Josh’s Getting Married …

My brother Josh is 47. He’s always wanted to be married, never gave up on his dream, just never met the right person until he found Michael Chandler … a wonderful woman and fellow journalist (he at the LA Times/Tribune, she at the Washington Post).

I am thrilled beyond belief that they have found each other and welcome Michael to our family with open arms – she ROCKS!! We don’t know when the wedding will be but it can’t come soon enough.

What are YOU doing to follow your dream??

Josh & Michael's Official Engagement (self) Photo

Some great ideas and examples for ’selling’ Social Media to your future champions

Chris Brogan posted some great content today about helping to win over the skeptics and get your Social Media agenda greenlighted.

Adoption, and willingness to invest in new social media-oriented programs, is ramping up slowly,  too slowly for me and the projects I’m trying to get off the ground.

I bet many of you are having the same issues.

In an effort to get the corporate sponsorship and commitment required to “green light” SM projects, you need additional resources … ideas, tools and examples of successful SM implementations.

How do you find your champions and equip your  mission to be successful?

In my book, proven success stories and shared best practices are some of the surest ways to communicate potential and win over the skeptics. There’s a boatload of both in Chris’s post, “Get on the right side of the Fence”.

Read it here

photo credit: ScottieT812

“Grugging” = Blogging reduced to Mono-Syllabic responses

Awareness Networks today unveiled the concept of “grugging” which is short for grunt-blogging.

Grugging returns the act of communication to a more primal level and requires the user express all they need to say with monosyllabic expressions.

Continuing on this trend, Awareness unveiled the concept of “grugging” which is short for grunt-blogging. Grugging returns the act of communication to a more primal level and requires the user express all they need to say with monosyllabic expressions. “If you look are today’s culture you will see we still find ourselves communicating in that primal way,” Carter explains. “As an example, Johnny Depp brought resurgence in the expression ‘Aargh’, in his role as Captain Jack Sparrow. Just the other day, I wanted to let a colleague know I did not find any value in his ideas so simply stated ‘Duh!’.

Grugging is ideal for communicating in a downward economy as it is more concise, efficient and cost-effective. “People are having difficulty finding an ROI in more cumbersome forms of communication. In today’s economy, we have to do more with less.”, said Mike Lewis VP of Marketing at Awareness. In a private press briefing, journalists found themselves agreeing or disagreeing with the new product by simply stating “ahh” or “huh?”

Fundraisers Benefit from Social Networking and Person 2 Person Promotions

Sandy Belknap posted a note on Facebook today (March 31) regarding the Taste of Nashua event, a fundraiser noting that even with a fairly high ticket price, the event has sold out based on word of mouth.

It is great for this first event to be sold out in advance. To me it is just amazing that the tickets were primarily sold person 2 person by the network of people who are on the board. The publicity is helpful to use to draw sponsors for future events, but it proves that 1:1 connections with our community(ies) is far more impactful than a bunch of media updates and ads.

About the Taste of Downtown Nashua event

Twitter Implicated in Mayer/Aniston Breakup – a strong endorsement for TweetStats

Twitter Implicated in Break Up Between Aniston and Mayer.

It's all in the analytics, dude.

Smart move Jenn!! Bury the details in a sordid celebrity gossip story that you know we’ll read. Love it!

I always say that the best way to get people interested is to bring awareness of something to them indirectly. Now I refer to this tactic as ‘fringe’ marketing. I used to refer to it in my corporate partner management days as ‘indirect channels’.  SSDD.

Anyway, who can resist an article about how Twitter played the Devil in the breakup between Aniston and Mayer (I didn’t even know they were apart)?? I couldn’t, even as I sit here thinking about the proposal I’m supposed to be writing.

But if you read to the bottom, you realize that Jennifer Van Grove (of Mashable) is brilliant – she’s using TweetStats to show Mayer’s upward spiralling Twitter trends, and it’s very cool analytics.

btw, not surprised really that Mayer’s tweets are as poetic as they are, considering the source ).

TypePad One: An EXCELLENT Training Resource for Bloggers

Right now I am using WordPress for my blogs, but this resource page from TypePad, another excellent blogging platform, can be extremely helpful.

TypePad’s excellent online resource for business bloggers bloggers

TypePad offers a valuable service by sharing free blogging classes on things such as basics, SEO (search engine optimization – how to make it easy for people to find what you want them to find about you and your business online), and business blogging best practices etc.

That’s just the beginning, but it’s a great place to learn more. And their blogging tools are great too! Check out my friends’ blogs: Ron Miller and David Meerman Scott – both use TypePad and are excellent examples of clean, functional, info-packed blogs.

TypePad One: The Resource for Bloggers.

You can be an excellent blogger too — this resource page is a perfect place to start. If you need ideas to help you get started, let’s talk!!

The Proof Is In The Pudding – building a directory of E2.0 Successes

OK. Enterprise 2.0 is coming to Boston next week. My mission has become clear … and with it, my opportunity. Here goes. Let me know what you think, and feel free to start providing your own stories. You’ll see what I mean in a second.

So, I’ve been in the ECM business for 20 years now (how is that possible when I’m only 27, right?!). I am so excited about how Enterprise 2.0/Web 2.0 builds  on that to enable companies to be more socially responsible, relevent, and capable of supporting the real communication, collaboration, and WORK that people do. By giving the outside world a way IN, and the INSIDE world a better way to create and share content, a whole bunch of new opportunities arise.

The piece I want to own is this one … collecting the stories of those who have successfully implemented E2.0 solutions — traditional content, socially oriented platforms, SaaS-based solutions that let even the smallest companies realize the huge potential of WCM internally and customer-supplier-partner facing.

I’m going to travel around E2.0 with my handy dandy camcorder and interview as many people as I can about their success with E2.0, focusing on it’s value to them. Do I care how things work?? Not so much. Do I want to capture the essence of users implementations so someone who’s on the fence about E2.0 can feel more confident about their decision to move forward. ABSOLUTELY. Logos and contact info/links to your own blogs are welcome. Let’s push this agenda forward together!

So stay tuned. This will be the blog. The content is forthcoming. Feel free to start by sending me a comment that includes your name and company (or some legally acceptable, reasonable facsimile), the problem or opportunity you used E2.0 to address, and a short description of what you did, what problems you overcame, and a note or two about your solution (let’s give credit where credit is due). I’ll ping you back if you need more info, and I’ll be eternally grateful for your support in helping me build this valuable directory.

Thanks!

Flimping to get out the vote

I’m fortunate to live in the wonderful community of Ashland, MA.

I’m also fortunate to work with some pretty amazing technologies that help people work, collaborate, and get things accomplished better, faster, and/or more cost-effectively.

So when I heard that Ashland’s school libraries were in jeopardy if the Prop 2 1/2 override didn’t pass, I knew just what to do to support ‘Keep Ashland Strong‘, the grass roots organization dedicated to getting out the YES vote.

I would enlist the help of talented friends and neighbors to produce an interactive video campaign, based on the FLIMP* platform, to help educate … and hopefully motivate … the community to vote for the override.

Here’s the result. Go ahead!! Launch the FLIMP, learn about the override, and let me know what you think!!

* For those of you who like technology and want to know more, FLIMP stands for Flash Interactive Microsite Platform. It is an amazing way to bring rich media, messages, and calls to action together to enable people to respond immediately to what they have just seen.

To learn more about rich media communications and marketing, please call me at 508.881.1519 or drop me a note at melinda@msmstrategicmarketing.com! Thanks!

###