"Link Love" newly added to my lexicon

At Coker I have the good fortune to be teaching a variety of courses that I put under the umbrella of professional communication studies. These are courses like public relations, organizational communications, media writing, crisis communication and others. This field, like many fields, is changing rapidly in today's information age. That is one reason I thought the Ragan "Corporate Communications in a Web 2.0 World" would be a good conference to attend. The fact that it is at the SAS World Headquarters in Carey, NC, (driving distance from Coker)helped it make even more sense.

One of the fields in which I have a strong interest is the whole question of Social Media as a corporate communication tool. Yesterday I got to sit in on a session by Shel Holtz, a Web 2.0 guru. He introduced me to the term "link love." Probably it is a term I should have known because I have been reading another guru on this subject, Paul Gillin and going to wejavascript:void(0)binars to see how blogging can be used for both internal and external communication, I guess hearing it made it sink in. Link Love is something those who blog strive for. Having other people link to your blog and linking your thoughts to others' blogs is one way of getting your messages more coverage. Link Love is the term that sticks in my mind but there is a great deal of other material that will be useful, even to the Organizational Communication class that I am currently teaching. I am also hoping it will be extremely useful for the messages about Selling Hartsville.

The main message in Holtz' first session was how to establish relationships with bloggers who might be writing about subjects that are important to an organization's goals. For example, if a blogger is writing about college decisions by seniors, a discussion of how Coker sets up campus visits might be useful for the blogger. That kind of notice in a blog with lots of "link love" would get Coker College some additional notice. The subtitle of Paul Gillin's newest book on "Secrets of Social Media Marketing" is "How to Use Online Conversations and Customer Communities to Turbo-Charge Your Business." Both the presentation by Shel Holtz and the Gillin book are emphasizing the concept of CONVERSATION as a communication tool. While the conversation concept is not new to corporate communicators, the technology is now in place to actually implement conversations for both internal and external audiences and your organization.