There’s so much happening in the World Company social media department right now, I want to share a few updates on our department’s projects.

We’re busy working on April’s Free State Social conference, and we’ve added another great speaker to our lineup. Scott Raymond is co-founder and CTO of the location-based social network Gowalla. Scott will share some fresh insights on geo-targeted social activity, and also happens to be a KU graduate – a nice tie back to Lawrence! Another exciting development this week is the addition of Mashable as a media sponsor. With more than 15 million monthly page views, Mashable is the world’s largest blog focused exclusively on Web 2.0 and Social Media news. It’s a great partnership which helps put the conference in front of a national audience.

In February we have two social media workshops that are a collaboration with the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce. The workshops will take place at the Lawrence Arts Center and represent part of our ongoing outreach to introduce the local community to the exciting world of social media.

Then in March we have the first of our niche social media workshops. To kick things off, we’ll be focusing on social media and real estate. We’ll educate realtors on ways they can use social media to both connect with the community and to better serve their clients. Details on that workshop series will be posted this week.

Meantime, we’ve been planning a re-launch of the LJWorld.com Facebook page. This week you’ll see big changes in the content we post to the page. The focus will now be on interaction with our fans vs. sending out links and headlines. There will also be some Facebook-exclusive content – polls, contests, galleries, user submitted content, and a fun video series “Minglin’ on Mass Street”. Check out the first video posted on Facebook page on Monday.

One final thing I’d like to share relates to the print edition of the Journal-World. Beginning on Tuesday morning, links to our Facebook and Twitter pages were added to the section fronts, 1A index, and all inside “Contact Us” boxes. Bringing social media in to our print edition is another step toward truly integrating our news coverage and indicates the significance placed on the role of social media in our company’s evolution.