Detour this way–>

Social media 2.0 has taken the Internet captive. Anything you would have imagined to go into a communications strategy or PR plan four years ago has since been widened by the integration of social media.

Last month on March 1, 2008 The University of Georgia and Edelman joined together to host the Edelman Digital Bootcamp. College students from all over the state of Georgia had the opportunity to utilize social media tools hands-on in their own communications plans. This was a great way for students to learn outside the classroom about the wide range of social media tools available and then actually integrate them into tactics.

As a UGA student in the Word of Mouth Communication class, my role at the Bootcamp was to provide live social media coverage of the event throughout the day. This required using Twitter to give constant updates and feedback about what was going on at the event, blogging to sum up key points of the seminars and speakers, podcasting interviews with key attendees of the event, and uploading pictures to flickr to showcase visual highlights of the day. Check out this podcast to listen to an interview I held with a fellow UGA attendee discussing what he thinks are the advantages and disadvantages of social media. Every new communications medium has a positive and negative side to it, but either way, these tools are excellent non-traditional ways to dive into the media stream and get noticed: whether it be your company, your client, yourself, or a new product.