Last year, Social Media Club shared the results of our first community census, and today, we’re excited to share our 2011 Social Media
Club Census.
In the last year, Social Media Club has expanded, not only in numbers of chapters and members, but in our missions of promoting digital media literacy through several of our initiatives. We launched our SMC Editorial Team in late 2010, which offers our members daily content on Social Media Clubhouse blog, of which we are actively expanding so we can continue to challenge our community members with thought-provoking, deeper discussions related to social media. We are working to expand the Social Media in Education initiative and have some exciting announcements around a new Interim Executive Director, Advisory Board and Programs coming in the coming weeks.
FIVE YEAR ANNIVERSARY
It is hard to believe, but August 16th marks the 5th anniversary of Social Media Club. Our first event was held in Mountain View, California (about 1/2 hour south of San Francisco) on August 16, 2006 and we have grown from that single chapter to well over 300 chapters simply through word of mouth. This is a huge milestone for us and I am amazed at what this grass-roots organization has accomplished in five short years, and how the industry has evolved during that time. We will be planning a series of retrospective posts over the coming weeks and sharing a few of our lessons learned as well.
In the September 2010, we received our 501(c)6 not-for-profit designation, another huge milestone for us and that was the piece that allowed us move from a loosely joined grass-roots organization to a trade association for social media professionals.
MEMBERSHIP
We’ve been focused on the expansion of our membership benefits, which has helped to increase the number of Professional, Small Business and Corporate members over the last year. To date, we have had over 1000 people find the membership page on the website and support the organization through paying dues. These funds have allowed us to continue to develop Social Media Club’s website to better the connections within our global community and also expand our efforts around social media education – most recently in our regional and International events like the Social Media Masters series that kicks off August 2011.
PROGRAMS
In 2011, we’ve also launched our Social Media Book Club, which hosts a title from thought leaders and leading educators that help our members learn, improve and share their knowledge with their communities and we began experimenting with programs like our Social Media Wine Club and Member-to-Member Promotions.
CHAPTERS
We’ve spent the last year making every effort to better serve our chapters, with the help of our full-time Community Manager, Jessica Murray. Jessica has deep knowledge in what it takes to launch and manage a chapter, having been the lead in Nashville for several years before joining us. She has been a great mentor to the newly forming chapters and works tirelessly to establish better processes as well as execute on Social Media Club missions with our global community. We have made many smart decisions over the last year, but hiring Jessica was probably our smartest.
THE SOCIAL MEDIA CLUB GLOBAL COMMUNITY
At present, we have 318 local chapters around the globe, with a total potential reach of 386,030. Accounting for any overlap on social networks between members supporting other Social Media Club chapters, we give an approximate reach of 300,000+ unique social media enthusiasts and professionals, across 49 countries.
From a global standpoint, Social Media Club HQ has a total potential reach of 114,983, with 93,000+ Twitter followers, 13,000+ Facebook Fans, 5,500+ members in our LinkedIn Group, a mailing list of 10,000+ and an RSS subscriber base of 15,000+. We attribute this growth to the launch of our editorial team and want to thank them deeply for their contribution to Social Media Club.
Census Highlights
- With 318 chapters, among the first SMC chapters to launch were San Francisco, New York City and Miami (all in 2006).
- Our newest Social Media Club chapter is Colombo, Sri Lanka. Previously active chapters that are in the relaunch stage are Chennai, India and Las Vegas, Nevada (USA).
- While we have yet to break ground in the Antarctic (but we are working some new contacts we just met), Social Media Club has chapters on six of the seven continents, and expect to have chapters on all seven continents by our 2012 census. 🙂
- Our chapter sizes range from 50 in Comox Valley, Canada to 400+ attendees in Moscow, Russia.
- There are more than 80 chapters who have active LinkedIn Groups, with Seattle, WA being the largest with 2,036.
- Among our chapters, 200 have Facebook Fan pages, and the largest Fan pages are Moscow having 7,093 fans, Seattle in 2nd with 2,816 fans and Detroit in 3rd with 2,336. Thinking this is a good excuse to start learning Russian now…
- There are approximately 80 chapters that meet sporadically and/or launched and have gone dormant. We’re actively seeking people to lead chapters like, SMC Albuquerque, SMC Calgary and SMC Prague, among others.
Top 5 Twitter Accounts:
1. Dallas, TX (USA) 7,125
2. Seattle, WA (USA) 7,111
3. Washington DC (USA) 5,160
4. Sacramento, CA (USA) 4,623
5. Miami, FL (USA) 4,366
Ten largest chapters by total potential reach across all social channels used:
1. Seattle, WA – 11,963
2. Dallas, TX – 10,017
3. Washington DC – 9,371
4. Miami, FL – 6,672
5. Chicago, IL – 6,343
6. Sacramento, CA – 6,052
7. Kansas City, MO – 6,021
8. Portland, OR – 4,320
9. Atlanta, GA – 3,779
10. Knoxville, TN – 3,722
CONCLUSION
We have our global community to thank for the growth we’ve sustained in the last year, and more broadly since we launch back in 2006. The commitment of our chapter leaders like Erno Hannink (Netherlands), Jesus Hoyos (Latin and South America), Anders Abrahamsson (Sweden) and Pierre-Yves Platini (France) has helped foster excellent relationships with our ever growing International community.
I also want to thank Hillary Till, who spent countless hours helping us complete the census this year. She’s also published blog posts in each chapter page, showing the increase in membership locally and/or the need to find support to relaunch chapter activities. So, if you’re looking for specific chapter numbers, you can visit Austin, Chicago, Fresno, Stuttgart or Sri Lanka.
It has been a wonderful time seeing this community grow, and while we have come a long way as an unfunded not-for-profit, there is a lot of work that needs to be done to professionalize the industry and expand educational opportunities for all. This will require Social Media Club to seek out funding options and our Board of Directors has set out a plan to do so. We won’t require much as we don’t think there is a need to build a staff of 100, but we do need to make sure we have funding for the staff of two (Jessica and myself)and hopefully get us a little help to ensure our local chapters have the support they need, we can continue to develop educational programs and we can bubble up the lessons learned in our local communities and connect professionals around the globe.
I honestly can’t wait for the census report in 2012 as the next 12 months are going to be an amazing time for everyone within the Social Media Club community. Thank you all for your efforts, and your continued support.
