The class is comprised of professionals who really want to understand today’s media, and the nuance and subtleties of communications in the digital era. None worked for a communications agency, and when I asked, none indicated any interest in doing so. They were more interested in achieving significant results in today’s new world of communications. Steve, a veteran journalist, is among the best to point the direction.

One student, however, brought up a good question – how do you get social media experience. She cited, with amusement, a help-wanted ad from an organization that wanted to hire a social media expert with at least 10 years experience. We agreed that it would not be a meaningful place to work because today’s online social media has only been around a couple of years and continues to morph each day.

My advice for jumping in to learn social media is to start a personal blog. You need five things, and it will cost about $125 the first year … less in subsequent years:

1. Domain name or Web site address – Visit Godaddy.com to find something clever. The cost is about $10 a year.
2. Web hosting (this is your portal to the Internet) – I recommend ThisWebHost.com which will cost $3 a month.
3. WordPress blog software – It is the most common blog software in the world and free. Click WordPress.org.
4. Blog theme (the look and feel of your blog) – There are literally thousands of themes available for WordPress. Just Google “WordPress themes.” The best and easiest themes I’ve found are from Solostream.com. A good theme costs about $79.
5. Imagination and creativity – A winning blog is only limited by your own imagination and cleverness.

You need no technical or code skills to launch your own WordPress blog but I recommend reading the blog start-up tutorial at WordPress.org. The only tricky part is configuring a WordPress blog database but the people at TheWebHost.com will help. Also check BlogStrategies.net for free advice on WordPress blogs.

By the way, I suggest forgetting about free blog services, like Blogger and the free version of WordPress. If you want to make an impression, be distinctive!

That’s it. Then, just start writing, posting photos and video and join the online conversation!

As a lot of bloggers have found, many of the people who object and criticize blog postings the loudest do not use their own name or a valid email address. All during the evolution of the Internet, such people have been bottom-feeders who lurk in the shadows as cowards, misfits, deceptive failures, malcontents and liars (did I miss anyone?).

Long before the Internet, Mark Twain said: “You are a coward when you even seem to have backed down from a thing you openly set out to do.” Such is the case with people who anonymously post vile material and comments online. But, they often leave fingerprints …

Whenever anyone posts a comment on a WordPress blog, their IP address is captured. It can look like this in the WordPress dashboard comment screen next to the comment: 12.345.678.90. That is the individual identification of their network and reveals all kinds of information, including location, Internet service provider, type of computer, operating system, etc, unless they have gone to the trouble of using a proxy server. In such case, they are a certified Internet criminal.

If the harassment and abuse continues, you can file a complaint with the person’s Internet service provider, providing the specific IP address.

Additionally, on incoming emails, you can reveal the “raw source” data of any email address which helps to triangulate the source of offensive comments which, in some cases, can be downright slanderous.

If you are being attacked on Twitter by an anonymous person who is using a false email and identification, Twitter responds quickly when you file a complaint by deleting the offensive account. The team at Twitter can block their IP address from further problems.

On the other hand, if a CEO is more insular or uncomfortable to get out in front of his or her organization as a leader, a blog might not be appropriate.

In my consulting work, the first questions I believe must be asked when considering a CEO blog are …

• Why? Why have a CEO blog?
• What’s the purpose, and
• What’s to be achieved by a CEO blog?

Resist marketing, selling and promoting

If a CEO (or the organization) wants to use a CEO blog to market, sell and promote through a CEO blog … or if a CEO expects that someone else in the organization will write the blog … or if a CEO only intends to get involved with the blog every couple of weeks or so … then I might strongly recommend against the whole idea of a CEO blog because today’s online audiences will quickly see it as contrived or disingenuous.

If the corporate marketing or PR departments want to “brand” the look and feel of a CEO blog to be seamless with the rest of the organization, it risks detracting from credibility and transparency.

Be distinctive

A CEO blog should, I believe, reflect the uniqueness of a CEO’s personality. As an example, look at the style of the popular CEO blogs of Zappos’ Tony Hsieh, and Mark Cuban’s BlogMaverick.com.

A CEO blog is a place where the human side of a CEO is displayed, where ideas and vision are candidly shared. It’s a timely and active place where buyers, customers, stakeholders and others can vent frustration, complain or praise directly to the person in charge … and where the CEO must listen, engage in conversations, and demonstrate affirmative responses. And, it’s all out there in the open for everyone to see.

Develop a network of ambassadors

One of the great values of a CEO blog is the opportunity for the chief executive of an organization to connect directly with the audiences that matter most to a business or organization, and establish a powerful network of … let’s call them, “ambassadors,” or involved people who will carry forth favorable impressions of the CEO, and his or her organization to others. 

Listen

Use a CEO blog to listen to which way the wind is blowing in your marketplace. Listen to buyers and customers. Listen to the media. Identify opportunities for growth by listening to feedback to a CEO blog.

