I know that there are lots of things on my mind to accomplish in 2009.  For example, I’d like to grow the business by a solid 15% — downturns be damned! … I’d like to do more   public   speaking … I’d like to do more for my many friends in the Social Media realm …

As for the blog, I plan to publish an e-book next month ( subscribe, if you’d like a copy!) … and I’d like to share more case studies next year … I’d also like to share more practical tips, along the lines of the Blogger Relations Bookmark, the Guide to SEO-Friendly News Releases, and oldies-but-goodies like Edgework with Social Bookmarking and Facebook.

I’d like PR-Squared to not only help you THINK but to help you TAKE ACTION.

But those are just nebulous thoughts on a snowy and quiet day.  And they don’t even matter all that much.  Because I don’t write this blog for myself.  I write it for you.  What are YOUR goals for this blog? 

Help me help you.  What do you expect to learn here that you don’t necesarily expect to see from friends such as Chris Brogan, Brian Solis, Kyle Flaherty, Jason Falls, Scott Monty, C.C. Chapman, etc.?

2009 is coming and I am here to serve!

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Two weeks ago, Peter Kim assembled some Social Media predictions for 2009 from some guru types.  Scraping the bottom of that barrel, he decided to include some of my ramblings, as well.  Hopefully you’ve already read all of that crystal-ball-goodness from the pundits.  I’ll use this space to reflect more deeply on my own thoughts about ‘09…

First up, “The Great How.”  Here’s my original snippet from Peter Kim’s Predictions Project: 

The "best" case studies of Social Media in action,to date, are marked by the introduction of "real" human beings into the customer conversation. As more corporations come to realize the obvious benefits of humanizing their relationships with online communities, they'll grapple with the "how."

How many people need to be hired and trained?

How will they measure the success of engagement?

How will the rise of employee's personal brands be handled, if/when these personalities eclipse the popularity of the corporate brand?  How does a company introduce new voices to the conversation in a way that augments the effort, versus causing consumer confusion?

How does the corporation — by nature a conservative beast — confidently move forward into such a riotous environment, with so few roadmaps to guide them?

All of which is just a roundabout way of saying that in 2009, corporations will increasingly understand that incorporating Social Media into their communications plans is now necessary.  The evangelization is working; the customers will no longer be ignored.  So companies will be grappling with issues related to execution.

I rattled off some questions, above, but there are many more that will be asked — and I think any single one of these tough issues could derail many companies’ ambitions. 

Take this one: “How will the rise of employee's personal brands be handled, if/when these personalities eclipse the popularity of the corporate brand?” 

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Harken back to the rise of Scoble.  He became the public face of Microsoft, rivaling the fame of Bill Gates in his heyday at the company.  Then, he left.

When you think about Social Media today, do you think about Microsoft much?  Me neither.  That’s not to say that Microsoft isn’t embracing the whirlwind: they have thousands of bloggers now; they do a ton of “ Enterprise 2.0” stuff internally, etc. But Microsoft is not considered a leader in the space, primarily because Scoble had been such an outsized personality.

And that’s something that any major corporation wrestling with Social Media execution is going to want to think about.  Would they want to create another Scoble?  How would they keep the star happy?  Would it help their brand for the long-term as well as the short-term?  Is there a way to promote a variety of voices, to head-off the Scoble Problem — or would the dilution also impact their chance for success?

Then that raises the questions of staffing, in general.  Should the newly-appointed official corporate blogger be the only one to respond to issues and comments that crop up in the socialsphere of blogs, Twitter, etc.?  Or should a handful of non-bloggers — comprised of a mix of marketers and customer service reps, perhaps? — be responsible for that aspect of the comms plan?  Where are the lines drawn?  Who does what?

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In 2009, it will no longer be enough for Social Media hotshots to help companies theorize and strategize.  Especially “in these troubled times.”  It’s not enough to question.  It’s a time for answers. 

2009 must be the year in which we answer the questions of HOW.  2009 must be a year of ACTION.  We’ll know that we’ve paid off on this requirement as we read a raft of new case studies in the months ahead.

Happy freakin’ New Year.  Now, let’s roll!

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It’s the end of the year. There are a lot of ways to deal with end-of-year blogging.

My plan for this year-end period was to expound on my contributions to Peter Kim’s Social Media Predictions 2009 project.  And I still might do that, if time permits.

But the holiday crush is upon us all.  I feel as if we are all careening into the New Year, don’t you?  Finishing up on work projects (or wondering what could be put-off to January!), wrapping presents, shoveling snow, worrying about the recession, prepping for visits to/from relatives, decorating the house, etc.

In addition to all-of-the-above, the Defren family just got a new pup (pictured) — a 2–year old collie/golden retriever mix from Save-A-Dog, an organization we’ve supported as foster parents for a while.  This gal walked in the door as just-another-foster but immediately captured the high ground.  Adorable, eh?  We’re still working on names … which presents yet another year-end distraction!

So can we agree to take a li’l break from Social Media? Re-connect, re-energize, relax?  I might still be inspired to blog before the New Year, but hey, even if I do write something, the posts will still be in your RSS reader in January, so don’t feel the need to check-in until you’re ready.

I hope you have a splendid, worry-free, quiet and fun holiday!  

(Photo credit: the wonderful & talented Branwen Defren)

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Chris Brogan and Izea (pay-per-post): Over this past weekend, Forrester’s Jeremiah Owyang wondered aloud about Chris Brogan’s sponsored blog post about K-Mart, which was coordinated by the PayPerPost spin-off, Izea.  Brogan discussed the issue at length, as well. 

Does a well-known, trusted blogger like Brogan sully his brand by accepting sponsored posting assignments?  As Jeremiah originally tweeted: “Transparent, Yes. Authentic? Debatable. Sustainable? No.”

