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Greetings!
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Here's Why You Need to be on Twitter
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Here's just one brief example of why Twitter is so valuable to us in telling our clients' stories:
Recently, we posted the following "Tweet" on the Twitter site of our client, the Quonset Development Corporation.
- "With closing of West Davisville land purchase the Quonset Business Park is now 3,207 acres."
A couple days later, Chris Barrett,  a reporter for the Providence Business News, saw the tweet and called to do a story about Quonset.
 Frank Coletta of Channel 10 read the PBN story. He invited Steven King, the managing director of the Quonset Development Corporation, to be on the business segment of the Morning Sunrise show.
While we were at the TV station, we gave Frank Coletta a Quonset coffee mug. A couple days later, Frank gave Quonset the Morning Sunrise "Coffee Cup Salute."
In this case, a Twitter post resulted in at least three (so far) very favorable pieces of media coverage.
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| Twitter in its Place |
Skepticism about the power of social media is now as obsolete as Hosni Mubarak, but some clarification may be needed. Twitter was a game-changing tool in Egypt, but Twitter didn't cause protesters to risk their lives in Tahrir Square. People make change. Technology's role is to make people more powerful.
At the heart of effective movements and campaigns are low tech things like a sound strategy and message. And, of course, in most movements the urgency is not as self-evident as it was in Cairo. In order to move people from interest to action, organizers must show a clear path to victory, remind folks why victory is so important, and empower them to be able to act effectively on their own. If these kinds of basics aren't in place, technology is just expense and noise.
New Harbor clients understand this. For instance, the New England Secondary Schools Consortium (NESSC) is a coalition committed to making the high school experience more meaningful in a new economy. They recommend a few, very achievable changes for proven results, and they've built an impressive group of leaders from across the region. Social media will be a key tool for NESSC - and most of our clients - but only in service of real-world action.
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| Here's How it Happened |
Hard to believe it's been 20 years, but that's how long has passed since my first day at the State House with Gov. Sundlun - the same day the Governor closed all the local banks and credit unions affiliated with the failed deposit insurer RISDIC.
 Recently, while doing a periodic office cleaning, I came across a piece I had written for Rhode Island Monthly magazine for the 10th anniversary of the closing - an "in the room" account of how it all came crashing down. We posted the account on the New Harbor blog.
As of today, it is our second most-read blog post ever. Still #1 - and by a wide margin - is "Media Training for Generals", last summer's post-mortem for Gen. Stanley McChrystal's career. The advice in that one came too late the save the general, but in the ensuing months it has done a world of good for many of our clients.
Take a look at both at the New Harbor blog.
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