest hotspot, The Exchange Conference Center, located on the waterfront in Boston’s historic Seaport—with delicious summertime appetizers from Legal Sea Foods.

Date: Monday, July 21, 2008
Time: 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Free hors d’oeuvres from Legal Sea Foods. Cash bar.
Price: $35 for AMA Members; $60 for Non-Members; $25 for Students.
Place: Exchange Conference Center, Boston, MA 02141

Register Now!

Social Media Club members and regulars, use the discount code “BMCAMA” to get the AMA membership price of $35 for this event. I think it’ll be well worth it!

PodCamp Boston 3 is “480 people gathering to share their ideas, lessons learned and earned, cutting edge developments, and stories.” It happens over the weekend of July 19-20th.

From blogging to podcasting to Twitter to virtual worlds and more, whether you’re a veteran of new media or just getting started, PodCamp Boston has something for YOU. Set aside July 19-20, 2008 at the Joseph Martin Conference Center at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.

PodCamp Boston promises to help you learn, share, and grow your new media skills. If you’ve been wondering how to get more involved in new media and social media, if you’ve thought about starting a blog, podcast, or Twitter presence, PodCamp Boston is for you. If you’re a veteran adventurer of new media, come to share and learn from your peers, and make partnerships & friendships! PodCamp Boston offers something for everyone, no matter where you are on your new media journey.

MORE INFORMATION

SIGN UP NOW!

The Social Media Club Boston’s June 2008 program, sponsored and hosted by Lois Paul & Partners, focused on social media in the enterprise.

Here is the audio for the event. Rich Wadsworth of LP&P kicked things off, Todd Van Hoosear of Topaz Partners moderated. Panelists were John Cass of Forrester Research, Michele Glorie of Kronos, Mike Volpe of HubSpot and Parna Sarkar of Invention Machine.

You can subscribe to the audio content from Social Media Club Boston events via RSS:

The panelist lineup for tonight’s Social Media Club Boston event focusing on the enterprise is excellent. It’s not too late to sign up! We’ll have:

Parna Sarkar, Senior Director, Corporate Communications, Invention Machine
With more than 15 years of integrated marketing communications experience, Parna Sarkar enjoys building high impact programs that deliver exceptional results. Sarkar’s expertise spans media relations, competitive strategy, branding, global product launches, executive visibility and thought leadership, IPO and mergers and acquisitions. As Sr. Director of Corporate Communications, Sarkar drives Invention Machine’s positioning and corporate communications strategy, including messaging, new media, public relations and analyst relations programs. Prior to joining Invention Machine, Sarkar was director of Public Relations & Marketing Communications at iRobot, where she spearheaded the company’s global branding and positioning strategy as well as public relations, public affairs and marketing communications programs.

Mike Volpe, VP Marketing, HubSpot
Mike Volpe is the VP Marketing at the internet marketing company HubSpot where he manages the company’s marketing programs and writes regularly for HubSpot’s Internet Marketing Blog. Prior to HubSpot, Mike held several marketing and business development positions at enterprise software and a consumer Internet startup companies including most recently as Director, Marketing Operations at SolidWorks Corp. He has also worked as a financial analyst at a technology industry investment bank. Mike is an MBA graduate of the MIT Sloan School of Management and received his B.A. in Economics and Government, summa cum laude, from Bowdoin College. He is a Director of the Alumni Fund at Bowdoin College and a Co-Founder and Director of the Boston Scholars Program, a Boston volunteer organization.

Michele Glorie, Senior Director, Corporate Communications, Kronos
Michele Glorie is Senior Director of Corporate Communications at Kronos Incorporated, a 3,400-employee provider of workforce management software and services. She is responsible for setting Kronos’ global communications strategy, and oversees the company’s public relations, influencer relations, and employee communications programs. She also managed Kronos’ investor relations program until the company went private in 2007 after having traded on Nasdaq since 1992. Prior to joining Kronos nearly 10 years ago, Michele spent several years working at Boston-based high-tech PR agencies Brodeur and FitzGerald.

John Cass, Online Community Manager, Forrester Research
In John’s new role at Forrester Research he will be working to develop further the company’s existing social media strategies for community building, dialogue and customer feedback. John started blogging in 2003 to find out how blogs help businesses reach high rankings in search engines, but discovered blogs do so much more in terms of creating dialogue between companies and their customers. His 2007 book, “Strategies and Tools for Corporate Blogging,” was published by Butterworth-Heinemann an imprint of Elsevier, Inc. He served as president of the Boston Chapter of the American Marketing Association in 2005-2006, and currently serves as a Founding Fellow and Advisory board member for the Society of New Communications Research.

Audio from the last two panel events is now available via the Tech PR Gems blog and the Social Media Club Boston audio feed (in podcast format for your listening pleasure).

Audio for March’s event, “The Search for Results: Social Media and Search Marketing”, sponsored by Marketwire, is available here.

Audio for last week’s event, “The Future of Journalism in a Social Media World”, co-hosted by PRSA Boston, is available here.

Call it web 2.0. Call it enterprise 2.0. Either way, companies are doing more than just talk about social media. They’re using it to build their businesses. Everyday companies are doing social media. It is time to stop talking about the philosophy of why and what could be done in social media and start doing it.

