Every Dot Connects
As any regular readers are aware, I’m a huge Twitter cheerleader. But never have I looked on in awe at the power behind this community until this week, when I noticed people changing their avatars to include peas, or “peavatars” as some are
calling them (see my peavatar here). The reason? Susan Reynolds, a blogger and “power networker” on Twitter, is
undergoing a mastectomy this week, and has used frozen peas to ease the pain of her breast biopsies. Connie Reece discusses the Twitter-based movement to fight breast cancer, and to show support for Susan. “In the days to come, Susan’s family will be by her bedside, caring for her and assisting her recovery. But an entire socialmediasphere will be rallying around her cause, lifting her spirits and doing our small part to help find a cure. Join us, won’t you?”
Do You Need to Lose Excess Media Fat?
Pardon the Disruption
While we don’t often highlight CustomScoop’s own staff blogs on the Jots (we prefer to spread the love around!), I thought Chip Griffin’s post on media snacking was one worthy of mention. The end of the year might be a good time to reevaluate your content intake—perhaps it’s time to clean out your feeds and start fresh, or finally purge those blogs you hardly ever look at from your reader. What will you do for a “new media diet” come the new year? “For one, I need to do a better job of reading books. I still read a fair amount, but too often I go for easy reads designed to simply entertain or to read an important industry book to allow me to better address trends. But I also need to read longer magazine articles and other more meaty content on a more regular basis.”
PR Squared
2007 has fostered a lot of great success stories in social media. More companies than ever before are adopting it as part of their communications strategies, and its legitimacy as a medium will only continue to grow in 2008. But as more of the
Fortune 500 start noticing blogs and other forms of social media, are they serious about change, or are they only paying lip service? Todd Defren examines this question, and argues that even a high profile company could do more harm to the validity of social media if they don’t do it right. “In some select cases we found our prospective clients more interested in paying lip-service to Social Media ideals than in true change. They were looking to mark off the check-box, as in, ‘Social Media? Yep, we got that.’”
