Public Relations Strategery

If you follow me on LinkedIn or Facebook or Twitter, you already know that I recently decided to become the Director of PR at Brunner in my hometown of Pittsburgh, PA. I was with Cramer-Krasselt for more than two years and can’t thank everyone there enough for the opportunities I was given and for everything I learned there. But having three kids under the age of 4 will force you to change your perspective on a few things, and for me, one of those things was the distance between my family in Chicago and the rest of my family back in Pittsburgh.

I’ve already started diving into our client accounts and new business pitches so before I get too busy to blog here (more on that in my next post), I wanted to give my new colleagues a quick primer on the new guy who won’t shut up in their meetings. And because I keep hearing that no one will read anything unless it’s a listicle and the headline piques your curiosity, here are 19 things you need to know about me:

1. I have three daughters – a four-year-old (Annabelle) and two 7 month old twins (Kendall and Callan)
2. Edward Snowden and I share the same former employer
3. I was once profiled as a “Corporate Rebel”
4. The only movies I’ve cried at are Rudy and Hoosiers
5. I started Booz Allen’s unofficial Yammer community and helped take it to more than 7,000 members before it became an official corporate tool
6. I listen to way too much 90s rap and R&B
7. My daughter Annabelle had a Twitter account and was featured on FedNewsRadio before she was even born
8. I used to have a Top Secret security clearance
9. I went to college in West Virginia, but am a Pitt fan
10. For the last 11 years, I’ve lived in DC and Chicago, but I’ve still made it to at least one Pirates, Penguins, and Steelers game every single year
11. I can’t stand onions, mayonnaise, or sour cream
12. You can almost always find some sort of gummy candy in my desk
13. My wife and I met when I was a freshman in college and she was a prospective student
14. I use sports analogies about as often as Pedro Alvarez commits an error
15. I’m a big proponent of asking for forgiveness rather than permission
16. I think we’ve forgotten that good PR is ultimately about relationships with people not likes, clicks, or shares
17. If I’m not saying these things enough to my team, call me on it
18. I ask a lot of my team, but one thing I insist on is honesty and candor
19. Someday, I’m going to try out for American Ninja Warrior

If you’re reading this and you’re one of my new colleagues at Brunner, drop me a line, follow me on Twitter, connect with me on LinkedIn, or stop by my desk and let me know a little about you too!

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Le Syndicaliste under Creative Commons license

That’s actually a great question, and one that I struggled with for a long time before I actually bit the bullet and created this site. You see, the current state of the social media blogosphere is very much like an echo chamber, in that a bunch of social media evangelists, strategists, gurus, and other experts are talking to and amongst one another. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but as Jonathan Trenn states in this post, that’s no longer enough. It’s great that there’s a vibrant community of these experts (check my blogroll on the right for a list of these experts, all much more established than I) actively sharing ideas and experiences. However, this has led to an almost stale conversation in the social media blogosphere where we’re preaching to the choir. So, of course, I’m starting…a social media blog!!!

Seem a little counter-intuitive? On its face, I’ll admit that it is – what could I possibly offer you, my blog reader, that is unique? What content will this blog have that you won’t be find anywhere else? That’s a tough question and one in which I hope that you will call me on if I start getting stale. For now though, here’s a list of reasons of why I hope this blog will prove valuable to you.

1. A majority of my posts will focus on Enterprise 2.0 – exploring the use of social media behind the corporate/organizational firewall. I’ve found that there are a ton of resources about the principles of social media and how those principles can be applied externally. I’ll write a little about that stuff as well, but I will try to stay focused on how social media can improve internal collaboration, communication, and information sharing behind the firewall.

2. I work for a large Government contractor and all of my clients are in the public sector (read my Legal-ese page for the obligatory disclaimers regarding content you find here). I think I bring a unique perspective on the challenges that government agencies face in bringing social media to their organization. Check out Mark Drapeau’s excellent series of Government 2.0 postings on Mashable for more information on this area of social media. As one of my firm’s Social Media leads, I’m responsible for working with our clients to figure out how they can use social media to benefit their organization. Much of my writing will dive deeper into this area – how and why is our government using social media internally?

3. Two months ago, my company officially deployed a platform of social media applications behind our firewall, including tools like blogs, forums, a wiki, social bookmarking, and social networking. In addition to serving as one of our social media leads, I’m also an advisor to the team responsible for developing, evangelizing, and teaching these tools to our internal staff. I’m able to write from first-hand experience about the benefits and obstacles of deploying social media to an organization with more than 15,000 employees located across the world. What’s worked? What hasn’t? Why?

There are many other reasons why you should read this blog, and hopefully those will become more apparent as I write more, but for now, I’ll stick to those three and hope you come back for more!