In a recent Black Enterprise post by Amanda Miller Littlejohn, I join 3 other online media professionals in sharing favorite tools for managing, monitoring and streamlining social media.

Other contributors include:

• Meredith Leigh Moore (@Meredith_MCD), Director, External Relations and Brand Outreach for McDonalds Corporation

• Michael Street (@StreetForce1), Account Supervisor, MS&L Group and Co-Founder

• Lesly Simmons (@LeslySimmons), Founder & Strategist, Digital District Group

Click here to read the piece. - January 2012

When I discuss diversity and diversity outreach in practice, I encourage PR professionals to first take a look at themselves. It is so important to understand the cultures that we represent and see how they may connect to the cultures of others.

It is on this level (culture), that we will be able to really develop great relationships and do amazing work that will move us all forward.

You can read my full thoughts here in this guest post on the Public Relations Society of America’s blog PRSay:

“Build Cultural Awareness with ‘Cultural Guides’ ” – February 2011

“…Check out our video with digital PR pro James Walker, whose PRSA conference workshop “Socially Diverse: Engaging with Diverse Communities Online” focused on reaching African-American and Hispanic audiences online…” Here’s the link to the video and the article by PR Newser reporter Tonya Garcia:

 http://www.mediabistro.com/prnewser/brand-pillars-are-the-foundation-of-bet-success_b7476

Some of the best tweets from the Socially Diverse (#socdiv) hashtag were featured on the PRSA Diversity Today blog and the Hispanic PR blog. Click here to see how people captured thoughts from the session in 140 characters or less.

Silicon Valley technology speechwriter Ian Griffin has worked with many of the tech giants out west, including Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and Cisco Systems.

It was great to have him sit in on my presentation during the 2010 PRSA International Conference. Just after my session on Socially Diverse, Ian and I spoke about my findings from the project and trends I’m currently seeing online. Visit Ian at Professionally Speaking and give it a listen.

My latest project, Socially Diverse, was mentioned in a post on the Hispanic PR Blog as we prepare for the PRSA International Conference in October in Washington, DC:

“PRSA International Conference Brings Multicultural Understanding & Expertise to PR Professionals” – October 2010

I’ve focused on Social Media and Diversity quite a bit in the last six months, particularly because of the launch of my latest  project Socially Diverse. For Socially Diverse, I talk a lot about the types of diversity out there online, but here’s a post featured on the PRSA “comPRehension” blog that shares some perspective on how you can conduct your own searches to find those conversations:

“Three Simple Ways to Discover Diversity Online” – September 2010

“Three Simple Ways to Discover Diversity Online” also appeared on the PRSA Diversity Today blog in August 2010.

I would be lying if I said I was slow to criticize, but for every criticism (as far as the industry is concerned), there is a solution to go right along with it. For me, it is less about knocking an initiative down and more about pushing a person or a group harder to make that project really work. In this post featured on the PRSA Diversity Today Blog, I share my take on the efforts of the McCann agency and encourage people to “Be Critical and Action-Oriented” when it comes to diversity. - July 2010

The lack of diversity in PR and Social Media is something that James Walker wondered about since he began working full-time in a PR agency setting, but his curiosity about the root causes of this problem only became more amplified with time. The tipping point for him was the July 2009 meeting of DC Media Makers with guest speaker Allyson Kapin, founder of Women Who Tech. It led to this post and then this video interview where he discusses some of his thoughts on the issue (about 6mins in).

In December 2008, James responded to a call for interesting business cards from a “freelance reporter working for a Washington, DC area media outlet.” Well, it turns out that this reporter was working on a piece for the Washington Post’s DC Express Paper. Here’s the feature which ran on January 13, 2009 in the “Careers: Getting Ahead” section: Card Cool: How to Spruce Up Your Business Card.