I love Thanksgiving and everything about it, except for the travel to get to my family in North Carolina. (Coming back up to Washington today took an extra two hours on I-95 — and I returned on Saturday to avoid the traffic!)
While I was home, I had a chance to interview each member of my family about why we love Thanksgiving so much. I think my cousin, a natural storyteller, captures it the best.
→ Leave a CommentCategories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Thanksgiving, ThanksgivingContest09
The Wall Street Journal’s Bits Blog has a very useful post on Gary Vaynerchuk’s new book, “Crush It”. Vaynerchuk offers five commandments for social networking. I can’t wait to read this.
Here’s how The Wall Street Journal tells it:
Gary V’s Five Commandments of Social Networking
1. Treat it like a cocktail party.
You have to get involved in different conversations. We don’t start selling the minute we meet people. It’s not a coupon outlet. It’s a real opportunity to connect with consumers.
2. Don’t draw lines in the sand.
Way too many business people say Twitter is stupid. Any product like Facebook is something you need to pay attention to in the business world. Some people don’t like to change. Instead, they feel they’re right, and say something is silly. Also, there are people who have vested interests in having these platforms fail because their understudies understand it so much better than they do. They are afraid they’ll be pushed out the door.
3. Humanize yourself or your brand.
It is OK to say, going to a soccer game. Or, having a hot dog. Humanization is quite powerful in this space. To be successful, this is the kind of thing you say 2% of the time.
4. Understand the authenticity.
Each consumer’s voice is dramatically more powerful today. This is word of mouth on steroids. The individual consumer has much more weight with corporate America. Most corporate brands will be wrapping their heads around the power of the individual consumer next year.
5. Interacting with potential clients and becoming part of the community is a real job.
You can’t spend ten minutes a day on this and think the social genie will save you. Most of all, you have to care. And you have to listen. That’s my overall arching thesis on this entire space. People think it’s about talking. What you say is irrelevant. The friend that listens is better than the friend who talks.
→ 1 CommentCategories: New media
Tagged: Gary Vaynerchuk, LinkedIn
I’ve told my story about diving into social media before, but today, I’m adding a new chapter to that story. I’ve started video blogging.
It’s not that our team at Sprint doesn’t have video capabilities — we do. We have an entire fully equipped television studio at our headquarters where I can connect any television reporter via satellite to a colleague for an interview. But as great as the studio resources are, they don’t always meet my needs. Sometimes, I need to quickly shoot a video and I don’t have the budget for a high end production or the need for one. Keep reading →
→ Leave a CommentCategories: New media · journalism
Tagged: Flip camcorder, LinkedIn, social media, Sprint 4G, video blogging, You Tube
Image credit: jacreative, Flickr (Creative Commons)
I’m writing this morning’s post from my hotel room in Charlotte, N.C., a great city where I once lived. I’m here because today, Sprint announced the launch of Sprint 4G in Charlotte and several other North Carolina cities, including Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Lexington and High Point (the Triad) as well as Raleigh, Durham, Cary and Chapel Hill (the Triangle).
I’ll be meeting with reporters and bloggers in North Carolina all this week to personally demonstrate our Sprint 4G air cards, 4G routers and 4G personal hotspots. Keep reading →
→ Leave a CommentCategories: Sprint
Tagged: 4G, Cary, Chapel Hill, Charlotte, Durham, Greensboro, High Point, LinkedIn, LTE, mobile broadband, North Carolina, Raleigh, Sprint 4G, Sprint Nextel, WiFi, WiMax, Winston-Salem, Xohm
Earlier this week I had lunch with a friend who works as contractor to a Federal government agency and he told me an interesting story. Recently, the facility where he works established a new policy where he is no longer allowed to bring his personal laptop into the office. He can keep it in his car or in a locker at the front desk where he works, but he can no longer bring it into his office.
If you’ve never worked for the Federal government, you probably are wondering why someone would want to bring their personal laptop to the office. Well, to check personal email for one thing. At work, for security reasons, he’s not allowed to use his work computer to access his personal email. This particular friends runs a blog in his spare time, so he’d like to be able to manage comments and do a little writing on his lunch break, which most of the time he spend at his desk because of his pressing work load.
I understand the importance of security to the government; it’s a very serious matter. But get this, employees are still allowed to bring in personal cell phones, BlackBerrys, iPhones and other PDAs into the facility. When you think about it, a smart phone really can do just about everything a lap top can, and in some cases, like taking photos and video, it can do things a lap top can’t. Wouldn’t that be more of a security threat?
My friend seemed think so. But he really made me laugh when he shared what he told his management team about the new policy. “If you won’t allow my lap top in your office, I won’t allow your BlackBerry in my home.”
I know he’s joking, but I think he has a point. Do you find because you carry a smartphone or PDA as part of your job that you bring your work home with you? Or do you use your work computer for personal purposes during the workday? My experience is that the younger you are, the more comfortable you are with blurring your personal life with your work life. Or maybe you’re a cell phone refusenik?
