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 - and had an interview with Capt. David Faggard, Chief of Emerging Technology at the Air Force Public Affairs Agency in the Pentagon.

Capt. Faggard told David that the Airforce has 330,000 communicators, because their goal is to have every airman act as a communicator. Their mission is to use current and developing Web 2.0 applications as a way to actively engage conversations between Airmen and the general public. It’s amazing to me, and to David, considering that so many private companies are so very gun-shy about all this new fangled technology stuff.

I’m thinking that the private companies should take a page from Capt. Faggard’s playbook and engage a little. It’s easy guys, I promise.

Check out David’s interview with Capt. Faggard and check out the blogger chart here. 

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 disband the way waves shape the beach. [source]

Now,  although Chris does go on to say that we might also might not be or do all of those things, but I have a very good feeling that this really will be the way of the media world. If traditional media doesn’t get involved in the social media world, they’re going to get left in the dust.

The New York Times has recently realized that the aggregation of and links to things the paper didn’t produce in-house improves the audience experience and they have begun to provide additional information written by bloggers and in some cases, even their direct competitors. [source] While this isn’t anything new for those of us who are used to the social media world, it’s very cool to see the New York Times embracing our world.

Steve Outing from Editor & Publisher has offered newspaper CEOS and journalists some ‘crisis advice’ in his most recent column. Chief among his advice includes hiring a Social Media VP.

Most newspapers have a vice president of circulation in charge of print distribution. Today, you need a “circulation VP” for the Internet. A more appropriate title: vice president for social media.

A key tenet in the digital media world we now live and do business in is: Be everywhere. Any newspaper company that thinks that its Web site or sites (and maybe a few other services like e-mail newsletters, RSS feeds and mobile-phone alerts) is enough is sadly mistaken. [source]

Today’s newspapers and media outlets have got to adapt. They need to get involved with citizen journalists more, get the reporters blogging, start covering hyper-locally,  and be everywhere on line, absolutely everywhere. Check to make sure that your brand/user name isn’t being brandjacked.

In short, get on it, hire your VP of Social Media (I happen to know a few good candidates) and get started before you go extinct.

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, and law firms. [source]

The study spoke with 300 start ups, none of which were BIGfrontier clients (which was my first thought, so I was glad to hear that they weren’t talking to their own clients), and only 18% of them even had a PR in place during the funding process.

Overall, this doesn’t surprise me in the least, and certainly was a bit of a no brainer. Companies can only be helped by a positive PR campaign.

I’m in complete agreement with the study, not that this should surprise anyone, but I’m a firm believer that PR and social media strategies are two of the best ways to get your company noticed, to raise it’s profile in certain communities and among specific stakeholders. Why would you even consider not engaging in a PR campaign?

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 Shachtman, of Wired’s Danger Room points out with his hilarious graphic, this just seems way too  reactionary.

“Twitter has also become a social activism tool for socialists, human rights groups, communists, vegetarians, anarchists, religious communities, atheists, political enthusiasts, hacktivists and others to communicate with each other and to send messages to broader audiences,” the intelligence report said.

“Terrorists could theoretically use Twitter social networking in the US as an operation tool,” it said. “However, it is unclear whether that same theoretical tool would be available to terrorists in other countries and to what extent.” 

What do you think? Are we all being too dismissive about this?

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 difficult sometimes.

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 in the world are lazy or clueless. In fact, painting all of the PR people in the world with that same brush is like a Canadian (yes, that’d be me) saying that all Americans are fat and ignorant.

When I was doing PR full time, I was adamant about doing it right, not being clueless about anything I pitched or the way I pitched it, when I made phone calls, who I pitched, what they covered etc.  Even more important, now as a journalist, I want to be pitched properly. I’ve written about this in the past, and I suspect it won’t be the last time.

So, yes, take a look at Jason’s tips for doing PR for your startup, but make sure that if you’re pitching a reporter, that you’re doing it right! Don’t ask if they got your release. Make sure you know the beat your target is covering and for the love of god, don’t get upset if they say no.

Like I said, I’m sure that I’ll revisit this because, well, I’m still getting shitty pitches, so until that changes, I’ll keep harping on it.

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 end up as social media dust too.

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 blog without doing the background work on his or her own 

Yes, I totally cut and pasted that from Jennifer, and like she said, if I wanted to just C/P/P, I’d ask you what you think and sign off. But that to me seems like lazy blogging. Where’s the author’s own opinion or voice here? If you just cut+paste+publish, why are you even bothering to blog?

I read blogs for the opinions and information offered by the author. Sure, I use a good number of blogs as source information, but I also make sure that I track down additional news stories, the original blog articles and additional opinions as well so that I can add to the conversation, not just regurgitate other people’s words. And if I can’t find something that I want to add to the conversation, then I don’t bother blogging it. There’s tons of other things in the world to blog about.

If you want to make sure that you’ve got your own thoughts out there – there’s some things you’ve got keep in mind, particularly the tenets of traditional journalism. To me, these were no brainers, but then I come from a PR/Journalism background. It’s just a given to me to follow the trail and find out what I can before posting madly.

If you remember these two things (well, ok it’s kinda three or four things in two points, but you’re smart. You’ll find it all), you should manage to avoid the majority of the problems Cut – N – Paste blogging presents:

• Don’t bandwagon jump – climbing onto the “me too!” bandwagon is only going to stir up the waters more, instead of adding to the conversation.  If you haven’t experienced something for yourself, and you don’t go tracking down the original information, then shush.
• Which brings me to: Find your own sources. Yes, absolutely, use the blogs you read as inspiration, but make sure you’ve got the true story and also that you formulate your own ideas, opinions and sources.

(image source: Vinyl Pulse)