As I neared the fourth year authoring the Punxsutawney Phil Twitter account (@GroundhogPhil), I cut my losses on attempts to hand the account over to the Groundhog Club and just went for it.

Read previous year’s posts and subsequent coverage here:

• 2011: A big day for @groundhogphil
• 2010: Huffington Post, Good Morning America, National Geographic, Urlesque and more pick up @groundhogphil
• 2009: Punxsutawney Phil on Twitter: a lost opportunity?

For 2012, it is clear the growing interest in animal based Twitter accounts (see @BronxZooCobra and @NYTChicken) amplified the general public’s interest in chatting with a forecasting rodent via 140 characters or less.

Building on three years of prognostication-related tweets, this year’s momentum was strong and resulted in even more big name coverage of Phil’s tweets. Like doing an interview with Mashable in character, for starters.

Again this year, The Huffington Post, The National Post, local media and weather sites again retweeted and/or referred to @GroundhogPhil’s tweets.

And the data was just tremendous. The RT’s were flying!!

In the spirit of good faith, I again offer up the account to the top-hatted groundhog bunch. However, given they’ve ignored this offer and opportunity for four years now, I’ve decided I’m happy to keep it until Phil predicts Twitter is a relevant audience for their event.

Long live @groundhogphil!

That’s me running the laptop. :)

Read the story: Answering the PR alarm bell

Read it here.

Full article.

Full article (sorry for the pay-wall)

Greg Swan, who works in public relations and Internet marketing, said he thinks people will learn to cope with the vast array of social-network choices.

“We humans adapted to balance hundreds of television channels, overloaded email inboxes, full social calendars and six lanes of freeway traffic. I would hope no one will lose sleep over fitting Google+ into their social portfolio.”

Read the whole story.

Follow me on Google+

“The highs and lows of social media“

Social media is a powerful way for civic government to connect with its social-savvy citizenry,” wrote Greg Swan, a Chaska resident and vice president of digital strategy for Weber Shandwick. “The city of Minneapolis uses Facebook and Twitter to announce snow plowing. Stillwater residents promote community garage sales via Facebook. Shakopee posts video from their music in the park series on a city YouTube channel. The Chaska Police Department uses Nixle to send SMS text alerts about breaking news in town.

“Jumping on the Bandwidthwagon“

Greg Swan, a Chaska resident and vice president of Digital Strategy for Weber Shandwick, would agree for the most part, but he still has some constructive criticism for the city.

“Like many organizations and businesses, the city of Chaska jumped on the Facebook page bandwagon, but hasn’t had a strategic communication and community management strategy to ensure updates are timely, questions are answered and that the page adds value to its fans,” he wrote in an e-mail.

Podhradsky gets that, acknowledging, “We gotta be better at this.”

While critical, Swan also understands the challenges cities like Chaska face.

“To be sure, Chaska government officials have plenty on their plates, and in an era of limited resources, we taxpayers want them to prioritize their efforts,” he wrote. “Yet, in many cases, a dormant social media profile is worse than a non-existent one … It’s of-ten difficult to justify return on investment in moving resources into social media, but the opportunity cost of not participating in conversations about your community can be high.

I also put together a “5 Social Media Trends to Embrace/5 Social Media Trends to Ignore” sidebar that ran within the feature.

Five social media trends to embrace

* Online monitoring of what people are saying about your community

* Social community building and engagement with two-way conversations

* Real-time event coverage (photos/video/news) on social channels

* Social focus-grouping, letting your online advocates get involved

* Live streams of public meetings with real-time chats

Five social media trends to ignore

* Establishing social media channels without a content and community management policy

* Outsourcing social media management to vendors

* Editing Wikipedia, which is against site policy for affiliated organizations

* Focusing so much on ROI that you miss out on the conversation happening today

* Google+, which hasn’t yet set guidelines for non-humans

It was a fantastic round-up by the Chaska Herald with stories on the faces behind city social channels, the role of public safety in social and interviews with social channels from Eden Prairie, Chanhassen, Chaska, School District 112, Carver and Carver County. They should enter it for an award. I’m serious.

Read it here. Watch it here.

Full piece:

I was interviewed for Fox 9′s investigative report on Wednesday, “Is Formspring a New Forum for Bullying?”

The report focused on Formspring, a fast-growing social community that is part of the a new Q&A trend that includes Quora and Facebook Questions.

Because users are allowed to ask questions anonymously, many questions involve topics or sentiment one may not say to someone’s face. Like any social network of this nature, anonymity increases the chance for hurtful comments that can contribute to bullying.

However, I was quick to point out most sites, including Formspring, have privacy settings to help users avoid such situations.

Formspring is just one of many (and many to come) social sites that can be used both positively and negatively, depending on the user. And although it’s difficult to cite a social network for fault when its users misbehave, there are tangible consequences to naiveté when it comes to privacy.

Ultimately, responsibility comes down to vigilant parenting matched with ongoing education to equip today’s teens at how to navigate a changing social landscape.

Watch the segment here.