Take genuine action

Consider the importance of a CEO directly interfacing publicly with someone who has a complaint, responding promptly to the concern and taking immediate action to resolve that person’s complaint. All the people who witness that blog conversation are left with a positive impression and inclined to share that positive experience or story with others. It’s how the image and reputation of distinctive and authentic leadership is defined and achieved in today’s online world.

We have become a society – in America and throughout the western world – accustomed to a style of reporting that has intentionally become more sensational and edgy as the media fights, sometimes desperately, to retain audiences. Balance, confirmation of facts, presenting both sides, fairness, and all the other “old-fashioned” tenets of journalism occasionally are swept aside.  To intentionally not tell the whole story, however, is still an untruth.

How often are cyber-rumors repeated on blogs without confirmation? Too often.

We all make mistakes in our learning and exploration of the blogosphere. I certainly have made my share of mistakes during about six years of blogging. When we make a mistake, what’s important to our personal honor and reputation is our responsiveness in correcting it, and to ask ourselves whether we might have intentionally skewed a story angle for our own benefit.

It was Barney who introduced me to the scope of WordPress blogs, and that gave me an idea … to write just a few words about the importance in today’s world of having a blog.

A few years ago, we only had our reputations that we had built among friends and in business plus a business card to define ourselves. Today, we have all kinds of online support tools to help build better awareness and differentiation. Few things are better than a blog. But a blog’s value is only as important as the value you deliver in what you write and share.

If consultant A has the same credentials as consultant B, for example, but consultant B regularly shares valuable information via a blog, and consultant A does not even have a blog, which consultant has the better change to prosper? Substitute “company,” “organization,” or whatever for “consultant.” In today’s competitive world, not only being online but learning the online world is crucial. That’s the premise behind my new book, The Media Savvy Leader: Visibility, Influence and Results in Today’s Competitive World.

If you are interested in learning more about WordPress blogs, visit BlogStrategies.net. It’s another of my blogs.

There … hope you have found something of value in this posting.

Twitter users are being bombarded by malicious phishing messages enticing them to enter their @IDs so they can innocently be used to post more phony messages. I didn’t realize the magnitude of the problem until getting an email early today from David Meerman Scott, and reading his blog. Here’s an excerpt:

In my opinion, Twitter has not been communicating as well as it should be during this crisis. As I look at my friends feeds, nearly everyone is talking about this issue. Yet, Twitter has three feeble communications as of this writing.

1) Three tweets from the @twitter ID providing a bit of information.

2) A short post on the Twitter blog

3) A warning on the Twitter home page.

David also wrote about reading an interview with Biz Stone, head of Twitter, who turned down a $500 million offer to buy Twitter from Facebook. By a humorously cruel twist of fate, the interview appeared this past weekend, when the phishing problem began:

Stone’s interview seems a bit arrogant based on what was happening this weekend.

Many people rely on the Twitter service. Sure, it’s free and we get what we pay for. But if Biz Stone and his colleagues (and the VC firms backing the company) want a bigger payday than a half a billion, then they’ll need to manage this crisis better. Much better. Starting now.

I think Twitter should be doing more to inform users.

I’d suggest hourly updates on the Twitter blog. Maybe set up a new Twitter ID that can be the official place where people go. A YouTube video that you put on the Twitter homepage to inform people. Whatever. But you’ve got to do more than you’re doing.

The Design for Users blog has an excellent post on this subject called Communicate, Inform, Address Users When Things Go Wrong Online.

What do I believe Twitter should do to handle this crisis?

1. Seek the help and counsel of Twitter’s most frequent and skilled users, who also happen to be very smart people.
2. Openly and prominently warn Twitter users of the problem, and ask users to send solutions to a special email address (Twitter, the company, is currently very insular).
3. List what Twitter users can do to avoid phishing.
4. Publicly and opening admit the problem and list steps being taken to find a fix.
5. Not hire a big PR company because, chances are, they don’t know what Twitter is and will only make matters worse … in the interest of maximizing billable hours.
6. Humbly ask Facebook for help.

I spoke about gaining a voice of leadership and integrity in a world of message clutter, and also led a workshop on blogging. So, almost by fate, I read Chris Brogan’s stimulating and relevant blog essay today, 27 Blogging Secrets to Power Your Community. In today’s Internet Era, this is a meaningful read that I want to excerpt here, along with a link to the full post on Chris’ blog.

