Yesterday, over on Twitter, I asked for suggestions for my SM Global Report and was surprised by the confusion that caused. Some people thought I was offering some sort of proprietary report, perhaps a PDF.
This post is to help me explain and to give me a link I can point to in the future. [If you know all about the SM Global Report and how I use it, just skip this report and come back later.]
The Social Media [SM] Global Report is at the core of what I do. Since 2005, I have interviewed people about how they use social media in their work and lives. In all there have been over 400 interviews with people in 40 countries. These people have varied from CEOs of global enterprises to pioneers in NGOs, elected officials and regime change activists; a cancer victim using Twitter for ideas and support; a member of the Lebanese Parliament using Facebook to talk with constituents while hiding from Hezbollah.
And so on... It began essentially as a business report, but it seems that I am following social media wherever it goes. I am looking for new stories that either inspire others or give pragmatic ideas of new ways social media can be used.
Almost invariably the SM Global Report is at the core of the books and articles I write. People I interview often become subjects for my speaking engagements and when I get a new project, the SM Global Report gets renamed for a period of time. It became "Twitterville Notebook" for a while. when I was working on my recent book.
I am always looking for stories of people who have used social media successfully. It doesn't matter where, but it most certainly matters how. These are case studies. I write about things that have already happened partly in the hope that it will help others make adopt social media in new ways.
In that light, I rarely--if ever--write about new companies with new tools or APIs. Despite that fact, I get more than a few pitches for stories like that and I get very few pitches for the stories I am really after. When I tweeted yesterday that I wrote about people not companies, I immediately received a few company pitches. So if you are a PR practitioner, please keep that in mind. You can email me with story ideas whenever you like, but it would be best for me if you took the time to click on the SM Global Report category button in my sidebar and read a few of the Reports first.
If you have such a story or an idea on how I can find one please let me know.
