The Classic Twitty

As a recent Facebook convert, I've extended the boundaries of my social media sphere by starting a Twitter account. If you're not familiar with Twitter, it's also been called microblogging and gives users 140 characters to answer the question "What are you doing?" Inboxer Brian blogged about the growing popularity of the application back in January.

Among those I follow on Twitter are friends, co-workers, PR gurus and media outlets. Being relatively new to Twitter, I sometimes find the conversations hard to follow and never know whether anyone could actually be interested in the fact that I'm writing a press release at the moment. But there are those who've gotten the hang of it. In fact, Twitter Grader has a list of the Twitter Elite in Athens. Among them are UGA professor and social media maven Karen Russell and former Jackson Spalding interns Katherine Strate and Lizzie Azzolino. If you want to be tweeting with the who's who in Athens, check out the list and follow their lead.

Putting Twitter to Work

A lot of business owners and corporate communications pros are wondering how to put new media to work for their organizations. Blogs, Wikis, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter.... It seems to be a never ending list. Business owners wonder whether social media is just a big time suck or a way to truly boost productivity and make money. Should employees be allowed to become true brand ambassadors as they communicate with customers publicly or do I need to continue to control the message on a corporate level? These are fair questions at this point, although with a cohesive plan and strategy it is possible for a company to become a part of the communities new media creates, and utilize the flexibility and interactivity of social media to better tell your story.

At Jackson Spalding, we are advising a lot of clients on new media strategy, and part of the challenge is that the applications and potential solutions are diverse, and vary with the business. So every solution has to be custom built and resources have to be dedicated to implementing new media, and keeping the content fresh.

Earlier today, a colleague pointed me to a great example of a company utilizing new media. Believe it or not it is cable provider Comcast, which has improved customer service and generated buzz -- and a sense of community -- in an industry known for disappointing consumers. All it took was an enterprising customer service manager -- get the story here. Pretty cool idea that could be applicable to organizations with a lot of Gen Y constituents. A certain institution adjacent to downtown Athens comes to mind....