Starter Moves

1. An intriguing title goes a long way towards getting people to the blog. Failing that, posts with numbers seem to work. Especially weird or odd numbers. 27 is odd.
2. A picture per blog post has been my trick for a while. It draws your eye, whether or not you want it to. We’re wired for it. I use Flickr Creative Commons photos to do that. (Make sure you give them adequate credit. I show that in this post, too.)
3. Did you ever notice most of my posts open by asking a question? That’s a secret. When I do that, you stop and think about the question. But more importantly, it shifts your mind to the “what’s in it for me” sphere that you started reading from in the first place. Make sense?
4. Break things up visually. Notice that I have an H3 tag (html speak) title repeating the top title, and that I’m using a list to give your eye some natural “chunking.” Go back and read cafe-shaped conversations for an example.
5. Oh, maybe I should’ve started the post by saying that it helps if you write something useful for people. People want posts they can use to improve themselves or their business.
6. Brevity rules. I mention this a lot. People just don’t read long posts (usually). There are exceptions. I read every word Ann Handley writes, and often wish for more.

Click read to read the rest at ChrisBrogan.com … and Happy New Year!

1. It takes time to gain trust. If you post something that has an “agenda,” be upfront about it. Being deceptive, unethical or manipulative may get you short-term results, but the long-term impact to you and your efforts will be detrimental. Most big stories by journalists have come only after they spent months or even years getting a source to trust them.
2. You are what you write. Whether it’s 300 words or 60,000 words, you have to make sure it’s accurate. A Pew Centre survey on bloggers found that while 34 percent of bloggers consider their writing to be a form of journalism, only 56 percent “sometimes or often” spent extra time trying to verify facts. Always double-check the spelling of a name, the name of an organization, dates, etc. If you want to be taken seriously by those outside the blogosphere, you’re going to have to verify your facts 100 percent of the time.
3. Use attribution. Journalists are trained to always provide a source for their material. This helps put the information in context, and tells the reader you’re not just making up stuff. It shows that you have a dedication to getting it right.
4. Step away from the computer. It’s easy these days to think that all questions and answers begin and end on the Web, but don’t insulate yourself that way. Talk to people on the street. Listen to conversations in checkout lines or while waiting for a movie. Learn how to ask questions of people outside your circle of friends and acquaintances – that’s what will net you a golden nugget of information that no one else has. Anyone can regurgitate what they get from Google. It’s the effort to get original information and look beyond the obvious that grabs attention and respect.
5. Look for the news peg. Journalists have always known they’ve got a limited amount of people’s time, so they need to make sure no one says “so what” when reading a story. If you tie your information to a current event, it makes the story more relevant for them. For example, if you have a “green” company, then Earth Day is a perfect time to use it as your “peg” to attract attention.
6. Be consistent. Journalists use the Associated Press Stylebook, a rulebook we use to make sure our “style” is consistent. (For example, we write out numbers less than 10, and use numerals if it’s 10 or more.) You don’t have to use this stylebook, but you should understand it is distracting when your writing style is all over the place.
7. Precision is key. If you carefully consider each word and each sentence, then you’ve put yourself in another realm as a writer. Precision helps you gain respect and legitimacy because it shows you’re taking your writing and reporting seriously, even if you’re writing humor. At the very least, consult a dictionary, thesaurus and grammar book. All the Web site flash and dazzle in the world won’t cover up poor writing riddled with spelling and grammar mistakes. Trust me: If there’s one typo, one spelling error, someone is going to call you stupid.
8. Just get on with it. You may hate me when I tell you this: I’ve never had writer’s block. I’ve been writing for a long time, and I’ve never once sat down at a keyboard and had a blank brain. Here’s the key: Just blurt out loud the first thing that comes to mind when you think of your subject. This is a technique taught to all first-year journalism students, and it has never failed me. The point is not to labor over your lead. Once you get something down, you can get on with the rest of the story. If you “overwrite” your lead, readers will quickly lose interest and move onto something else. And one more point: Deliver what you promise. Don’t sensationalize your lead and then fail to back it up with the information in the story.
9. Rewrite. One of the most important parts of any good story is the rewrite. When I wrote my second book, I spent three months writing it and three months editing it. I put on five different hats when I read the copy: 1) as writer I made sure the copy flowed easily; 2) as a reporter, I made sure the copy included solid facts and sources; 3) as a copyeditor, I made sure I used proper grammar, correct spelling and looked for ways to tighten the copy so that it was concise; 4) as a workplace/career journalist, I made sure I was giving people information they wouldn’t find elsewhere; and 5) as a reader, I made sure that even if I knew nothing about the subject, it was still clear. (By the way, don’t try and put on all these hats at once. You’ll lose focus and get confused.)
10. Understand you’re creating history. That may sound dramatic, but it’s true. Your writing will last forever. Don’t abuse the privilege of being able to record the events and feelings of our day. With every word you write, you’re leaving a record for future generations, and that’s not an assignment anyone should take lightly.

Anita Bruzzese is a syndicated columnist for Gannett News Service and USAToday.com. She is the author of two books, including “45 Things You Do That Drive Your Boss Crazy,” named one of the top 10 most notable books by the New York Post. Her website is www.45things.com, and she can be reached at anita@anitabruzzese.com.