Boyd is enjoying learning more about the millennial generation and viral marketing while he reads Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube and the Future of American Politics.
Want to get involved with social media but don’t know how? A good first step is to gain a basic understanding of social media and see what other are doing with it. Of course, a great second step is to contact us to find out how we can help your business, but we will leave hard pitch for later. For now, here’s a great list of 35 companies that are using social media and how they are using it.
http://mashable.com/2008/07/23/corporate-social-media/
Boyd sports his new Harley Davidson do-rag.
Boyd takes a break from riding near Mount St. Helens.
Boyd sports his Rolling Stones jersey in this picture with Mt. Adams.
Best of luck to Heather Reynolds and her boyfriend Joe as they make their way to a new home in Maryland, where Joe will start his career as a chiropractor and Heather will be content manager for the Birthday in a Box website. You can follow the road trip on her blog at
http://hajjeastcoasttransplant.blogspot.com She will also be working for VHPR remotely as needed.
You will be hearing us use the term Thought Leader from time to time and we just realized that we haven’t defined it on the VHPR blog yet. Below is the definition, but make sure to let us know if there are other social media / web 2.0 definitions we should post to the blog.
Thought Leader – A person or organization recognized among its peers for innovative ideas. Thought leaders also demonstrate the confidence to promote or share these ideas in actionable ways.
Watch for posts from Boyd during his 6 day bike trip and follow him on Twitter at
http://twitter.com/vhbva1
VHPR’s new website has a tag cloud! But what is a tag cloud, and why are we using one?
A tag cloud visually represents the number of times certain words and phrases appear on a website or blog. The more a word is used in tagging (categorizing) something, the larger that word becomes in the tag cloud. In our tag cloud Social Media is the largest word because it is something that we post about a lot.
The tag cloud widget helps us achieve two goals. First, if you are new to our site you can instantly see the topics we cover. Second, clicking on any of the words in the tag cloud will take you to all of our postings about that subject. Overall it all comes down to making the VHPR website easier to use and more visually dynamic.
Read more about tag clouds at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_cloud
Heather Reynolds discusses the micro blogging tool Twitter in this video podcast.
Twitter Podcast July 9 2008.wmv (6.43 mb)
With all the attention given to social media, influencial bloggers, thought leaders and online news sites, it’s always nice to be reminded that some rules of “ old” media still apply, namely – if you offer something of interest, it will probably take off.
Patricia Edwards is a portfolio manager and retail specialist with our client Wentworth, Hauser and Violich who often comments for CNBC TV, Bloomberg TV and major print publications on how retailers are doing. The Associated Press published a story on Sunday with a several quotes from Patty (and the name Wentworth, Hauser and Violich) and within 24 hour it had been featured in over 200 print or online newspapers throughout North America, including the front page of the Seattle Times.
Just another reminder you need all the tools to tell your story.
Read the Associated Press story at any of these links:
Tigger helps Heather Reynolds with a social media campaign.