Many companies and corporate decision makers think of social media as something only done by large companies or 2.0-focused entities. And most of the training sessions and how-to sessions held in our industry seem to always be about what the large companies are doing, what PR people trying to sell social media services are selling and about potential and “should do” situations that have nothing to do with reality for most companies. But the truth is that every company can be using social media now.

So the Social Media Club of Boston is holding an event on June 12 in Woburn where we are cutting through the high thoughts and actually hearing from regular companies that are blogging, podcasting, Twittering, etc. These companies with real budgets and real issues that everyone on this list can appreciate, and they will be discussing what they are doing now and how they got there, and will then take part in individual sessions.

A panel of social media practitioners at mid-sized enterprises will share their learnings with the group. Stay tuned for more panel information.

This event will take place at LP&P’s offices, near the Woburn / Anderson MBTA commuter rail station in Woburn.

Networking starts at 6pm, with the panel program starting at 6:30. Break-out sessions will start at 8pm, and run till 9.

SIGN UP NOW!

The Boston Communications Happy Hour and the Social Media Club are joining forces on Wednesday, May 28th. Social media mavens will mix with other communications professionals for a networking and social event at Legal Seafood’s outside bar in the courtyard at The Charles Hotel in Cambridge.

The Boston Communications Happy Hour was organized by Jenny Krentzman, and is a relaxed way to network with communications pros in the Boston area. They meet once a month in Cambridge and take turns planning the venue. Agency, media, analyst, student and corporate folks from companies including Clarity PR, Emerson, Foley Hoag, Forrester Research, KeyBank, Novell, Nuance, Staples, Sunlife, Text 100, The Horn Group, Shift Communications and Waggener Edstrom Worldwide have been known to attend on a regular basis.

Here are the details:

Date: Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Time: 6:00 p.m. until whenever
Where: Legal Seafood Outdoor Bar in the courtyard at The Charles Hotel - right outside of Noir

On Tuesday, May 20th, PRSA is planning a great event on social media and the future of journalism. SIGN UP NOW!

Newsrooms are shrinking and many industry trade magazines continue on their low-calorie diets. Meanwhile, advertising revenues continue to shift online, where publishers are still trying to find the right business model. Print isn’t the only industry being challenged–television is facing the repercussions of video on-demand (and the ability to fast-forward through commercials), while radio is trying to figure out how to make its content available online in streaming and podcast formats while maintaining ad revenues.

Veteran journalist Paul Gillin, author of “The New Influencers” and the upcoming book “Secrets of Social Media Marketing”, leads a panel of reporters, editors and producers through a discussion of the future of journalism in a social media world. The big questions we’ll ask:

* How are blogs, podcasts and online video impacting the both the business and the reporting of news?
* Will journalists need to master video, audio and photography in order to practice their craft in the future?
* How has the journalism profession been impacted by the success of bloggers moving into the reporting business?
* What does the future have in store for mainstream media? How can those media stay relevant in a changing information world?

[UPDATED 15 MAY 2008] Our panelists so far include:
* Ted McEnroe, Director of Digital Media, NECN
* Robin Lubbock, Director of New Media, WBUR
* Howard Sholkin, Director of Communications & Marketing Programs, IDG Communications
* David Wallace, Managing Partner, Gamechange LLC

SIGN UP NOW! (The event will be held at the American Cancer Society offices right by the Weston tolls (intersection of the Mass Pike and 128 / I-95.)

You’re invited to join the Social Media Club Boston on March 13th for ”The Search for Results: Social Media and Search Marketing.”This event will explore the following:

• Why SEO is an important component of a social media marketing strategy
• What are SEOs doing with social media on behalf of their clients
• What are some of the tools being used by SEOs for social media optimization 

Networking starts at 6pm and the panel kicks off at 6:30pm at 800 West Cummings Park in Woburn. Directions and registration is online at http://socialmediaclub.pbwiki.com/BostonMarch2008.  

Our moderator for the event will be Amanda Watlington, the owner of Searching for Profit, a search marketing consultancy focusing on the interaction of the consumer with businesses, using search engines, RSS, blogs, podcasting, or other new media to deliver their messages. An industry thought leader and an internationally-recognized speaker, Amanda has led sessions on search marketing, web strategy, and social media at Search Engine Strategies, Webmaster World, AdTech, and DMA. She shares her views of where search marketing is headed at her own blog, Blogs and Feeds, and as a blogger for Search Engine Watch. Amanda will be joined by a panel of experts that includes:

• Thom Brodeur, Senior Vice President, Global Strategy and Development, Marketwire 
• Greg Jarboe, President and Co-Founder of SEO-PR search engine optimization firm and public relations agency with offices in San Francisco and Boston
• Andrew Komack, founder and president of KoMarketing Associates, LLC 
• Sherwood Stranieri, Director of SEO at SMG Search a division of Starcom Mediavest Group 

Thank you to our sponsor Marketwire for making this event possible!

Sorry for the delay, but the audio from the February Social Media Club Boston event is now available via the Topaz blog and the Social Media Club Boston audio feed. It was another sold-out, well-attended session with great discussions and lots of lessons learned! See you again next month!