[I wanted to post some quick thoughts here which I think put today's Voce news in some additional context...] So in my previous post, I touched on an observation, a belief really, that there's a widening gap within this bubbling ecosystem of social media practitioners.
It's funny, it's so easy these days to become enamored and enthusiastic about a "web project" that you tend to quickly underestimate its technical plausibility. For this I blame you, web 2.0.
So despite all the hype I and others wrap around social media programs, there remains a very raw, very real and very unsexy part of this line of work that seldomly gets discussed — and that's the ugly, but critical custodial maintenance of the social web. This is what I jokingly, err, awkwardly refer to as "Janitor 2.0"
"How do you measure social media programs?"
In my world, this time of year is always crunchy, it's an endurance race to the holidays. It means unfortunately that I don't get to read as much, blog as much, breathe as much, etc., but oh well, so be it. I figure I can either put my head down to cover ground and get some creative stuff in the works for '08 or stand still debating the finer points of bad PR vs. ugly PR vs.
It's funny, after several years, countless projects, big successes and humbling failures, I still to this day stumble and stutter when casually asked: "so what do you do?"
So, I guess if there was one thing we could all conceptually agree on, it would be that the link, in all its iterations and forms, has become the accepted currency of the social web -- especially in the context of blogging.
Just a quick pointer: Keith O'Brien with PRWeek has a good piece today that profiles how various PR shops are fortifying their new media expertise and services.
Okay, so I'm continuing with some thoughts here shaking out of my recent RFP posts....
Here's the situation: you want to starting folding social media strategies, tactics and tools into your company's PR program, but you're not sure how exactly you want to approach things and because of that, you're leaning toward bringing in some outside help. Maybe you're thinking about a consultant or a small group of specialists or even a large services firm, the tough question is this:
Convergence is a tired concept, you here it all the time, there's convergence of this and convergence of that, but sadly, it's probably the best way to describe this messy little moment in time we're all in right now. It's happening in different ways within a variety of industries, but hands down it's happening very quickly in the area of new media services.
