How Iran May Legitimize Twitter…

Has anyone been reading the posts from Iran on Twitter? The two people on the ground (@iran09 and @persiankiwi ) seem to be accomplishing what traditional communication channels have not been able to muster. Here is a link to the disturbing photos http://twitpic.com/photos/madyar and an excerpt from MSNBC (thanks @RushtonM).

"With traditional reporting silenced and e-mail and many Web sites shut down by the government, much of the information from Tehran was coming through social media Internet services like Twitter.com and Facebook.com, which can be accessed through mobile devices and cell phone networks.

Twitter postponed a scheduled blackout for maintenance Tuesday so as not to silence the protesters after the U.S. State Department lobbied it to keep its service running during the unrest, a State Department official said. The official said the United States wanted to highlight “Twitter’s role as an important means of communication — not with us — but horizontally in Iran.”

Messages from people claiming to be eyewitnesses to the violence were flowing into Twitter at the rate of hundreds a minute. Posts would flood in, only to slow to a trickle for a minute or two as Iranian censors sought to stanch the flow of information. Then posts would resume in a torrent as users found ways around the censorship."

Don't forget the strategy!

One of the first questions I often get when people find out about our GFsM program is "Can you build me a Facebook page?" This is akin to "My teenage daughter said we should be start a blog. Can you help?" or "Can you Twitter for me?".

Can you spot the pattern? Yep, they're all tactics. For some reason, social media often seems to lend itself to a tactical approach, rather than a strategical one...at least initially. My theory for this is because so many people view social media as simply a bunch of tactics. Facebook Pages, Twitter contests, YouTube Channels... they're all basically tactics and that's also how most people are introduced to social media.

When I get the inevitable question asking me if we can perform a specific social media tactic, I try to caution folks to take a step back, a deep breath and ask yourself some questions. Are your customers using social media? Where are social conversations about your company or your industry taking place? What are your goals for executing a social media program? In other words... what is your strategy?! We all need a reminder some time.

As a side note... One of my fave PR bloggers, Todd Defren, recently blogged a theory that the economic crisis leads many marketers to focus more on tactics and less on strategy - perhaps another reason why we've recently shoved strategy to the backburner.

Keeping Good Company

It’s great to see nine U.S. members of the Public Relations Global Network in the latest O’Dwyer’s Rankings of Top 169 Independent PR Firms. As #109 on the list, GroundFloor Media is proud to be affiliated with these great agencies and relieved to know that we can rely on each and every one of them should any of our clients have a specific need in any of their respective niches or geographic markets.

Congrats to the following:
67. CooperKatz & Co., New York
70. DVL, Nashville
75. L.C. Williams & Associates, Chicago
91. Xenophon Strategies, Washington, D.C.
102. The Castle Group, Boston
109. GroundFloor Media, Denver
140. VPE Public Relations, Los Angeles
149. Landis Communications, Inc., San Francisco
157. Buchanan PR, Philadelphia