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.
A wine guy from New Jersey provides the template for how potential public relations nightmares can be turned into a positive through the use of social media, including blogs, and by being transparent and truthful.
Gary Vaynerchuk who has brought wine appreciation to the masses with his Wine Library TV podcast and who has grown a family wine store into a $60 million business faced a potential PR disaster when his community wine review site-Cork’d-was hacked by an adult site.
In this video, he describes his response. It serves as a real life pattern for anybody dealing with touchy situations that could go sour with plenty of backwash and potential for damage. Those who could benefit would be politicians, pastors, business people and anybody else in the public eye.
Notice how he jumped on the problem and got his wine community informed and how they mobilized to help him deal with the problem.
Are you on Twitter?
Thinking about getting on Twitter?
Looking for Twitter connections?
For an example of a business person who’s providing good information to a growing national network, check out my friend David Porter, a retired mortgage broker, who has been coaching mortgage brokers trying to build and rebuild their businesses in this challenged economy.
He’s a person of integrity and set the bar high for ethics when he had his mortgage practice here in mid-Michigan.
His Twitter address: http://twitter.com/MtgBrokerCoach
I wonder if there’s an online cemetery for dead blogs where their owners started and then discarded them. I’ve seen it happen plenty with all sorts of people who wanted to cash in on the lure of blogging and the Internet. Then something happened.
They forgot that a blog is just a tool. It’s not magic and it won’t bring you fame and fortune just because you created an account with Word Press or Blogger and published a few posts.
It’s a tool like a hammer that you see in Home Depot which you can buy, take home and put in your tool box and take it out everyonce in a while to use. Unless you have a plan and know how to implement it, the hammer it pretty worthless to you, other than to say you have one.
The same principle applies to blogs and other social media. You have to know how to use it and you have to hold to certain values and be motivated to exercise them.
The first two are: 1) the desire to build and nurture relationships with others; 2) the desire to communicate to those you have a relationship with or who you want a relationship with.
Each situation has its own peculiarities and needs to be thought out before you start the blog. Perhaps, you pastor a church. You could be a candidate running for political office. You might be an elected official or you could be a buisness owner.
Just remember: A blog is just a tool. Time spent learning how to use that tool can pay dividends and can keep your blog from dying a quick death and cluttering the online blog cemetery.
It was almost five years ago that I read a blog for the first time. The blog mentioned in a story by Detroit Free Press religion reporter David Crumm grabbed my attention and stoked my interest in this new media and the growing role that it plays.
Since then my interest in blogs and the social media has only grown. I’ve seen firsthand how mainstream media has changed and how more and more people are getting information from the new media, rather than newspapers or television. Read more…
