Make one to throw away

The first post is always the hardest, which is why I always like to start with the second. So no introduction, no statement of purpose, no puffed up bio, no piece describing my philosophy of social media or my place in the world.

I actually think this post is going to be a case of ‘make one to throw away’ – a practice piece that gets you going but isn’t really worth saving.

I hope the blog is going to be interesting to people. I do social media for a living — and yes, I realize that’s like saying “I do the web” in 1999 or “I do faxing” in 1989. I’m not a PR guy and not a traditional marketer. I don’t regularly read social media blogs or go to social media conferences. I’m part of plenty of social media conversations with colleagues and partners, but not the public ones going on in the blogosphere. So to start, I’d better figure out some blogs to start reading:

• Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang. I see Jeremiah as a consummate connector in enterprise social media and communities – Jeremiah seems to know everybody. I first met Jeremiah several years ago when he came by to talk with us at VMware about our community.
• SocialMediaToday. Have no idea who these people are, but they seem to have gotten a lot of the more prominent social media folks to republish their stuff here.  I would think that’s a Google no-no, but I find this aggregator useful.
• PR 2.0 from Brian Solis. Brian’s seems extremely prolific and seems to appear in many venues. There have been a number of times I’ve been reading a blog article, start nodding my head in agreement, and then scroll up or down to find out that it’s Brian’s work. And he seems to take amazingly good photos.
• PR-Squared from Todd Defren. Not sure where I picked up on Todd. I follow him on Twitter. Again, I seem to find myself agreeing with a lot of what he says.

There are many others that I’m sure will become favorites, but that seems like a good place to start. I think blogrolls are somewhat out of fashion these days, but let’s go ahead and start one over there on the right.