Given the fact that I’ve always considered the Air Force and the other military organizations as being pretty conservative, the fact that the Air Force has a well organized policy for social media interaction is totally impressive.
Not only do they have a Twitter account, a YouTube channel and Wigets and Podcasts as well as having Airmen proactively “counter-blog”, which is what they refer to replying to bloggers. They’ve got a complete, strategic flow chart for response, and of course have to be careful about what they reveal online.
I first found this through friends, but David Merman Scott also wrote about it …read more

The New York Times is beating the bushes to generate more interest in their website, trying to get more eyeballs on the site in order to convince their advertisers that online really is a good thing!
I have to admit, the videos are pretty good. The site calls them “candid conversations with someone’s most interesting conversations about their passions, their lives and NYTimes.com”. They’re unscripted and are, for the most part, just pure fun. You can see them all here.
I think my favourite has to be the Ben Stein one, but that might just be because the dog is adorable.

I’ve been thinking about the whole traditional media/new media thing – everyone trying to figure out will happen to traditional media in the future. I’ve been mulling over thoughts around this for a while now, but haven’t been able to gather all my thoughts into one cohesive post. And then, I came across Chris’s post entitled All Tomorrow’s Armies and realized that Chris managed to coalesce all my thoughts!
Stay with the old at your own risk. All tomorrow’s armies are equipped and ready to embed. We don’t need to gather. We have our own dial tone. We connect and …read more

BIGfrontier Communications Group in Chicago just released the results of their recent study about whether or not PR can help a start up get funding faster than if they don’t engage in a PR campaign.  Apparently, companies are 30% more successful in getting funding within 1-3 months than their counterparts who don’t look at PR.
“Those entrepreneurs understand that anything they can do to get them an advantage to get limited or finite funding is something they should avail themselves of, especially now,” said Steve Lundin, founder of BIGfrontier. The boutque firm specializes in PR for startups, tech and consumer companies, …read more

The US Army has declared Twitter a potential tool to organize a terrorist attack. They’re basing this on the fact that news spread rapidly about the July earthquake in LA – much faster than news outlets could report the news. Activists at the RNC in Minneapolis apparently used the service to provide information on police movements.
So, ok fine. Yes, those of us who use Twitter spread information and news rapidly. Much of the breaking news that I become aware of comes to me through Twitter. What I’m having trouble with is what seems like paranoia over the tool.  As Noah …read more

Yeah, yeah, despite the fact that there really is a lot of sex and hook ups that happen through various social media sites, sex isn’t what I mean by “prolific”.
Dan Zarella has compiled a study that examined how much social media users share information with their friends, and from there, how much the people these users share with believe their friends.

Overall, the entire study is pretty damn interesting, a2nd it is seriously helpful for social media marketers looking to prove the value of social media to clients.
The whole study can be found here. (image source, Dan Zarella)

Good blogs are hard work, but they’re also the ones that keep people coming back, keeps readers engaged.My favourite part of the entire article is Point #6:
Good blogs are weird. Blogs make fart noises and occasionally vex readers with the degree to which the blogger’s obsession will inevitably diverge from the reader’s. If this isn’t happening every few weeks, the blogger is either bored, half-assing, or taking new medication. [source]
 I’m just not sure there’s a ton of controversy in Social Media, public relations & the intersection of business. Makes the part about being weird enough to qualify for “good” kinda …read more

Jason Calacanis thinks so.
I’ve gotten more press than any entrepreneur could dream of–certainly more than I deserve–and I’ve never had a public relations firm working for me. [source]

Ok, fair enough, and I agree with Jason for the most part. I don’t think that all start ups need PR. What’s pissed me off about Jason’s article is his overall perception of the industry.
You must realize that journalists are constantly getting banged by lazy, clueless PR folks who fire first and don’t understand what the word "aim" even means.

Now, while that can be true, not all of the PR people …read more

I love Will It Blend. I think it’s one of the most creative viral videos ever. Josh Bernoff recently asked Jeremiah Owyang for some of his random swag from companies for a demonstration. Based on Jeremiah’s comment that he didn’t know his Flip would be turned to dust, I suspect that Josh didn’t mention that he could be using this swag as a demonstration of one of the key points in Groundswell.

Do what Josh and Charlene say. Pick a clear objective first not just choosing technologies because they seem cool, otherwise your next social media program is going to …read more

Um. No. And yet, Jennifer Leggio, a dear Twitter friend and an uber smart security chick, had to point that out to people on her ZDnet Blog.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I completely agree with Jennifer, as well as with Al Krueger from Comet Branding whose post, “Regurgitator or Originator”, is what brought the whole Copy+Paste+Publish phenomenon to light.
Copy+Paste+Blog is when the blog author does one of the following:

Posts only snippets of another blog with a link to said blog, sometimes posing a question but rarely offering additional ideas
Using a blog solely for research and referencing that …read more