In 2009 I'll utilize all social media tools at my disposal to become an avid Digital Storyteller. Back in 2007 I wrote about this phenomenon -- this year I encourage everyone to share their stories of hope, to raise our collective spirits.

Digital Storytelling Phenomenon
http://dhdeans.blogspot.com/2007/03/sxsw-2007-d...

I would like to learn how to better use my website, blog and twitter to teach clients about luxury travel and create a discussion about new destinations

I would love to break into the Twitter and Facebook world. They have both come full circle over the past year. Our company offers great job search advice and my thought is that Twitter and Facebook would allow us to get our message across to a huge audience.

Social media/networking is here to stay and I'm glad to be a part of it!

My goal is to continue to be helpful and useful in 2009. And to learn a few things.

While social networking is becoming more prevelant amongst us "techies" it is not so welcoming to the average employee. I would like to integrate various social networking techniques in my oranization in a meaningful and comprehensive fashion so that it is embraced and utilized by all of our employees to create a tangible difference.

Social networking is the wave of the future, we just need to guide our employees on how to catch this wave. Until then, Hang Ten!!!

I'm currently looking for ways to adopt social media into the company that I work for. I'm fairly savvy on how social media works. i just need to figure out how it can work for us.

I'm planning to relaunch my company's blog, now at bloggerrelations.com, with a focus on integrated advocacy campaigns - how to coordinate multiple social media sites/tools to get constituents more involved around an issue.

After people decide they want to use social media, the first three questions are "what tools should I use?", "how can I tell if it's working?", and "how do I keep everything updated and working together?". There's plenty of advice out there for the first two questions, but the third one is less discussed and is a strength of ours. We're hoping to share our systems and learn from others who have developed their own.

I plan a three prong approach to creating a greater presence in the "social media" forums in 2009. First, I will write and post articles and create a blog entitled, "Leadership Lagniappe." I will also present teleseminars and webniars in my area of expertise, leadership. Second, I will continue to increase my networks on Linkedin, ecademuy and Plaxo. Finally, I will begin both a facebook and YouTube account posting video to help people better understand how to lead others and themselves. I think together, this is a rather comprehensive, but well organized approach to growing my social media presence.

thunder::tech has a social media resolution for both our clients and for our own company. As an integrated marketing agency, our theme for the New Year is engagement.

Internally, our goal is to encourage and offer opportunities for our staff to enhance thunder::tech’s social media presence. We want to take better advantage of our arsenal of marketing professionals that includes account managers, developers, designers and communicators to provide online content that is relevant, creative and helpful for our audience. We actively tweet @thundertech and have spent months developing our goals and plans for an all-agency blog. Through creative collaboration and smart online engagement, we want to grow our client and industry relationships.

We also want to create social media campaigns that are valuable for our clients. To do this, we want to continue to integrate social media tactics into our campaigns and strategies with definable ways to measure success. thunder::tech will educate clients on the social media tools that will add the most value to the organization and customers. In addition, we will continue to help our clients develop the skills necessary to confidently participate in the online realm.

Resolution: Lead with my strengths.

I'd like to focus on providing delivering important and relevant information. I've spent the better part of the past three months growing my "network" and now I'd like to provide value for the people that are 'following' me.

My resolution, borrowed from Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon, is to not go into an electrical storm wearing an aluminum suit.

My resolution for 2009 is to write a book. I began my blog www.fuelingnewbusiness.com in December of 2007 using an outline that I created for my book. I have over 220 blog posts and 52 blog post drafts. When I reach 300 - 350 posts I should have enough of the content ready to then convert into the initial draft for my first book. The outline has been a tremendous timesaver and has provided a good direction and focus for my blog plus I'm able to reuse the content, with feedback from my blog readers to hone it. Through my analytics I've been able to adjust the content more toward my audience's needs and interests. The blog has allowed me to focus group my content!

Hi Merritt,

I am a subscriber the the new SocialMedia Smartbrief and think it's fantastic. Thank you.

As a survivor of Crohn's disease and a college student at Berkeley, I hope to develop a means by which college-age students from around the world connect to discuss how we can best tackle fighting (researching) this disease. Part of the problem with the research front of this disease is that very few patients have teamed up collectively, to try and alter the course of research. The patient voice, in essence, has been silenced. But as of today, nobody has any concrete evidence pointing to any specific cause, but we do know that the disease may have an infectious agent involved. By bringing the next generation of survivors of my disease together, I truly feel we can put the best minds out there -- the patients' minds -- to fight, and win this battle.

You can learn more about my work at my site, http://IBDCure.org

Only a Jr in high school this year, I am running for state president of DECA, an association of marketing students.
My mission, if elected, is to integrate social media into the way DECA operates as a whole.
I envision the local DECA chapters using social media to communicate with the state officers as well as other DECA chapters in an effort to collaborate on state-wide service projects for charities. The result: instead of 1 chapter raising $500 for a charity, at least 20 raising $500 (through sharing ideas to raise money via facebook, youtube, blogs, etc.) and having a bigger turnout.

