In this panel, Kerri and Kevin chat with Asif Kapadia, Director of the new Formula 1 documentary Senna. “Senna,” is about Brazilian Formula 1 driver Ayrton Senna and the Three Formula 1 World Championships he claimed before his death at the young age of 34. “Senna,” premiered at the SxSW Film portion this year.

Kerri and Kevin met Asif through Twitter while they were starting the Austin Grand Prix website. The three talk about how social media brought them together and how it is impacting Formula 1 racing. Asif discusses the important role social media played while promoted the film since the audience for Formula 1 racing in the United States is so small.

Kevin and Kerri were able to have the film screened in Austin during SxSW by using social media and creating a large audience for “Senna.” This interview is a perfect example of how targeting a specific audience by using social media can turn into a huge success.

Senna Movie and Forumla 1 – 3.13.11 from Social Media Club on Vimeo.

Sandy explains that in the beginning, businesses would do “fly-by-social media,” which is to make a Facebook page and Twitter account, but not interact with it.  Businesses are now realizing to succeed in social media, it’s not about having the tools, but using them effectively.

Businesses are still resisting using social media because of the risks involved. Unsatisfied customers have easy access to write negative comments that the public can view. Sandy explains businesses can use analytics to evaluate consumer reaction to certain posts, tweets, and comments.

Social media is becoming a part of businesses just as the Internet became a part of them a decade ago. These three are making sure businesses are getting the information they need to make their footprint in the social media.

Social Business – 3.12.11 from Social Media Club on Vimeo.

Consider it like this: we always have our phones on us, right? But do you bring business cards out with you on Saturday night? Some people might….I bet most don’t. You won’t go anywhere without a phone though, and your public persona (possibly business/professional persona) lives on the social networks that you access from that phone.

Another scenario: Everyone at SXSW has business cards with them. What if you run out? What if you can’t dig them out of your huge purse (that might just be my personal problem)? What if your company business cards don’t list your Twitter handle?

What if you lose the business card(s) you collect?

All of these are legitimate things that can happen. And in a digitally connected, on-the-go age, it’s inevitable that we will evolve to electronic forms of business cards.

And we like to engage…why not add a social component to business cards? I mean, social media is another form of networking. So why wouldn’t it also be your business card?

Enter: Hashable.

I went to a Hashable presentation while down here at SXSW. What is Hashable? Well, I was signed up for it before I even came here and I couldn’t really tell you.

But then I started talking to someone from Hashable at the event and asked how it worked. They just launched the mobile app, so we were able to run through it right then and there. I have to say, the mobile version of this tool made me understand it a lot better.

Basically, you log in with your Twitter handle and you’re given a few options:

-Check-in w/someone (Foursquare style; it will sync to your Twitter account)

-Send a business card: you type the person’s email address or Twitter handle, and then it will send a tweet saying you met that person along with a #justmet hashtag

-Make an intro: this is how you can introduce two people. It’s perfect for those times when you’re telling someone “You should meet so and so.” Now you can make that introduction immediately happen.

An email is sent to you as soon as you interact with these people in any way, so you have a record of it.

You can also manage your profile, invite people to be in your “Inner Circle,” and find other connections on Hashable. I think that’s probably where the web version comes in handy. It’s better for managing things. But the mobile app is the way to go if you want to exchange business cards on the fly.

You might not want to part ways with your business cards just yet, but tools like this make it pretty tempting. It’s especially useful at a huge conference like SXSW where you’re meeting tons of new people that are all very interesting and work in your industry.

I think the bottom line here is that society is starting to find the intersection of social, mobile and face-to-face interaction. To me, that means relationships and connections you make are even stronger.

It’s something to consider the next time you go to hand someone a business card…

The tweets were coming from the SxSW panel discussion: “Lurkers: Your Most Important Community Members.” The panel consisted of Heather Strout – Director of Community Services at Farland Group, Jim Storer – Co-Founder of The Community Roundtable, Mike Pascucci – Social Strategist at Ektron and Mark Wallace – VP, Digital at Environment Data Resource Inc.

Judging from the tweets I saw, there is a lot of disdain for lurkers from community managers. In fact, I know one Facebook community built around fans of a particular sports team where the community manager got frustrated and kicked off over 200 members, just because they weren’t participating enough in the discussions. Even when some tried to get back in, he told them they were banned. Not a good way to build up a community.

