Hello!
Just wanted to take a quick moment to introduce myself. My name is David Murray and I am the Director for Social Web Communications here at re:group.
Okay, enough shop.
Time to get personal, because that is what social media is all about. Getting personal. Believe it or not, social media isn’t new. Oh sure, the tools are, but they are just that.. tools. Social media isn’t Twitter. It’s not Facebook either. It’s about communication and building relationships. Maybe you’ve heard that before, maybe not. The point is, don’t think of the social web as just another way to advertise. There are more appropriate channels for that.
Want a quick tip? The more time you spend using the digital landscape as a place to cultivate relationships and be human, the better. Why? People now have the option to tune you out.. and they will. Unless they get to know you, not your product.
What I hope to do is to show you how this can be done while sharing some of the things I’ve learned along this social media discovery. I’ll also provide some examples that I find, and point you to some people who are way smarter than me.
Whoops! I forgot to get personal!!
Well, you can find me on Twitter (where I spend most of my time), at most offline social functions, or around the internets. I’m also the founder of Social Media Club Detroit. When I’m not doing the social media thing, I like to play the occasional video game, cook, and watch movies.
I look forward to learning with you, so feel free to reach out to me anytime!
~David Murray
Posted in
press Tags:
brands,
business,
communication,
facebook,
marketing,
realtionships,
social media,
social web,
twitter
We don’t really have a blog policy. We let our team weigh in on topics relevant to our business in their own words, with their own opinions. Sure, we check to make sure there isn’t anything slanderous or mean, licentious or libelous. But if one of us wants to say they like or don’t like something, that’s okay. If we didn’t have strong opinions individually, we’d be a lousy communications partner all together.
Unfortunately, some people take offense very, very easily. So if we do offend, we do apologize. But we do not tell our people they can’t have a viewpoint of their own.
Discomfort can be a catalyst for change, or it can be a reason to hide. What makes blogs valuable is that they are written by real people with real thoughts and opinions. How you make use of the insights they offer is up to you.
Posted in
new media,
press Tags:
blog policy,
blogging,
blogs,
opinion
We lost our daily paper paper last July in Ann Arbor. The old Ann Arbor News was replaced by an online product, AnnArbor.com. Like many, I was chagrined. I couldn’t imagine breakfast without ink and newsprint. It just seemed strange to imagine reading the daily news on a laptop across my bowl of fruit. Not getting that dirty ink all over my fingers anymore, that would be good. But spilling coffee on my new paper? That would be bad.
I’m not a total Luddite. I’ve been a heavy online user since the pre-www days of Compuserve and Prodigy. So I’m totally comfortable in the online world. But my daily newspaper? Hmm…
I wasn’t happy about it then. I am happy now. Not with the actual digital replacement product. It’s marginal at best. Maybe because it’s marginal, I have been forced to seek out other sources of local news, information and opinion. What a revelation! I guess I never realized how much filtering was required to reduce an entire community with all of its events, quirks, warts, and diverse personalities into a daily bundle of bird cage liner, packing material and filler for my recycle bin.
Make no mistake, these new sources are not fair and balanced journalism. Most don’t pretend to be. Much is presented as fact that is, in fact, not. Articles and reader comments are often snarky, off topic, offensive, and rude. (I kind of like that part, it takes less energy than polite and politically correct). But you learn pretty quickly who has something interesting to say and who doesn’t.
What used to be twenty pages of news and a quarter page of Letters to the Editor is now snippets of news and screen after screen after screen of Letters to the Editor. I always liked the letters best anyway. The only issue I have with this new order is that the conversation tends to be dominated by an annoying few. Maybe they just have too much time on their hands, or maybe they really do know everything… about everything. You who know it all – and you know who you are – start your own blog.
And then there is the anti-everything crowd. News flash: www.antieverything.com is for sale. And the conspiracy theorists. They think I’m out to get them. (I am, but I’ll blog about that some other time.) There are the mindlessly single-minded. Is that an oxymoron? Or just a moron? Their one pet peeve is somehow relevant no matter the topic. The linkers, they think I really need 100 pages of linked minutiae to learn that the school board spent too much on pencils. And then there those I call the twits. The ones who use that incredibly annoying twitterism of using the @ symbol when replying to another poster.
But, all in all, since I’ve been reading these local blogs, news sites, pseudo news sites, rants, and journals, I certainly feel like I am more informed. I might actually be. It’s hard to tell. It is definitely more fun than the old paper paper. And I haven’t spilled anything on it yet.
Posted in
general,
media,
new media,
press Tags:
ann arbor,
AnnArbor.com,
online news
As easy as riding a bike!
Welcome annarbor.com! As the media agent for the new local on-line news media, annarbor.com, re:group reached out to the local audience where they work and play. We wrapped buses, spread the news on the sidewalk with chalk messages, took over the local mall, hired a plane to fly a banner over the largest U.S. art fair and engaged pedestrians as our bike ads were cycled through Ann Arbor. For annarbor.com, we’re takin’ it to the streets!
Posted in
advertising,
general,
press Tags:
advertising,
ann arbor,
media
Hello!
