Twitter is one of those social networking tools I am still trying to get my arms around. I know that several of the HTG folks use Twitter, and I have looked at it and considered the possibility, but it just seemed like a stretch for a guy in his 50's. But as we are working on our PR and communication strategy, being led by Stuart Crawford who fills that role on our HTG board of directors, well Twitter is coming into my life. http://twitter.com/htgmembers is our URL. Stuart will put together some information on how to use this little tool in the next few weeks. Watch for it in an upcoming newsletter.

It took me quite a while to succumb to the whole idea of blogging, but that has actually been pretty effective as a communication tool. Twitter allows us to set up blogs to feed into it so that will be the primary use. There will likely be some use particularly at our quarterly events when we are trying to get the word out quickly. I am no expert, but it does have some potential and we are beginning to work with it as a tool for HTG.

Stuart has also started our process of creating an HTG blog site - www.htgblogs.com - which will be a central repository for HTG specific information. This peer power blog often addresses HTG, but it is not completely dedicated to that - more of an IT SMB industry focus. So some of the things I write here, or that others write on their blogs will be posted to the HTGBlogs.com site as well.

It also will be a source for the public relations and media coverage that Stuart will drive. We have started to be more proactive in that area, with recent coverage around our Ingram partnership and some great work by Storagecraft around their sponsorship of HTG. We want to replicate that for all our relationships. And we want to highlight things that our members do as they tell the HTG story, so if you have an article published, a local newpaper clipping, or anything that we can share, we want to highlight that and help get the word out about what our HTG members are up to. We have the greatest people in this industry involved in HTG, from members, to vendors, to industry resources and distributors. And we want to let people know all about you and your success and partnership with HTG.

So I hope you continue to learn about the social networking tools that are out there. They can be effective ways to connect and communicate. I am still trying to grasp the business applications, which I know there are some of, and we will be working to educate you about those as we move through 2009 together. For now, just start learning and checking things out!