It’s been quiet around the blog lately. I’ve been traveling a lot for work (and some for fun) and blogging has taken a back seat. Plus, it seems like I haven’t felt like I’ve had too much to say. I’m resolving to get back on track, though.

Here’s some of what I’ve been up to over the last six weeks:

I guest lectured on social media to a graduate-level PR class at The College of Saint Rose and talked with them about how social media has influenced and changed PR over the last several years. The class is working on a social media strategy for a local non-profit and I gave them some ideas for ways to encourage volunteering and fundraising via content marketing. My slides from the class are below (and they’re pretty bland – I usually try to jazz up presentations more!)

I was a member of a panel of speakers on social media at the 2010 Hugh O’Brien Youth Leadership Conference at the NYS Museum. I had never heard of this group before, but it’s fantastic! This national organization has chapters all over the US and brings together 10th graders from different schools for a weekend devoted to leadership and community service. The kids were excited, energetic and inquisitive. For my part of the panel, I talked to them about how social networking is an important component of online reputation management. When they’re applying for jobs or scholarships, people are going to Google them. They need to make sure that their social activity (blogs, Twitter, Facebook, other online postings) reflects the type of person they want to show to the world. I also taught them how to Call the Dawgs.

I read Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. I received a copy of the book at last October’s Inbound Marketing Summit, when it was pretty new, but never got around to reading it. I thought it would be interesting to wait to read it until almost a year after it was published and see how well it held up. I’m generally not one to like social media books (or even business books in general). I’ll probably save my observations on the book for another post in the coming weeks.

I flew three round-trips to BWI for conferences about PR in higher education and communications in government. I talked with lots of readMedia clients (and hopefully future clients) about effective ways of reaching hyperlocal media, how to manage enterprise-level PR and communications within complex organizations, and how to ensure social media is baked into PR best practices so that it becomes a natural extension of communications activities. I go back to BWI in two weeks to present a workshop on social media for government communicators. I’m going to be the mayor of that airport in no time.

I finally pulled together a group of smart, hard-working people to help me keep Social Media Breakfast Tech Valley moving forward. The event has grown so much in the last year and was more than I could handle on my own – so I’m now happy to have a team behind me making it happen. We took a break from our typical early morning programming in June and instead hosted a social media happy hour at a local biergarten. Networking was greatly enhanced. We’re looking forward to bringing back regularly scheduled programming in August.

So, this post is a total cop-out, but I plan to be back to blogging (semi) regularly soon. Stay tuned…