IABC Luncheon

Nearly 100 people showed up to the IABC luncheon that focused on social media in the B2B workplace, a presentation put on by Dora Smith, the director of global social media for Siemens Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Software.

Smith covered:

• Social media effects on communications from a location, influence, quantity and culture perspective.
• Siemens’ (a B2B software company) approach, goals and objectives in social media.
• A technology launch integrated with social media that won an IABC Gold Quill Award.
• Her recommendations on social media frameworks and resources.

Some of Smith’s tips:

• Consider social media’s impact on search and the new Social Search.
• Follow Forrester’s 4-step Social Media Approach: People, Objectives, Strategy, Technology.
• Survey your customers first before venturing out into social media and monitoring a conversation.
• The most important aspect of Twitter is that if you do things right, you begin to surround yourself with a great group of people.
• Social media road map: Listen, train ambassadors, engage, train bloggers: start internally, talk externally, energize.

SMCSTL
The SMCSTL event later that evening featured speaker David Garland, the founder and host of The Rise To The Top on ABC in St. Louis. His discussion, titled “Maximizing Content Marketing: Creating, Promotion, and ROI,” focused on how to create and take advantage of the content you put online and achieve measurable results to execute your strategy. Garland was a great speaker and interacted with the crowd well. “I approach social media like working the room at a cocktail party,” he said.

As a member of IABC’s Professional Development Committee, we have seen that events focused on social media tend to increase attendance due to the high interest to learn more about how to use social media as a communication tool. Judging by the turnout at both of these events (and the fact that they were on the same day) I think it’s safe to say that social media is sticking around for a while and is constantly gaining popularity in St. Louis.

Upcoming Social Media Programs in St. Louis
Webster University and The Vandiver Group, Inc. (TVG) will also be putting on an event focused on social media. Webster’s School of Business and Technology and TVG will present a social media seminar, “Engaging Your Employees: Web 2.0” on Friday, December 11, at Webster University. This event is free and open to the public and includes a free continental breakfast, which will be served at 7:30 a.m. The seminar will begin at 8 a.m. At this seminar you will learn the benefits of the latest social media platforms when engaging with employees. Seating for this event is limited, so RSVP today!

IABC – St. Louis (@IABCstl on Twitter) puts on events, panels and speakers on the last Thursday of every month and SMCSTL (@SMCSTL on Twitter) holds events on the third Thursday of every month. Due to the holidays, IABC will be putting on a special event on Tuesday, December 15, again focused on social media at the Schlafly Tap Room. Schlafly Co-Founder and Vice President Dan Kopman will present “See What’s Brewing at Schlafly: Social Media” and he will share Schlafly’s experiences in Web 2.0 and how your company can get results with social media. This program is open to both members and non-members, and you can register here.

Last week I attended two well planned, successful events discussing social media, and yes, both were here in St. Louis.

Social Media Club

The first event was put on by the Social Media Club of St. Louis, which is an organization that enables people to share knowledge and build relationships. Their slogan is, “If you get it, Share it.” St. Louis founders, Reem Abeidoh (@rabeidoh on Twitter) and Todd Jordan (@tojosan) started the club this year with the goal of building it as a hub for all social media users to exchange knowledge and develop relationships among people they chat with online. The kickoff event was held back in May, and they have had a meeting on the third Thursday of every month since then at various venues throughout St. Louis. Each month features a different panel of social media experts discussing a variety of topics.

Oh, and did I mention that all of their events are free? Well, they are. You don’t even have to sign up for a membership. The only thing they ask is that you RSVP on their Web site, and after that, you can opt to have emails reminders sent to you for future events.

You can also check out their Facebook page for more information on the monthly events.

This month’s panel discussed new media versus old media and featured Craig Cheatham (@InsideNews4 on Twitter), an investigative reporter at Channel 4 News – KMOV; Erica Smith (@ericasmith), multimedia producer at the St. Louis Post Dispatch; Bill Streeter (@billstreeter), a video blogger (lofistl.com), blogger for the Riverfront Times, and teacher/advisor at St. Louis University; and Mike Flynn(@mikeflynn), a blogger at PunchingKitty.com and a web developer.

They discussed the benefits of social media and blogging and how it is changing the face of old media.
Some key points of the discussion included:

• Journalism ethics in blogs vs. print media.
• How bloggers have raised the bar and helped enhance the integrity of journalism.
• Blogs need to be backed up with links and sources in order to be trusted and considered authentic.
• Social media is driving the first response to breaking stories, whereas traditional media is still having difficulty responding as quickly and effectively.

