Social Media Blog: Conversational MarketingA blog that disects conversational marketing via social media.

Whoa, it sure has been a busy two months. I have been swamped with other stuff that I have neglected to write in this blog.  First, I was asked by Michael Rubin of the Blog Council to write a post for their blog that just launched. My post titled, Thinking Strategically about Corporate Blogging outlines several things marketers must consider before launching a corporate blog strategy.

I also wrote a post in my other blog about making the business case for using Twitter; and cite great examples of how companies (like @Richardatdell) use twitter to build relationships, listen, and participate in meaningful conversations.  I also cite the not so good examples from HP and Yahoo; both of which are my former employers.

I was asked by Chris Heuer to be a part of the Interim Board of Directors for the Social Media Club. I humbly accepted and I am currently the lead for the Media Literacy project. It’s a collaborative effort to create a library of resources that consolidate “introduction to social media” content that will help those who are new to social media get all the information they need, in one place.  I will be working closely with Alex de Carvalho, Howard Greenstein, Richard Binhammer, Des Walsh, and Erica OGrady on this project.  So, if you have any Introduction to Social Media presentations, classes, discussions, cartoons, videos, blog posts etc…, please add it here.

I was also scheduled to participate on a panel at Cisco Systems here in Santa Clara as part of an internal education program.  The panel was about online communities. I was going to present four slides.  Slide 1 was “Why Community?” and was prepared to speak on the following points:

• It’s all about relationships
• Real people w/ real personalities that share “everything” online
• Group collaboration
• Shared participation
• Innovation and feedback – IdeaStorm example

Slide 2 and 3 were examples of how we at Intel use communities both internally and externally to communicate. Slide 4 was titled, “Best Practices and Lessons Learned”:

• Participate!  Not doing so is like being on trial without any representation from a defense lawyer
• The community owns the conversation; don’t interrupt
• Stay involved and don’t abandon the conversation
• Chime in when you need to. Listening may be the only thing you have to do
• Act. If you are getting feedback; do your best to act on that feedback (if it makes business sense)
• Be real and authentic; or it might bite you in the butt

Unfortunately though, I was called to jury duty and had to cancel at the last minute.  Thank you Norys Trevino for understanding and considering me to present; and I look forward to the Social Bookmarking and Tagging panel at Cisco on September 3rd.  I’ll make it this time, for sure.

Speaking of jury duty, this was quite an experience. I was a part of a civil case that involved a rear-end collision that resulted in alleged neck/back injuries.  The case lasted 5 days and we deliberated for about two hours on Friday afternoon. The verdict was that the defendant was not negligent in this accident. It was awesome to see the court dynamics and how the entire process worked. I even met a few new friends on the jury panel. I was the youngest out of all of them.

I am also gearing up for the launch of a new consumer blog at Intel.  I am really excited for this; but there is still a lot of work to do. The blog will be heavily integrated into the Intel “What’s Inside You” consumer web site that highlights real people who have used Intel technology to build/create something.  There are some really awesome stories there.

Lastly, I was able to attend Chris and Kristie’s one year wedding anniversary this past weekend. My wife and I had a great time and I met a lot of cool new peeps, one being Chris Saad, who is also on the interim board.

Event tags: ck888