Is SMA UK dead?

I was at SES London 2 years ago when SMA UK launched.

After Mike Grehan raised a high-profile series of criticisms at SEMPO - the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organisation - a splinter group worked it’s way out and set up a rival Search Marketing Association (SMA), which was supposed to work on a national level.

Formed from that there was SMA-UK, SMA EU (Europe), and SMA NA (North America).

However, things haven’t looked good since then.

Last year I reported on the SMA-UK website failing, and contacted the group about the issues.

A year later?

Even more of the SMA-UK website no longer works - the contact form, application form, committee page, members directory. All return just errors.

The SMA EU site is worse - it’s expired, and now you are now invited to buy Cialis and Xenical.

To be fair, Ian McAnerin has really developed the SMA NA website - but no updates for 7 months.

So what now?

I tried to contact the SMA-UK chair, Andy Atkins-Kruger by phone via SMA UK. Still no reply after a week.

So tonight I’ve emailed Mike Grehan and Barry Lloyd - chief architects of SMA UK - raising my concerns, and offered to rebuild and manage the website - get a working version back online, update the blog platform, and also set up a forum for communications.

I’ve already invested money and trust in joining SMA UK. I intend to waste neither.

It’s not difficult to run a website, and I’ve offered to help.

It remains to be seen whether SMA UK will take me up on my offer - or whether SMA UK is dead.

ADDED: Barry and Mike have both replied. Despite personal investment by Barry Lloyd, problems with the website are simply symptomatic of the organisation itself, with board staff heavily committed to their own work projects.

Personally, I think there is still room to develop SMA-UK, and provide a voice at least for the UK SEO/SEM industry. There are certainly questions being asked behind the scenes. However, it remains to be seen what decisions may arise from answering them.