What a sad day for Colorado. Ouroldest newspaper announced today that it will print its final newspaper tomorrow. A slideshow documents the news as it is being told to the staff.
A sign of the economy or the digital age? Perhaps a combination of the two. You will be missed...
Recently, we have seen several examples of how social media can make a social impact in the world through online/offline events like the Tweetathon 2009 and Twestival (just to name a few). Another social media charity challenge is underway and is worth taking a look at.
The 12for12k Challenge is the brainchild of Press Release PR
owner Danny Brown. Inspired by the way that social media has changed so
many lives for the better already with various charity promotions,
Danny wanted to do something that was both easy to take part in and
have the potential to change as many lives as possible. The 12for12k
Challenge started taking shape.
Dave Taylor is widely recognized for his writing and speaking
engagements on both technical and business issues. He has written over
twenty business and technical books including The Complete Idiot’s
Guide to Growing Your Business with Google and maintains several
weblogs two of which are the The Intuitive Life Business Blog and Ask Dave Taylor.
Here is a list of tools that I have come across that are extremely useful in storing and promoting content whether it is audio, video or text. Feel free to pass on or add to the list.
A common comment made by companies large and small. What isn't common? Is the understanding that you can't simply dip your toe into these waters, you have to dive in or be prepared to swim with the fishes. Okay, that is probably enough aquatic references for today...
Creating a blog is one thing, diving into the community that you hope will engage, read and follow your blog is another. To take a line from the infamous Gary Vaynerchuck... you have to get in the trenches, bitches.
Before you decide to start a corporate blog, here are a few suggestions.
Promise transparency - be truthful, authentic and personable.
Listen to your customers - bring issues (good and bad) onto your blog.
Give something away - whether it is a best practice, tips, report, PowerPoint, information fed into the community will help build social equity.
Make it easy for people to comment and participate.
Link love- link back to areas of your site as well as other sites of interest.
Chill on the marketing speak - this is a place to be conversational, not speak like a robot.
Make it social - make it easy for others to bookmark the content, subscribe etc.
Give it personality - what can people expect to hear from you.
Be the first to provide a statement - in case of an outage or other issue, make sure you use the blog to communicate to your customers and community before someone else does.
Commit or don't do it... This isn't a one time thing, you need to dive in.
Good luck and if you would like to learn what not to do, give me a call. I have a catalog of lessons learned the hard way!
Was interested to see how the latest salmonella breakout was being communicated on social networks. This story demonstrates how the FDA and relevant agencies got to work online to get the word out.
Officials with Health and Human Services Department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used widgets, blogs, Twitter, podcasts, mobile alerts and
online videos to warn the public that peanut butter manufactured by
Peanut Corp. of America for institutional use and for additives in
other products such as snacks may be tainted with salmonella.
The FDA created a database of recalled products, which the public could
search either by product name or category such as cookies, chips and
crackers (sounds like a good case for a TrackVia database). The also used a blog, Twitter and video as well as social networks like MySpace and Second Life (insert flying peanut here ;) to get the word out.
Nice work, let's hope that we see this type of behavior continue!