Two hundred and fifty days of sunshine per year, skiing up the road, runnable whitewater in town, and an influx of creative types make Reno the new Boulder. One of its oldest neighborhoods, the Old Southwest, is its best, with quiet, leafy sidewalks near an up-and-coming part of downtown (at California and Sierra).
OGDEN, UT
Once abandoned for gated communities on the city’s fringes, downtown ogden is in the midst of a comeback. Buy a bargain Victorian near galleries and restaurants, and still take advantage of nearby bouldering and whitewater. A commuter rail whisks you to Salt Lake City (for your day job) in an hour; Snowbasin is half that by car.
In this episode of Horse Power Josh Morgan of Morgan / Dorado Public Relations and I talk about social media, PR and Marketing at his US Davis Extension class on Social Media. Morgan invited me to come in and speak to the class about podcasting from a content creator’s perspective based on the presentation i gave at the Nevada Interactive Media Summit. Afterwords, we fired up the camera and talked a little bit about how Josh helps his clients use Social Media.
Morgan does a great job of relating social media concepts, tools and potential to the goal of portraying a brand or client in the best possible way on the web. “You can’t just do PR and you can’t just do social media,” he says, “because everything has to work together.”
As we are finding with Twitter’s trending topics notifications and hash tags, social media and twitter in particular can be a powerful way to spread ideas. They go “from one person’s idea to a mainstream news story over the course of minutes,” says Morgan.
Filtering those ideas from the background noise is a challenge, and Morgan says that it is up to the individual to accomplish because you can’t automate it. So you have to become engaged and grab a hold of the all powerful CONVERSATION.
Is it REALLY all about Conversation? (yes it is…)
“Conversation means actually engaging with the people who want to engage with you,” says Morgan. Though it isn’t always important or even necessary to have a conversation per se; there are plenty of special cases where information sources, agencies, companies and especially celebrities do just fine without really worrying about conversations.
Still, as Morgan says, “you need to be involved in the conversation instead of having things pushed to you all the time.” Most users are seeking real interactions. Often those interactions occur with or even around a brand.
Social Media As PR
That can be intimidating not only to a lot of PR and marketing professionals, but also to CEOs. Morgan adds, “that should energize companies and really scare them.” Though many companies have stepped into social media to react to emergent issues, it is a far better policy to engage before trouble arises. You can easily quell the bad (if you do it right (OK, and are lucky)) and accentuate the positive.
As we learned from Krista Parry, companies can have a lot of success putting their own info out there for users to find, by posting breaking news and info on blogs and podcasts. “The great thing about using a podcast or videocast for that,” says Morgan, “is you can have everything you want to say encapsulated there.” There are people out there who are super interested in a topic and will seak out lots of information and eventually become defacto experts, sources and influencers, “and you want to be able to provide those peole with as much information as you can,” says Morgan.
Great to meet you Josh, and thank you very much for inviting me out to speak to your class!
Note: In the audio version of this episode you get a few extras. 1) A lot more insight from Josh into how businesses can benefit from using social media for PR (and that’s not just lip-service either, he actually does it), 2) a segment where Josh asks me about my observations on the use of technology I observed on my recent trip to Morocco, and 3) a stumble where my sleep deprivation and jet-lag leads to a funny quote regarding the CDC and swine flu.
In this episode of Horse Power I get a few minutes to speak with Alan Hall, Founder and Chairman of Grow Utah Ventures, a group dedicated to finding, training and helping entrepreneurs get their business started and grow in Utah. Hall and Grow Utah Ventures promote entrepreneurism in the community through education, networking and speed pitching opportunities. In this video Hall talks about the components of a good start-up and how he can help entrepreneurs get their business started and their products to market. (There are a few more details in the Audio version, click here to subscribe to Horse Power in iTunes.)
Alan Hall is also Founder and Chairman at MarketStar, a successful sales and marketing outsourcing company that he started in his basement in Ogden. Hall is involved in almost every level of entrapreneurship promotion in Utah, from finding venture capital dollars to having simple conversations with new entrepreneurs and answering questions. Our President, Steve Spencer, caught up with Hall last year at a Funding Universe speed pitching event and was very impressed with both his knowledge, passion and ability to help new entrapreneurs find direction.
Hall is taking his show on a much longer road over the next year with Grow America. Thanks for taking the time to talk with me Alan. It was great to meet you!
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