Boomerang

I can’t imagine what life would be like without social media. Balancing work, staying informed and maintaining a social life are, for me, three full-time jobs. Lately, I’ve added apartment hunting to the mix, and rely more than ever on social media tools to optimize my time so I can do the things I care about.

Let’s take staying informed: I’m not typically sitting in front of a stack of newspapers or magazines when I find a spare moment. Using social media, I can listen to podcasts of my favorite French radio show during my morning commute, discuss issues with bloggers via IM on my lunch break — even listen to BusinessWeek podcasts, directly from the reporter, on my iPod while at the gym. This is invaluable if I ever need to speak to him about a client. Social media allows me to consume and interact with information when it’s convenient for me.

My apartment search is another example. Because the housing market is so tough in San Francisco, each ad on Craigslist receives hundreds of responses. Sifting through and responding to ads becomes a full-time job. Most responses become buried within minutes, so timing is everything. Instead of living in front of my computer screen, I set up RSS alerts for ads that fit my criteria. When one is posted, it’s instantly sent to my phone via email. I can access the ad, research potential roommates on Facebook or Google and respond within minutes if I think it’s something that is a potential fit — all while hanging out with friends at Dolores Park.

So what would life be like without social media? I don’t want to know.

What goes around comes around. This time it’s coming to you via podcast featuring EVP/managing director Annie Longsworth, and Jessica Jones, research associate, in a lively and impassioned discussion around Cohn & Wolfe’s San Francisco office and the agency’s new green practice. Annie and Jessica touch on the dangers of “green washing” and the overall challenges faced by companies that are trying to “go green.” If you’re interested in how to build a green communications strategy, and like to be entertained along the way, this podcast is for you.

 Intro to Cohn & Wolfe San Francisco [11:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

For me, Easter weekend will forever be associated with one of the most traumautic, yet ultimately inspiring, events in my adult working life. It was five years ago in April 2002 that Wilson McHenry Co. (WMC), a very well-respected tech PR firm in Silicon Valley, closed up shop following the Bay Area tech collapse. I called in from Palm Springs for an all-hands staff meeting on Easter Sunday to learn that negotiations to be acquired by another larger firm had ultimately fallen through. There was no longer a WMC to return to after my holiday road trip.

In 1999, I moved from a smaller sports marketing agency to WMC during the height of the tech boom, and my first technology client was Maxtor Corp., which, at the time, was the world’s largest hard drive company. After learning the ropes of technology PR from colleague Erin Hartin during my first weeks at WMC, our expanding agency team eventually grew Maxtor into our largest account. Back then, one of our biggest wins for Maxtor was launching the first-ever external storage drive, which became the Maxtor OneTouch family of products. The brainchild of Mike Cordano, EVP, and his Maxtor Branded Products Group team, it became the #1 brand of external storage devices for consumers in the world.

Eight years down the pike, I’m still working with Erin Hartin, now my Fabrik client, and Mike Cordano, Fabrik CEO. In fact, I’ve done so at three different agencies over the last five years; we keep following each other wherever we go. Two of my Cohn & Wolfe colleagues who also work on Fabrik, Annie Longsworth and Tony Obregon, are also former WMC-ers who worked on the Maxtor team. We’re one big happy family.

It’s incredibly satisfying to work with this dedicated and talented team - and the depth of industry knowledge I’ve gained after eight years working the same “beat” is probably the closest I’ll ever come to working an in-house PR gig.

This year’s Easter was filled with anticipation and excitement leading up to today’s launch of the first wave of new offerings coming from Mike and his innovative R&D team following the recent SimpleTech acquisition. The Fabrik team is building out a personal media web of software, services and devices that will make managing, sharing and publishing content more simple than any of us can imagine.

You can hear more about that in Mike’s vision for Fabrik, and the latest offerings hitting the market this week, in recently recorded podcasts for today’s launch.

It’s been a great eight years. Here’s to many more. Cheers!

PR Week writes that BMW is using free podcasts, consisting of talks that were delivered at the TED conference in Monterey, CA on February 22-25. The podcasts tie into the latest branding push around the theme of “Great Ideas Become Driving Machines.” Speakers featured on the weekly podcasts include former vice-president Al Gore, New York Times columnist David Pogue, and MacArthur Award recipient Majora Carter. BMW reports that their web traffic has increased since the introduction of the podcasts, and has matched traffic generated from a number of short films released several years ago.