BLOGGING WITH WES

Lansing (MI) Mayor Virg Bernero is mulling a run for Michigan governor on the Democratic ticket.  He’s also head of the State’s Capital city which is facing a huge budget deficit that threatens basic city services.

He’s using Twitter during a time when communicating with constituents has never been more important.  Politicians can use Twitter as a means to purvey fluff or they can use it to seriously communicate what they are doing and who they are.

How would you rate Bernero’s Twitter use and what suggestions would you give him.  I welcome your comments and I’ll be sure to see they are passed on to the mayor.

Communication between the government and the governed has never been more important.  Check out this official website of the city of Grand Rapids, MI. It includes a blog and a focus on usability.  What U.S. cities do the best with the web, including blogs and other social media?

I’m putting this link here so I don’t forget to read it.  It’s about how Facebook can be used to help local governments better serve their constituents.  It has links to many examples where this is being done.  I’m anxious to read it.  Does anybody have other examples?  The link is from the blog Inside Facebook.

I’ve only scanned this link to a blog post from “Jeff Wong Design” where he shares his notes from a web designer’s point of view after reading “What Would Google Do?” by Jeff Jarvis.

At first blush, this seems like good commonsense stuff that’s so easy to ignore and often is.

I will read it more carefully and share my observations from what I learned.

Has anybody read the book?  What about Jeff’s observations?  Agree?  Disagree?  Are they helpful?

I’ve had many friends and acquaintances who have been disappointed with the results of their blogging.  They generally stop posting after they see the number of readers who don’t come to their blog.

This post from Michael Hyatt, the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, outlines 10 mistakes that are real easy to make when you have a blog and they are particularly easy to make when you are starting.  And they are not hard to correct.

Just a sidenote, Hyatt uses social media effectively to network with others around the world.  I read his blog.  I’m part of his Twitter group. He’s a real person who’s not afraid to be transparent.  He’s also very accessible.  He’s worth getting to know and it’s pretty easy to do.

I will write more about the 10 mistakes that he lists.

In the meantime, his post is worth a click and his content about the 10 mistakes is worth a read.  My experience affirms everything he lists.

You may have heard one too many stories about Twitter and how it’s changing the world.

This is another and it’s about how Virgin America Airlines reacted to a mom anxious about her young traveling kids waiting on the tarmac, according to MSNBC. They were stranded for a lengthy period of time with no takeoff in sight. She was concerned.

So what does she do? She Twitters her concern to her Twitter group and asking them to resend or retweet her message. Within minutes, the airlines called her and reassured her that her kids were okay.

What’s the take-away for you?

Think about it. Maybe you’re a neighborhood leader and you need to get the local police department’s attention. What if you had your Twitter group make calls asking for action? You can do this real time, while the situation is front and center.

For politicians, the uses are endless. Think about it. Perhaps, you’re a state legislative candidate and you need your supporters to show up at a sudden event with your t-shirts on.

Within a a couple of minutes you can pass the word effectively.

Who else can use this? Pastors. Real estate agents. Wine shops. City council members. State legislators. The list is endless.

Mid-Michigan businesses have been slow to adopt blogging as part of their communication strategy.

The latest to make the move that I’ve seen is Paramount Coffee, a local roaster which sells their own brand and others around the country.  We’ve bought Paramount ground coffee from the local Sam’s Club for several years.

By-the-way, my wife and I toured their operation this past Saturday when Lansing celebrated Be A Tourist in Your Home Town.  I really enjoyed learning about their business and its footprint around the country.

I invite you to check out their blog and feel free to leave comments about how they can make it stronger and more interactive.

This is the best free advice I’ve seen in a long time for anybody trying to persuade or sell a product or a set of ideas.

There are so many individuals and groups with so many important things to say and they’re failing at it.  Chaos rules in the whole communication arena.

Pastors struggle with it as do politicians, including and especially local officials like city council members, county commissioners, state legislators and whole lots more.

Gary Vaynerchuk is a young New Jersey guy who gets it.  He understands what has happened in the marketplace with changes that started before the web.  He’s a wine guy who has a turned into a bastion of wisdom.  His daily wine podcast is downloaded by thousands.

Watch this CNN interview  if you have a need to see your ideas or your product.  Then leave your impressions and questions.  I really want to talk about this more.

Just got word via Twitter from Lansing (MI) Mayor Virg Bernero that our City Council voted down a controversial proposal to sell a city parking ramp.

This is Mayor Virg Bernero's Twitter about the parking garage vote.

What’s neat is that Bernero used micro-blogging to get the word out before the 11 p.m. news and before any bulletin from the Lansing State Journal.  Of course, there’s minimum detail, but  citizens following the mayor on Twitter know the outcome.

Now, it would be nice if the mayor and city council members had blogs so residents would get more details and points of view on a very divisive issue.

Our local paper gives minimum coverage to city hall activities.  It’s time for a new paradigm for city government coverage.

Anybody know what other cities are doing?

I’ve talked to all kinds of business people, with small and medium sized operations, about business blogging. Real estate types seem to get it, but others are real slow to think seriously about it.

This set of slides from Debbie Weil, an early and major proponent of business blogging, helps explain this hesitancy from businesses to adopt blogging as a communications tool.