Social Media Breakfast Twin Cities and Social Media Club of Minnesota and have aligned for selected events in order to push forward the digital community discussions and connections here in the Twin Cities. Better things happen when you come together. This coming Friday at 8AM, BestBuy continues their openness to discussions on new media and social media with local practitioners in Minneapolis by hosting a breakfast in their main auditorium. Rick Mahn, founder of the local chapter of Social Media Breakfast, is leading the charge and has brought together a great lineup. Julio Ojeda-Zapata, journalist for Pioneer Press (main paper in the Twin Cities) will talk about his upcoming book “Twitter Means Business - How microblogging can help or hurt your company.” Julio opened up live-writing on a chapter to the new book on Twitter before the event and he will share some of the collections at BestBuy on Friday.

Also at the event, there will be a live remote update from Noah Kunin of TheUptake.org from the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Denver, CO. Noah will be demonstrating how social media, specifically mobile video, is being used for citizen journalism. You are able to watch remotely via the Mogulus video channel on Mogulus: www.mogulus.com/smbmsp. Attendance to the events has been  steadily growing, and the goal is to keep attendees around 80-100 simply because real interactive discussions can’t take place as the numbers get too large. The goal is to keep it interactive.

After BestBuy, the following three events in September and October are in the planning phase and will be hosted at Minneapolis Fortune 500s. Minneapolis is special because of the large business that exist here, including 3M, BestBuy, Target, General Mills, United Health Group, and Medtronic. These companies are big slow ships, but hey they are massive behemoths that are making strides to incorporate social media and build communities internally and for their customers. Some have had a few bumps along the road but at least they are willing to discuss it. Back in May, BestBuy’s Gary Koelling (Blue Shirt Nation) sat on the panel hosted by Social Media Club and MIMA  and brought some fresh air to the conversation on who controls social media in the enterprise. More news will be coming out of Minneapolis as these large companies are developing and putting into practice new services for massive amounts of customers and employees.

Be sure to tune in on Friday August 22nd at 8AM Central.
More details: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/991607/?ps=6 - 

Social Media Club of Minneapolis

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We would like to put together a list of ‘case studies’ of companies around the world (large and small) who have adopted a Social Media strategy and, here’s the kicker, successfully taken action on their plan.

It may not have been a completely smooth path for them to walk down, but they are making strides and their internal and external communities are all the better for it.

Who should we make sure is included in this list and why (short summary please)? And feel free to toot your own horn if you are proud of what you are doing.

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Here’s a bit of what’s going on in Social Media of late. Feel free to add your own links in the comments section, or send us you suggestions for the next issue of Social Media Now.

• Mike Sansone’s mantra is Reach with Intention, and he provides some great questions to ask yourself when considering the use of Social Media tools in your Marketing strategy. 
  
• Patrick Williams writes a nice article on How to write a Strategic Communications Plan. Having written a few of these in my lifetime, his 13-step  model feels pretty dead on.
• Mashable reports an interesting story this morning on a possible break in Gmail’s security if you use this service on a public hotspot. Thankfully, it is easily corrected by clicking on ‘Settings’, go to the ‘General’ tab and select ‘always use https‘ when accessing Gmail. Might run a wee bit slower for you then, but at least your data will be secure.
• Michelle Lamar just completed the White Trash Mom Handbook. Great use of her site to give me snippets of the content and dig into her blog to learn more. Thinking I know what to get my girlfriends for  Christmas now…
• Pandora is in trouble as the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) is looking to almost triple the licensing fees for web radio sites. Note that under the new plan Internet radio stations would jump to 2.91 cents per hour per listener, satellite radio stations would pay 1.6 cents per hour per listener and traditional radio stations would pay…nothing. Everyone agrees royalties are due, it just seems to me there should be a more fair and balanced fee structure. More info, and how you can help here.
• via @ciaoenrico, Arizona Highways is having a photo contest to capture images of their great state. Smart way to engage visitors and locals alike and keep them coming back for more.

Bright Shiny Objects
Ok, these are not really so bright and shiny, but they are three services I find I cannot live without.

• Dopplr -For the folks who travel a bit. Easy to use interface with a great social element to help you connect with your community while on the road.  Dopplr is a free service.
• iContact - If you send mass email communications (i.e. newsletters and such) this is a great service to help you manage your contact database. Disclosure: We were users, and believers, long before they became a Social Media Club Small Business Member. You can try them out with a 10-day free trial.
• Survey Monkey. There are a lot of polling systems out there, but I find Survey Monkey is the one I go back to time and time again. They do offer a free version that would work for many.

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• Be The Voice: August 17, 2008 - David Spark talks with Chris Heuer, Social Media Club’s CoFounder and a Senior Partner with The Conversation Group and Peter Hirshberg, also of The Conversation Group and chairman of Technorati about engaging with your community. Heuer and Hirshberg offer some amazing insight with regard to developing your voice, caring about what your audience cares about, and NOT just being an agent to deliver a message for a brand or company.
• Marketing Voices: August 11, 2008 - Chris Heuer talks to Jennifer Jones about how Social Media Club got started, what should be most important to marketers today and explains what he means by ‘gisting’.

If you have a podcast that covers Social Media Marketing, Tools and/or Practices and think our members would find the topic of interest, please send a summary and the link to socialmediaclub [at] gmail [dot] com.

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[I posted this article on my blog yesterday, but thought it might help a few SMC members if it were reposted.]

Last week, I strategized and launched a pretty large social network in four days, with the help of a really amazing team. In some days, I have done jobs like this before, in that I’ve launched a hyper-local social network last year in a couple of hours, but in many ways, I entered uncharted waters this week with this particular implementation.

To learn 13 of the things that you’ll need to do as a social web strategist, in order to get a huge, robust social network up in a ridiculously short time period, just follow this link. Damn the torpedoes!

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