Your lurkers are a vital and necessary part of your community. They often make up a majority of your membership but are dismissed as valueless members of the community. Treating your lurkers as if they have no value could be a fatal mistake in managing your community.

For one thing, most community members start as lurkers (people who join, but just look around without saying anything). Many of them are often your evangelists, you just don’t see it happening because it’s either offline or in their other communities.

Lurkers are learners. They access your community for information. Consider them entry level community members. They are there to learn first. Just showing up is a level of contribution. These lurkers could be your next evangelists. The community member cycle starts with non-followers that move on to become lurkers, then they become engaged members and finally they’re evangelists.

How do you deal with lurkers? Lurkers are people you need to nurture in your online community to turn them into active members. Give them a glimpse behind the screen so they can get a sense of what they’ll get from membership. Give them enough information about your community’s purpose and quality content. Create safer places for them to share, even if that means creating private groups within the community.

Don’t be afraid to take conversations offline. You can also use traditional methods that work when engaging with customers. One way to engage lurkers is to create qualified mailing lists and craft newsletters specifically for them. Be inviting. Ask their opinions. Survey lurkers and the community at large to get some metrics on things like satisfaction. Do research to find out what converted other former lurkers.

Turn lurkers into contributors by engaging them immediately. It’s important to create a personalized welcome to each new community member. Some have had success with having members welcome other members as a way to engage them. Also, make it easy for them to take initiative with simple, small tasks like uploading photos.

Sometimes, engaging them is about making sure you’re being engaging yourself. For instance, if you’re writing a blog post, don’t end with a generic question like “what do you think?” Write a compelling question at the end of each post to bring lurkers out of hiding. In fact, it was suggested that 40% of the time making a blog post should be spent working out the question you want readers to answer in the comments. Some went so far as to say you should write that question first, before you write the post.

Remember, active feedback is the goal of community. When you post and get no active feedback – that is feedback telling you that you’re doing it wrong.

You can turn lurkers into contributors. Just start with great content and seed the community – no one wants to be first at a party. Pay attention. What resonates with them? Use what you learn to engage them.

That’s what I picked up lurking on the lurker panel feed. Thank you to the panelist and everyone who tweeted out the great content that became this post. Now, if only someone had tweeted a good question I could ask at the end of this post.  So, how are you dealing with lurkers? What’s worked for you?

[image by Mona Loldwoman http://www.flickr.com/photos/40147761@N04/4335555919/sizes/s/in/photostream/]

For instance, are you a social media “cheater” if you buy your followers? Are you a cheater if you automate or schedule your tweets/other social media messages? Is it authentic and credible if you ghost tweet?

On the other hand: How can you be authentic without turning some people off? Personally, I know I have a sarcastic sense of humor—but if I don’t tone it down when I communicate on social media sites, then waill I offend someone?

The most interesting part of this panel is that they were split. They were not advocating ethics, but rather bringing up valid points on both sides of the coin. A couple panelists suggested that (in a nutshell) it’s a competitive world and you need to be able to keep up…which sometimes means you need to “play the game” a little bit. Others firmly believed in 100% organic social media usage—only you should speak on your social media accounts, even if you’re speaking on behalf of your organization’s account.

The conversation evolved into something very relevant to those of us who use social media as a business tool. How do you justify social media to top business executives at a company? How do you define its value? Can you measure the ROI of social media?

This came up after we got onto the topic of organic social media usage. Ideally, we’d all like it to be organic, but let’s get to the real issue: If we’re going to put in all the time and effort to build an organic social media community, how can we be sure it’s going to benefit our brand?

In this case, the panel was in agreement: Volume doesn’t equal value. As, Laura Beck suggested, having the *right* 100 followers/friends (aka those who are your active brand advocates) are much more important than having a million followers/friends that barely engage with you and don’t really care about your brand. Although none of us in the room were positive how we can convince the top execs at, for instance, Nike, that a mere 100 followers can be more beneficial to their brand, we all still think it is.

The problem is that influence is subjective and doesn’t have solid metrics for measurement.

It’s also a process: your brand advocates need to continually spread the word to their social graphs before you see the true results. It takes a while, which is why those of us fighting for the validity of social media as a business tool are at risk with the execs—they want to see results in the first four months. Unfortunately, real results might not take effect until a full year passes. Sure, you might have more followers/friends/likes after the first four months, but chances are those people aren’t going to take action immediately. You need to build a relationship with them and convince them your brand is worthwhile before they convert into brand advocates that actually purchase your product and/or services.

