PRSA San Diego Resource List

A thanks to the packed-house audience today at PRSA San Diego's 3 Minds 10 Questions presentation. Very special thanks to my co-panelists, who helped expand my own thinking on the topic. Greg Block and Caron Golden.

As promised, this is my list of favorite social media resources:

1. My YouTube how-to list covers some key concepts that are easier to understand in this medium than in print or lecture: http://tinyurl.com/getspine-PRSA
2. “The Epic Saga of the Well”, Wired Magazine, May 1997 (yes, 1997). Reminds us that—regardless of the technology—social media is about people and worked even when our screens only displayed one color. http://tinyurl.com/sagaowell
3. Book + Web Site: Here Comes Everybody (2008) by NYU's Professor Clay Shirky www.shirky.com. Solid foundation for understanding how social media behaves very different from other mediums. (A Shirky lecture is included in my YouTube list.)
4. The Brave New World of Digital Intimacy (New York Times): A great sense of how to think differently about Twitter based on a reporter’s year-long immersion in it. http://tinyurl.com/sdgnyt
5. Google Alerts: One of the most powerful and easiest-to-use social media tools. Self-explanatory from their home page. http://www.google.com/alerts
6. Google Reader: Your very own FREE clipping service. Allows you to efficiently follow numerous news sources, blogs, (and just announced this week—virtually ANY web site, regardless of how it’s underlying technology). By far, one of the most powerful and under-utilized social media tool. Learn it. http://www.google.com/reader (There’s a video about RSS feeds in my YouTube list. It relates directly to Google Reader.)
7. Google Analytics: Must be installed on your web site (which is a minor technical change) and requires some learning (free YouTube videos), but this is the single most powerful (free) measurement tool for determining how you social media efforts are working. http://www.google.com/analytics
8. ROI: See my blog comments on the topic at http://tinyurl.com/howthecount
9. http://mashable.com/ : One of the best blogs about the latest social media trends.
10. Web Strategy by Jeramiah: Written by an industry analyist, this blog gives an in-depth view of trends in contrast to Mashables must-publish-something-NOW approach. http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/
11. Hootsuite.com: Makes Twitter a whole lot more manageable; schedule tweets, track click-through rates, manage multiple accounts.
12. Social Media Gestalt, my own blog of course): http://smgestalt.blogspot.com