"At last."

I remember BBDO’s Phil Dusenberry addressing an international meeting of Pepsi-Cola marketers and telling us all that those were the two most overused and least motivating words in advertising. Some twenty years later, I can tell you that they mean a lot to me; this site was almost as long in the making (not quite, but it feels that way). It’s the classic cobbler’s kids story: clients take precedence over “house” work – first, last and always.

We launched a placeholder blog called Authenticities two years ago, thinking we’d have our “official” site up in three months. I think we’ve started, almost finished and then binned, at least three iterations of what you’re now looking at over the past two years. Nothing was hitting the mark. So our placeholder blog lived on, and on, and on. I can’t thank @amandamooney enough for being its primary contributor over the past year. She’s incredibly good btw, and we’ve migrated many of her posts here.

I killed V2 about nine months ago, and a small team of us decided to take a 180. The voice of reason and rigor throughout it all was Greg Lipman, our Creative Director in Chicago. He took my rather loosely defined vision (i.e. give me something different) and he brought it to life. Then, working with our global technology guru, Ming Yee, and Greg’s creative team of Kenny Roa, Derek Van Horne and Jim Kopeny, they made it real. That was last August BTW –just as our business was taking off on a trajectory that continues today. Greg was a great noodge, and he made it his point to remind me how close we were with amazing regularity, passion and no small amount of patience.

Fast forward to about three weeks ago. @applegirl, aka Suzanne Marlatt comes on board as our Community Manager. We sat with @armano, looked at the site, looked at the calendar, saw SXSWi and picked our launch date. Huge shout-outs to each of them, and a final one to Shawn Jones, our TD in Chicago, for working their collective magic on structure, content and bugs over the past few weeks.

It does take a village (and apparently, a lot of time). I’m biased, but – thanks largely to the efforts of the folks mentioned above – we finally have a site that’s equal to the quality of the work our teams do for some amazing clients worldwide.

See you all at #sxsw.

Rick Murray
Edelman Digital, Chicago
Follow on Twitter @rickmurray

What’s so special about SXSW? It’s unlike any other industry event you’ll likely attend and that’s by design. We’ll be there in full force this year co-hosting “Allhat 2” with Richard Binhammer of Dell, which thanks to a sponsorship from BlackBerry (client) promises to be even better than last year. Our president, Rick Murray will be in attendance along with regional managing directors Michael Wiley and Cricket Wardein to name a few. And our newest member of the team, Suzanne Marlatt will join me in “covering” the event. We’ll be doing quick video interviews featuring some faces you may recognize, so be sure to come back here or subscribe to our feed.

If you can’t be at the event, you can follow the tweets from “Allhat 2” here. And if you are coming, please be sure to say hello to anyone from our team. We’re looking forward to the the BBQ, brainfood and time with friends.

Hope to see you there.

David Armano
Edelman Digital, Chicago
Follow on Twitter @armano

The Health Digital Check-Up traditionally hasn’t been the place for politics, but given that a good part of the digital health team has ties to D.C., it’s hard to ignore events like last Thursday’s bipartisan summit on health reform.

Even though the summit was going on just a few blocks from Edelman’s Washington, D.C. office (seriously!), it wasn’t like any of us had direct access to watch the proceedings in person. However, wonks, interested parties and political enthusiasts had many different avenues – including in the digital space – to watch and analyze the event, President Obama’s proposal and the reactions. To give you an idea of the different ways last week’s debate and summit went digital, here are five different ways online media played a part in extending the summit.

The Debate, Live on YouTube

Throughout Thursday, the entire health reform summit was broadcast live on the White House’s YouTube channel, and the videos have been archived there for continual access. In addition to making the video available online, the opportunity to watch the summit on this channel was promoted through e-communication sent to supporters and a banner across the top of the site all day long.

C-SPAN + Twitter

C-SPAN is hardly the flashiest network around – basic, essential, but hardly flashy. Yet for this summit, cspan.org turned the summit into a demonstration of the power of its online – and over air – community. The summit’s “action” streamed on the cable network’s Web page, and, at the same time, those who logged in could also see a Twitter stream moving constantly with comments about the summit.

Bloggers React

There was no shortage of commentary from online pundits when it came to discussing the health reform summit. Usual political gurus like Nate Silver discussed the role the President took in the legislation and questioned whether or not anything new came from the proceedings; there were conversely partisan voices calling out extremes described by Democratic participants. In the health blogger space, it was just as divided: one primary care physician wondered how things would be different this time around, while Bob Doherty of the ACP Advocate Blog wondered what the Republicans may want in a reform bill.

Coverage Lives On

This is by no means a new trend in terms of the digital channel, but the fact is that broadcast and other traditional news coverage around the health reform summit could take a new life online. Comments from the pundits from any of the cable news stations (or Comedy Central) will likely be the center point for much of the discussion. An interesting example came the morning after the summit from media bloggers noting how Jon Stewart, the normally critical Daily Show host, was fairly complimentary of the efforts of the summit.

Sources for More News

There will be other stories that come and go – whether health or policy related – in the next few days. If you want to keep a handle on the follow-up directly related the health care summit, there are plenty of places online to turn. Twitter conversation seems to be gathering most around the hashtag #hcrsummit, and for a few bloggers to add to your feed, Ezra Klein of the Washington Post and the team over at The New Health Dialogue will help provide you up to the minute information wherever you are.

Gary Karr
Edelman Health, Washington D.C.
Follow on Twitter @garykarr

I have been following David Armano since I saw him speak at Social Media Club Chicago in January 2009. I found his tweets interesting but I never took the time to respond to anything he said until I saw a tweet from him indicating that he was using Yammer. I responded back to him, and said that although I like Yammer, it was difficult to implement at my work because people just don’t yam.

My tweet was different from the other responses he received that evening and he took the time to look into my social accounts (blog, twitter etc). And, it just so happened that he was looking for a Community Manager at Edelman and I fit the bill. A few DM’s and an interview later, I accepted a position. Behold the power of the @ reply without which I wouldn’t be in my current position.

We all know that twitter is a wonderful tool for connecting with people but are you truly harnessing the power of your account, do you actively engage or is your approach more passive? On a daily basis I respond to and ask questions of my followers in order to build a real relationship with them. The people are out there, you’ve accepted their follows and now it’s time to engage with them so you can maintain the relationship and take it to another level.

Here are 3 of my tips for how to utilize the @ reply properly.

Find your @ reply limit

You have to try to find a happy medium with twitter replies. If you reply too much your feed will look like you just respond to every tweet in your stream, which says you aren’t creating your own original content to contribute to the conversation. If you never respond you look like a person that really doesn’t engage and interact with their followers. If you find a way to respond frequently to valuable conversation you’ll utilize twitter much more effectively and you’ll find that your tweets will provide more value to your entire following.

Acknowledge people that reach out to you

There is nothing worse than reaching out to a company or person only to be ignored. Take the time to look through your mentions and replies and try to respond back to as many as you can. It’s one thing to message @billgates and not hear anything back but a company or smaller personal account should attempt to acknowledge when someone reaches out.

Know when to take a conversation "offline"

In certain instances a twitter conversation can go back and forth between two people for a while. In this situation it’s usually not something your followers care to read about and it can come off more like an IM conversation than a twitter conversation. If possible move the conversation to DM or email so you can have a more in depth discussion without harming your twitter following.

Responding is engaging and engaging with real live people is becoming a huge movement on the web. How can businesses and individuals harness the power of engagement with the people who matter to them?

Image credit: ~llse