That being said, I think the best way to convince the execs to jump on the social media bandwagon is by a) not promising them that it’ll happen overnight and b) showing them a concrete example of a similar company (at least in size and hopefully in a related industry) that benefitted from social media usage.

Do awesome research: Is there a company doing this particularly well? Which organizations are people most engaged with? Are there companies in your industry who completely increased their presence or put themselves on the map by social media? Remember that all of these things will eventually lead to increased sales…and that’s the bottom line, right?

The point is that you’re never going to do all of the things I mentioned above if you don’t do it organically. There’s a real opportunity here to build relationships and engage with mass amounts of people at once, yet in a one-to-one manner, but if you automate your tweets and buy a list of followers it’s never going to happen.

Companies need to build their own social graph. It might take time, but it will definitely pay off in the long run.

French programming hosted by:

Axelle Tessandier is a Media and Social Platform Strategist. she is also a social media addict, writer, Internet explorer and an eternal learner. On a moreconventional side, she did a masters in Audiovisual, Media Law and Communications at La Sorbonne in Paris. After different experiences in media, TV, press and foremost cinema, she helped green organizations to communicate using the digital environment. A few months later, she was chosen to participate in the innovation program Palomar5 in Berlin. At the end of the innovation camp, they started a pilot collaborative hub in San Francisco with GAFFTA, where she was a resident artist.  She writes for different sites such as ReadWriteWeb and participating in new journalistic innovations like LongShotMag. She is currently based out of San Francisco and in charge of developing the new social media curation platform Scoop.it.

You can catch Axelle’s live Ustream at 1pm CT (UTC/GMT -6 hours), Friday, March 11th through Monday, March 14th.

Connect with Axelle:

RWW France: http://fr.readwriteweb.com/author/axelletessandier/

Scoop.it: http://www.scoop.it/u/axelletess

Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/axelletess

Spanish programming hosted by:

Shaine Mata started in social media through blogging about local politics. It was at his first SXSW that Shaine recognized the value of online communities and collaboration. Soon after, he and several friends from San Antonio organized the first Podcamp in Texas, followed by many unconferences since then. Their most recent event was Mobicamp San Antonio.

Shaine co-founded the Rio Grande Valley chapter of Social Media Club back home to help build the same spirit of community and collaboration in a bicultural border region. His interests beyond social media include politics, personal wellness, and helping the local food bank.

You can catch Shaine’s live Ustream at 2pm CT (UTC/GMT -6 hours), Friday, March 11th, Sunday, March 13th and Monday, March 14th.

Connect with Shaine:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/shaine

While intended as a place for our members to gather together to make media and merriment, we are happy to host entrepreneurs, bloggers, journalists and others from our community/industry. In addition to our UStream studio broadcasting live each day, the Clubhouse will be host to several events from Friday March 11 through Monday March 14. As an ‘unofficial event/venue’, you can request credentials even if you don’t have a conference pass, you can also contact us about sponsorship opportunities or hosting your event at the Clubhouse.

The Schedule So Far (will be updated here regularly):

Thursday March 10, 2011

• 4-6pm We will host a kickoff cocktail party to open the Clubhouse for our professional members and select invited guests.

Friday March 11, 2011

• 330-5pm VIP Invite Only Party/Press Event (tenative, details to come)

Saturday March 11, 2011

• 12-3pm Social Media Club Members Meeting: We are inviting all our professional members attending the conference to join us for this important membership meeting where we will discuss our code of conduct, vote on key matters of our 501c6 non-profit association and set the direction for the remainder of 2011.

Sunday March 12, 2011

• 3-6pm #BlogChat Live with Mack Collier and friends.
• 7-9pm TBA, Special Entertainment

Everyday (Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday)

• 10am-6pm Clubhouse open for credentialed guests
• 10am-2pm Panel Discussions. If your panel didn’t get ‘picked’ you can submit your panel to us to feature on our UStream channel each day, starting on the hour and running for 30-45 minutes.
• 2pm Interactive Conference Recap in Spanish
• 3pm Interactive Conference Recap in French, featuring Axelle Tessandier of ReadWriteWeb France and Scoop.it
• 4pm Conference Insytes: Chris Heuer’s daily show with interviews of industry leaders and a look ahead to the night’s activities
• 5-6pm Live Music on the Roof (tenatively)
• 7pm-2am Social Shuttle for Credentialed guests

As with last year, we will be offering the “Social Shuttle” each night to transport you to and from all the official and unofficial parties/events. Many people last year said it was their favorite memories from the conference. Equipped with karaoke and filled with Molson, sodas and water, it is in many ways its own party, and your Clubhouse credentials is the only way to get onboard.

