What's in a name?

This is reposted from my work blog, Luminary.

Call it "social media". Go to a "Web 2.0" conference. Look to the masses for crowdsourcing. Think of it as PR 2.0. Or The Long Tail. Or...

Whew. As communicators, we often get caught up in the names and labels we assign to new fields and we forget the actual importance of the technology.

Regardless of what you want to call it, "New Media" is here to stay and must be an essential component of the marketing mix. I think that the most identifiable characteristic is bringing the community to the content. The truly special thing about New Media is its transience. For the first time in modern civilization, content producers are hardly separated from content consumers. This enables each of us to receive the type of information that we need and to ignore all of the content we don't.

And marketers are paying attention to it too. According to this recent study by the University of Massachusetts, 39 percent of the INC 500 are blogging.

Before social media was vogue, if you weren't paying attention to your customers, your business probably failed.

Now, if your business doesn't get social feedback from its customers, it can never succeed.

Ding, Searching For Tweets...

Reposted from my work blog:

While most public relations practitioners are coming to grips with social networks like Facebook and Myspace, one emerging communications platform is quickly becoming a key medium for consumer marketing.

Twitter, a micro-blogging community allows users to comment to one another in 140 characters or less. "Tweeters" access their account from the web, a stand-alone application, or their mobile phone via text message. As more and more users flock to this platform, several consumer brands like Zaphos, Jetblue, and H & R Block have been quick to set up accounts to quickly reach their audiences.

And lovable, charismatic, innovative Southwest Airlines is just one company leading the way. On Twitter since October 2007, members of their PR team respond to customer complaints, questions, trivia, and jokes, all with the jovial jest that customers have come to love from Southwest Airlines. In fact, Twitter was used to help repair one customer's (and blogger's) misdirected anger to the airline with a personal touch and a joke. According to their press releases more than 500,000 visitors have been reached through their blogging group, Nuts About Southwest.

By coming to their audience in this personal way, consumers will continue to recognize Southwest as one of the friendliest brands in the cyber-sky.