Through developing (what I call) Twitter networks with my fellow state officers, I'd be able to update everyone with new ideas and progress on our work, and even communicate with the presidents of every state chapter in the same manner. Doing so would lead to a much more unified DECA club, build "literacy" on social media marketing with every chapter in the state, and possibly influence DECA chapters from across the nation to get involved in a social media revolution.

With the high school students of my generation getting involved in a media they are already fairly involved in, we'd see amazing developments in the future of social media as a marketing and communication tool. Also, entrepreneurial ventures that future business men and women take on can be pursued with the networks established in their high school days.

Next step: integrating the principles of globalization.

My 2009 resolution is to help as many people as possible to start understanding social media and interacting on new platforms. From getting my parents to upload a picture on their Facebook profile to getting colleagues at my office to use Twitter for their client’s campaigns. I’m predicting a very successful 2.009!

I'm a fashion designer with a line of clothing that I'd like to spread the word about. To do this, I've created a blog and YouTube sister channel inviting everyone who's in the fashion industry to join and share who they are and what they do. The network (which I call "our community") focuses on helping spread the word about everyone who joins the community (the idea is to help each other out... tell someone about me and I tell someone about you). The message behind the blog is "It's not just about me". I'm also joining other social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc. to recruit others who are in the fashion industry into my network. As a graphics designer as well, I offer monthly contests via a email newsletter to give them spotlights on my blog (i.e. a spotlight feature page, an ad banner on the site, or you could win a website (design only) to begin branding yourself. My plan is to grow the network to talk about my line as well and launch my line of clothing website perhaps mid-late 2009. Check it out at http://everythingfashion.catwalkds.com/blog!

Hi!

My goal in the realm of social media is to create the #1 career blog in the world at www.careerczar.wordpress.com as a companion to our Internet talk radio program on careers, The Career Czar, www.alltalkradio.net/careerczar and careerczar.com.

The purpose of the blog is to compliment our talk show, with the expressed intent of both being to help as many people as we possibly can with their careers.

We launch the Career Czar blog on 01/02/09. Wish us luck. :-) Thank you.

Paul the Career Czar

Max, You are an absolute hero. I've been waiting for someone to come along with a truly positive idea for along time. Great work blog hero and can't wait to see more genius from you.
My idea is to censor avatars and people from social networking unless they fulfill or supercede certain bandwidth and posting requirements. Three twitters, tqo blogs and ne photo a day or people shouldn't be able to benefit from all our hard work. This way personal information would flood the social network and we would be much more connected.

I work on a social norms changing campaign that has deep social marketing elements to it. As part of our work, we train facilitators at community rape crisis centers to do ongoing 'clubs' with high school boys to talk about living non-violent lives, having respectful relationships (with women and others), and in general being good people and participants in their community. To support the work of the clubs, we have branded social media that focuses on the message "My strength is not for hurting." To date, we have 20 clubs through-out the state.

So, we have a few hundred high school boys in clusters through-out the state, we have lots of media pointing to our website... but we do not make effective use of online social media. That is something I must change in the next year. There are multiple opportunities for these boys to interact online, and interact with their non-club classmates and other youth through-out the community. There are opportunities for video story telling. There are opportunities for blogs and discussion boards. We need a web portal that can access many social media elements and tie them all together, and we definitely do not have that right now. We can run a twitter campaign where the boys tweet every time they hear a disrespectful comment about a girl or woman. There is so much that can be done!

More to come later, got to go check my other blogs and twitter. Hit the submit early on accident as you can see. Happy holidays to all the blogovators.

Electronic social media has revolutionized my social and advertising life. However, each of my blogs are relatively disconnected. I would like them all embedded in one deep social networking interface. It would be a one-stop-shop for social market embedded networking on the internet. Facebook, myspace, snapfish, google, ebay, wikipedia, twitter, amazon, blogspot, all bundled into one social marketing network extravaganza. Increase the visibility of information, especially friending and glue it all together with sly market techblogospherating. One page, every blog, every site, every commercial. Imagine the new revolution of market based social networking. Make friend connections through the person you could be with the products you want.
Expand your social network just by consumer interactive market economy boost purchasing. The more you buy,

I've got to increase my friendspace. Maybe it should be called one love friendies.

My 2009 social media resolution is to help my clients utilize Twitter during informational Webinars to allow for real-time Q&A and to enable participants more effectively shape their learning opportunity.

2008 was an introductory year for us in terms of social media. I hope and expect that 2009 will bring a more rich sense of understanding as to how best to assimilate social media into both our internal and external communications strategies.

Get organized! Figure out how to coordinate and keep up with all of my networks while being valuable, not just treading water.

Speak less, listen more

My social media resolution for 2009 is to better manage the inundation of information I'm experiencing.

These powerful tools we're all experimenting with are only as useful as we make them. You think wading through emails from friends and colleagues is overwhelming? Get ready to be paralyzed by updates from people you barely know in your twitter feed and friendfeed stream. Alcohol seems to be a solid short term stopgap, but that seems untenable going forward. Suggestions - or more alcoholic drinks - are welcome.

I want to teach people who consider themselves non-technical how to use social media.

I'd like to create a place -- be it through workshops, a book or a blog -- that anyone with access to the Internet can use to teach themselves how to use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. to improve their life or career.