Unfortunately, we are at this late hour still in need of sponsors due to some unfortunate events.  If you would like to support us in making sure this Social Media Clubhouse can break even or perhaps make a few dollars to support our other community endeavours to improve media literacy around the globe, please contact us via email at socialmediaclub@gmail.com. Sponsorships are available from a few hundred to several thousand dollars.

After many months of planning, and working to create some true innovation for #SMCH6, we are nearly there.  We are really looking forward to seeing all of our friends, old and new, and enjoying all the great city of Austin has to offer. Stay tuned to the Social Media Clubhouse web site for more announcements, including details on were the house is located (walking distance from the convention center) and all of the social events being produced by our friends from around the world during ‘that’ interactive conference in mid-March.

Important Links:

• Request Credentials
• Submit Your Panel
• Be interviewed on one of our UStream shows
• SMC Members, Promote your Panel/Talk at the conference
• Sponsorship Info

As an extension of the Clubhouse, each night we run the “social shuttle”, transporting Social Media Club members, bloggers/journalists, entrepreneurs and other guests to the various official and unofficial parties held during this conference in Austin during the middle of March. The bus is a party unto itself, with karaoke, music and a mini-bar. Last year around this time, many folks said it was one of the best parts of the conference. You need to get credentialed (and be over 21 years old) in order to get on the bus each night as well as to visit the Clubhouse. As we get closer, we will be announcing a basic schedule of where you can find us each night.

Please complete the form below to request your credentials and get access to the Clubhouse and onto the Social Shuttle. Note, certain special events will have separate registration requirements.

If the form below is broken, you may also request credentials in a new window here.

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“…places like the Social Media Clubhouse will become increasingly valuable for maintaining an environment for deeper conversation, co-working, networking and the like.”

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I am thrilled so many people were able to come by the Clubhouse during SxSW and this is absolutely something Chris and I will continue to do. The houses may not all be as decadent as this one was in Austin (there were days I felt like wrapping the $12k couch in plastic to protect it), but the core idea of bringing smart people together to live and work under the same roof while creating interesting content and sharing their experiences with one another is something we wholly believe in (and ties perfectly into our work with Social Media Club).

Stay tuned folks…we are just getting warmed up.

What does Maximizing Engagement mean? Industry experts, David Meerman Scott, Eric Qualman, David Carter, Chris Heuer, Paul Gillin, Mike Lewis, Brian Solis and Peter Fasano gathered Sunday afternoon to share their insights and share examples of brands using the Social Media tools to engage with their customers.

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I think they could have talked for hours on this topic, so for now, get a little taste with this 58 minute clip. The internet conveniently died about 10 minutes before the end of the Summit, but we have the balance on hard tape we are currently having edited and will post once available.

A couple key takeaways:

• Paul Gillin: Early findings in a research report he is working on with Awareness finds companies are getting comfortable with the tools and expanding their reach, however, there does not seem to be a standard for determining ROI across any of them.
• Peter Fasano: Produce content authentically. Do not be who you think you need to be, be who you are.
• David Carter: Don’t try to use all the tools at once. Start slow and add to your ‘portfolio’ as you can manage. Looks bad if you have an account somewhere, but no one is there monitoring and maintaining it.
• Chris Heuer: It is not about your time commitment, but about your commitment over time.

I think my favorite moment of the day was when David Meerman Scott asked that we stop using Dell, Zappos and Comcast as the case studies de jour. We totally agree more examples need to be shared and I am glad he threw the gauntlet down so we all benefit from new stories and experiences. So here we go…throwing the baton back to this fine group of men and will ask them each to share ONE company they feel is doing a great job using the tools to engage with their customers. David, Eric, David, Chris, Paul, Mike, Brian and Peter – please provide this in the comments below. ::all eyes on you now::

Our heartfelt thanks to Christine Major and the folks at Awareness, Inc. who sponsored the summit and assisted us in bringing this great group of industry leaders to the Clubhouse. This is a meaty topic for sure and we will work on putting together the Maximum Engagement Summit, Part II (this time will be with all women just to balance it out).