Welcome to our new blog – for now the very unimaginatively named “Social Media Blog.”

It’s funny how challenging thinking of a name was. We tried to be creative. We tried to be funny. I liked one co-worker’s suggestion, “Whit and the Brit,” though while that describes us pretty well, it doesn’t really describe the blog itself. So, if anyone has any inspiration we’d love to hear from you!

The purpose of this blog is really three-fold. First, we want to share our thoughts on social media as a whole. It’s something we’re passionate about and love to share our ideas with others. There are so many exciting changes taking place in the media industry, online, across social platforms and even how social media impacts our day-to-day lives offline in the “real world.”

Second, we want to talk about the online community in the Lawrence area. Not only do we live and work in an amazing city, but we have an incredibly vibrant online community that translates into an equally as vibrant offline community. Hundreds of people that connected via social networks are now connected in person and have valuable relationships with people they otherwise may never have met. We want to share these experiences and hopefully inspire others to take that step. It’s called social media for a reason.

Finally, we want to show you some of what we are doing with social media at the World Company. It presents us with so many exciting opportunities in news, sports, weather, advertising, marketing and customer service. Every part of what we do is impacted and the opportunities for engaging our readers, our customers and our community have never been greater. And not just to engage them but to make them part of what we do. Some in the media industry are openly fearful or skeptical about changes that are happening. We say embrace them! This includes helping educate our community on how to use and benefit from the same technologies.

As we go through the process of introducing social media in to each division and each department of the World Company; developing and implementing social media strategies and policies; and socializing our news, advertising, customer service, and our online properties, we want to share some of that process with you. We’ll give you some behind-the-scenes accounts of what we are doing, why we’re doing it, what challenges we face and the results of our efforts. This includes details on projects for the internal social media team, and community projects like seminars and speaking engagements. We would love to hear from you as we tell you our stories. Please post your comments, questions and ideas.

Also feel free to connect with us online. You can find us on Twitter @benasmith and @whitneymathews.

Now, if we can just come up with a more creative name for this blog….

Ben and Whitney