My take:  Full disclosure = carte blanche.  With disclosure “covered,” the community gets to decide how much credence to give the post, and to the blogger.  Jeremiah is right that it is probably not sustainable, i.e., if all of Chris Brogan’s post became paid-for, he’d lose brand equity and readers.

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TechCrunch and the Death of the Embargo: Yesterday, Arrington informed the PR industry that TC will now routinely break embargoes.  We’ve been warned.  He also went into the typical rant about shitty PR firms.  To his credit, Arrington does at least seem to recognize that it is often clients’ demands that spur some of the most spurious behaviors… but then again, a GOOD agency will reject those client pressures.  

My take:  We can debate the merits of Arrington’s decision.  We can secretly wish that all PR firms could agree to “cut off” TechCrunch for a month, to see how it impacted coverage.  But it’s Michael’s blog and he can rant if he wants to: the job of PR has always been to adapt to the media’s need.  The PR agency’s only job with regard to TechCrunch is to advise clients of the new policy and plan accordingly.

I feel bad for the PR ninny who tells his client that TechCrunch will honor embargoes and then has to go back and explain why their sacrosanct news was so quickly and publicly unsealed, i.e., they didn’t know about the new policy cuz they weren’t paying attention.  You know that’s gonna happen.

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Do Brands Belong on Twitter?  This issue was raised in a Mashable post. Some folks maintain that brands shouldn’t create personality-free Twitter accounts that simply spam corporate news, or that don’t allow fellow tweeps to “know” an individual within the company.  And some misguided purists still just dislike the idea of brands hanging out in Social Media forums at all.

My take:  I am more aligned with the follow-up Mashable post by Lon Cohen.  Twitter is opt-in.  If you care to interact with a brand via their Twitter presence: go for it.  Find it annoying?  Buh-bye.  Meanwhile I’d point to the folks at Dell, Comcast and my friend Lacy at RealNetworks (client) who strive to be helpful, human and creative online.  This can only help a brand’s image.  (Granted, the Twitter audience is still relatively small — but its influence is disproportionate: there are a ton of VIPs on Twitter.)

Tempests in a teapot?  Perhaps.  But these kerfuffles are important in helping us navigate a true course in Social Media.  In an area that is still so new, everything is important.  This is how rules are made.

Sian has a pretty crazy life story.  On both sides of her family she is the daughter of sea captains — stretching all the way back to the 1600’s, where family lore suggests direct kinship with one of the most fabled admirals of the Netherlands.  Her paternal grandfather was a Jew who resisted the Nazis in Holland; miraculously survived; and went on to reap a fortune as a European industrialist. Sian’s earliest memories involve indoor swimming IStock_000005811520XSmall
pools in Swiss mansions.

Growing up, Sian was something of a violin prodigy.  By the time she was 12, as part of the famed Suzuki School, Sian had played in concerts across the world, including Carnegie Hall and the chamber halls of Munich.  She even played for President Carter!

Then the fortunes were lost.  Sian’s parents — now in San Francisco — were destitute.  At the tender age of 13 she was shipped off to stay with rich friends in upstate New York … who promptly put her to work, mucking the horse stables every day.

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She subsequently fell in with a boy who convinced her to ditch it all and live with his family in New York City.  But this wasn’t just any dingy apartment in a city of 8M people:  this particular pad overlooked Central Park.  The boy’s father owned a posh NYC nightclub, where Sian routinely met “regular folks” like Ozzy Osbourne, Keith Richards, etc. 

Pretty wild so far, right?

Then Sian went to Bard College and met me, and I’ve screwed things up for her ever since.  You’ve read before about how we got pregnant way-too-young, about starting out on welfare, etc.  What you haven’t heard about is Sian’s amazing patience and self-sacrifice.  She spent the first 7 years of our marriage as a stay-at-home mom.  Then, in 1999, when our kids were 7 and 5 years old, she decided to go back to school for nursing.

Sian felt strongly that she didn’t want to go back to school full-time; she wanted to raise our kids, too.  So she went back part-time, and for almost 18 months gunned her way through the scientific and medical pre-requisite courses that needed to be completed before applying to Nursing School. 

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Then, I went nuts.  Threw a wrench in the works.

The Internet craze was — well, it was crazy — and I got caught up in it.  I convinced my patient bride to raise up stakes and move from Boston to San Francisco.  “Don’t worry,” I said.  “I’m sure you can just transfer all your credits to a new college in the Bay Area.”

OMFG, was I wrong.  Most of the credits did not transfer.  Sian would have to re-take many of the pre-req classes she had just completed in Massachusetts.  Worse, the California community college system was overwhelmed by a crush of post-bubble expatriates looking for safe havens in the healthcare field.  So Sian would sometimes have to miss-out on an entire semester, simply waiting for an opening to take a class she’d already aced a year earlier!

Meanwhile, business sucked.  My dreams of conquest were dashed on the rocks.  “It was a stressful time,” would be an understatement.

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But Sian prevailed.  She’s inherited the good ol’ fashioned grit of her sea captain forebears.  When we moved back to Boston in 2005, she reclaimed a spot in her old nursing school; kept her head down; and aced class after class after class.  She routinely nabbed the best grade on every test — but convinced her teachers to stop posting the grades publicly, because she didn’t want to upset anyone else in class who hadn’t fared as well.

My bride is beautiful, brilliant, kind, modest, funny — and luckily for me, she is also endlessly patient and loving.  Twenty years later, I’m still smitten.  “Sian” is Welsh for “gift,” and that’s a perfect way to describe how blessed I feel every time I see her smile.

Congratulations, honey!  You’ve definitely earned it!