This past week I attended the IABC (International Association of Business Communicators) International Conference in New York City. Three words sum up most of the sessions I attended – social media trends.

Aaron Uhrmacher from Text100 had a great session on Navigating the Social Media World. Some figures he put out there opened my eyes, but by the end of the conference I heard them again and again – the Corporate World is taking to social media very slowly.

Sacred Heart University Study from 1/2008 – 70% of Americans don’t believe “all or most” of media reporting. Yet, blogs are increasing being seen as the de facto news source.

2008 – Only 11% of US companies are using blogs.

Twitter use is growing rapidly – 145 characters – do we really need any more than that to say what we have to say?

Common Craft, LLC has some great online videos to explain social media to newbies.

According to Aaron a good Social Media Policy for a company should:

• be transparent
• be authentic
• uses common sense
• speak for yourself (no ghostwriting)
• doesn’t share company secrets
• asks for help

Over and over again, I was told to answer questions in a topic that you know something about on LinkedIn. It’s a great networking tip.

Aaron told us about utterz- mobile podcasting from your cellphone. Very cool. And he told us about summize, a google search feature for sites like Twitter.

Corporations can use the social media tools for good – Red Cross – Iowa Floods- established a blog, twitter account, and used utterz when the media could not get in to get the story out.

American Airlines – last summer when they stranded lots of people on their planes – established a crisis blog, but it wasn’t connected to American Airlines own site, was bare bones and horrible.

Well that’s it for this entry, as I download all that I learned at the conference I’ll share the highlights here. look for parts 2-4 coming soon. Do you have any social media trends that you are seeing?

Until next time, Tim