As for me, I don’t think I could do my job without a BlackBerry, yet some times I need to turn it off and step away from the unending flow of email, Google alerts, Factiva alerts, Facebook updates and Tweets.
What about you?
→ 1 CommentCategories: Business philosophy
Tagged: BlackBerry, iPhone, LinkedIn, PDA
The title of this post makes it sound like Fawn and Andrew are getting hitched. They’re not. But I want to wish both Fawn Johnson and Andrew Noyes well as they begin new jobs.
Fawn has covered the Federal Communications Commission and telecom issues in Congress for Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal for the last year or so. She’s switched beats to cover the Securities and Exchange Commission which she will do ably.
Andrew is currently a reporter for Congress Daily covering IP issues, some telecom, and all kinds of tech policy issues. He’s moving into a job similar to mine — he’s going to manage public policy communications for the Washington, D.C. office of Facebook. Keep reading →
→ Leave a CommentCategories: journalism
Tagged: Alan Murray, Andrew Noyes, Dow Jones Newswires, Fawn Johnson, Jason Gertzen, LinkedIn, Molly Peterson, Peter Kaplan, TWTRCON, Wall Street Journal
My sister tells me she’s figured out when I am slammed at work: my blog goes silent. She’s right of course. So let me tell you (and her) what I’ve been working on.
First, one of the most interesting projects I spend time on in September and October was the launch of wireless coverage in Washington, D.C.’s Metro. Typically in the wireless business, AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless join with Sprint in a fierce competition for customers. This project was different. We worked together.
Here’s the back story. Keep reading →
→ Leave a CommentCategories: media relations
Tagged: AT&T, Audubon Society, bird call ring tones, HTC Hero, LinkedIn, Metro, Sprint, Sprint 4G, T-Mobile, Verizon, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
This morning on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday, host Liane Hansen interviewed Nat Benchley, co-editor of the book, The Lost Algonquin Round Table.
At the end of the interview, Benchley shared this poem written by Franklin Pierce Adams, who was known as the “Dean” of the Round Table. Adams included it in his column in the final issue of the The World, a New York newspaper which folded in 1931. Ms. Hansen thought it was worth ending the segment with since so many newspapers are struggling in this new age of online communications. I agree.
Journalism
Journalism’s a shrew and a scold.
I like her.
She makes you sick, she makes you old.
I like her.
She’s daily trouble, storm and strife.
She’s love and hate and death and life.
She ain’t no lady, she’s my wife.
I like her.
→ Leave a CommentCategories: journalism
Tagged: Algonquin Round Table, Franklin Pierce Adams, journalism, LinkedIn, Nat Benchley, Weekend Edition Sunday
Four years ago tomorrow, Hurricane Katrina made landfall near Morgan City, La. The storm actually had hit Adventura, Fla. a few days earlier as a Category 1 storm, but by the time it hit Louisiana, Katrina was a Category 3 hurricane.
The storm came just nine business days after Nextel and Sprint had closed the dealwith created our new company, Sprint Nextel Corp. At that point, we really had two of everything. Employees were worried about what the merger meant for them personally. Would I still have a job after the dust settles? Who would be my new boss? Who would be on my new team? Would the projects I was working on still be a priority in the new company? To be honest, it was a time of personal uncertainty for all us. Keep reading →
→ Leave a CommentCategories: Crisis Communications · Issues Management · Network disruptions · Sprint
Tagged: Hurricane Katrina, Hurricanes, LinkedIn, Sprint, Sprint Nextel
Crocs in London's Covent Garden. Photo credit: Hoodrat's Flickr
Last week’s panel discussion on the future of journalism held by the Washington, D.C. office of Ogilvy Public Relations had a lot of bloggable moments — lessons for journalists and public relations professionals were plentiful.
One of the best anecdotes came Washington Post staff writer Ylan Mui. Close readers of the Post may recall Mui’s recent front page story which told how the recession had impacted the Crocs, Inc.
Crocs, Inc., as the more trendy among you know, makes and sells those colorful, comfortable and clunky shoes with the same name. They were a big deal when they burst onto the scene in 2002. But as Mui explained, the firm expanded to meet demand over the last few years. Unfortunately, in 2008, as the economy tanked, it had to slash 2,000 jobs and figure out how to pay down $185.1 million in debt. Keep reading →
→ 2 CommentsCategories: New media · journalism · media relations
Tagged: Crocs, George G. Smith Jr., LinkedIn, Ogilvy Public Relations, social media, Today Show, Washington Post, Ylan Mui
Ars Technica All Things Digital Los Angeles Times MediaShift National Journal’s Tech Daily Dose New York Times San Jose Mercury News Wall Street Journal’s Digits Washington Post News from Sprint Nextel Corp.