Twitter Co-Founder Jack Dorsey Returns Home to St. Louis

The second social media event I attended was the Jack Dorsey Tweet Up sponsored by Webster University. I was surprised to find out that Dorsey (@jack), the co-founder and chairman of Twitter, is a St. Louis native who grew up in Compton Heights and attended Bishop DuBourg High School. He told an audience of almost 1,000 about his story, how his love of maps led to one of his first jobs as a dispatch programmer for emergency personnel and how he eventually started Twitter with co-founder Biz Stone.

For a recap of his speech, the following blogs offer a nice rundown:

Blogger Erin Eschen’s Notes

In Media Res Blog: The Highlights

The Social Media Report’s Recap

Dorsey also gave St. Louis a hint about his new company that is currently in the works with his former boss, Jim McKelvey of St. Louis-based Mira Digital Publishing. He mentioned health care and financial services as possible industries for the new company and he said St. Louis would play a role.

The Riverfront Times reported that the new company would be based on the “three concepts (of Twitter): immediacy, transparency and approachability.” He couldn’t give us much more information, because it is currently still in “stealth mode.”

I would like to commend Dr. Benjamin Akande (@benjamin_akande), Dean of the School of Business and Technology at Webster University, and Webster University (@websteru) for putting on such a successful event. One interesting feature of the event was a large projection screen that was displayed on the stage showing a live feed of tweets with the hash tag #jackatwebster. Dr. Akande also announced at the event that #jackatwebster made it to the list of Trending Topics on Twitter, to which the audience responded with cheers and clapping. While the Twitter feed was a little distracting, it was an interesting addition to Dorsey’s speech and made the event more interactive for the audience.

After his speech, Dorsey took questions from the audience and the media. Dorsey’s visit to St. Louis caused quite a stir in local media, prompting news articles and blogs left and right. To see a list of the media coverage, as well as video of Dorsey’s speech and photos, click here.

Webster University then honored Dorsey with the Success to Significance 2009 Person of the Year award. However, Dorsey’s day did not end there. After visiting Webster, Dorsey went on to St. Louis City Hall to receive the key to the City of St. Louis by Mayor Francis Slay. Lastly, he ended his eventful day by throwing the first pitch at the Cardinals game that night.

It was a big day for Jack Dorsey, the St. Louis native and Twitter CEO, and yet an even bigger day for St. Louis. This may be the jump start St. Louis needs to become a key player in social media.

You can follow someone on Twitter, request friendships on Facebook, and now you can Glympse™  your friends and family. What is Glympse™ you ask? It’s a new technology that allows you to send “Glympses” to your friends and family letting them know where you are at any time, in any place. It’s a mobile location-sharing program that can be downloaded to your phone, but only if it’s a T-Mobile G1 phone, for now. The program should be available soon to other leading smartphone devices, like the Blackberry®.

Once you download the Glympse™ software onto your phone, you can send people a Glympse™ for a certain period of time, meaning they will either be able to tell exactly where you are for those five seconds that you allow, or they can track you on a map for up to four hours, but it is ultimately up to the sender. The recipient of your Glympse™ does not have to download the program in order to follow you or see where you are currently located. As a recipient, you would be able to see information such as, what street the driver is on, what his/her speed is, as well as traffic conditions.

The makers of Glympse™ are marketing their product as a way to let your co-workers know that you’re running late for a meeting, let your friends know you are running late for the baseball game or let your family know you made it to your destination and that you’re OK. They even have a YouTube video on their Web site explaining the simplicity and usefulness of Glympse™. The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times have both praised this product as an efficient way to get in contact with co-workers, friends and loved ones, but they also note the level of “creepiness” in the Glympse™ program.

As if Facebook status updates and tweets aren’t enough, now you can send someone your exact location as they follow you on a map until you reach your destination? Talk about an invasion of privacy.

My question is this: when will it stop? Just last night at dinner my friends and family were discussing one of my friend’s obsession with constantly updating her Facebook status, but her mom argued it let her sleep better at night knowing where her child was at all times. “She might not call like she’s supposed to, but with Facebook, at least I always know what she’s up to,” she said. Maybe she’s right.

Will Glympse™ simply ease the worrying minds of parents with teenagers and the spouses of business-travelers, or will it be cause for ex-significant others and nosy neighbors to stalk you? I’m not sure, but I do know that our society is changing, and in a world where stalking someone online is kosher… I ask again: will it ever end?