Choosing a puppy from a litter isn’t the easiest task. The variables are limitless… Are you a purebred markings snob? Are you looking for “personality?” Is the pooch just plain cute? How does Fido get along with Mom or siblings? Will he take to you?

A few weeks ago, Mike, Ella and I drove up to Vermont to visit our new puppy’s breeder. It was time to choose which pooch we’d like to take home. There are dogs everywhere. The breeder and her husband have 4 adult Bostons. Very friendly and active pooches. The two moms of the bunch whelped litters roughly a week apart from each other… 11 or 12 puppies all together. A giant bundle of cute.

Gets better. Is your image of a Boston Terrier the ubiquitous black and white, with tuxedo-like markings? Our Ella is, with a slight off-center blaze of white between her eyes. Gingy and Holly (the moms) have red and white coats. Somewhat unusual in Boston circles. More unusual is 3 of Gingy’s pups are champagne and white. Beautiful. Unique.

When searching out a breeder to add to our family, we came across Laurie and her champagnes. We fell in love. That excitement peaked once we arrived in Vermont to meet the pooches. We had already decided on a champagne boy, and placed our deposit, securing us 2nd pick of the litter, of which 2 champagne boys remained. This was both the same and completely unlike the process choosing Ella as ours. She was one of a litter of three, with the first pick staying in the breeder’s family. We chose from 2 girls.

The difference with Duke (our little boy’s name) is we got to play with him and his champagne brother, and also with the other 10 or so puppies (all red and white coats). We wanted to take them all home. Imagine all these month-old puppies, only beginning to discover their world.

We sat for hours talking with Laurie and enjoying the pups. We couldn’t decide which of the two we liked best. One has a diamond-shaped marking on his head (a traditional sign of good blessings for the breed), the other has the most adorable white-tipped and speckled ears. We just can’t decide.

Ella snoozing in the car, we knew what our next choice would be. Let her pick her new brother. Would it work? How would she react to these tiny dogs? Would a motherly instinct kick-in?

With the two boys exploring the grassy outdoors for the first time, I led Ella over on leash, very cautiously easing her into the scene. She immediately took to one, sniffing him all over and not just “where dogs sniff each other.” This went on for an hour, half interested in this particular puppy the rest of her time curious about nearby horses and roosters. She practically ignored the other dog, eventually getting curious enough to visit.

We were sold. Mike and I were evenly split on which dog we liked. We Ella cast the tie-breaker. We crowdsourced our puppy. Little Duke.

Curious to know which one Mike chose and which one I did? Ask Ella

Enjoy, nothing “naughty” here.

PS – I use Google Reader. Here’s how you can import OPML files.

The big event was EMC World, EMC’s annual showcase for customers and partners. This year was the biggest ever, with over 10,000 attendees. To highlight all the wow-awesome stuff EMC’s social media team does, we amped up our presense. We doubled the size of the Bloggers’ Lounge (and its espresso machine) and added a whole new arena called Social City where impromptu and planned tweetups and meetups were streamed to the masses.

The centerpiece of our social fun (hey, this is *my* blog, so I say so, wink, wink) is an excellent experiment to connect with our most-ardent fans. We featured keynote videos on Facebook. We earned ourselves over 8,000 new fans, that’s how good the content is!!! (Oh, yeah, we also dished-out free Mozy accounts and a raffle for free EMC World 2012 passes. Check it out, raffle still on…)

The #EMCworld tweet stream was (and still is) full of unbelievable interaction. Our YouTube channel features hours of entertainment. And Flickr is teeming with beautiful photos from attendees. All of this social media awesomesauce was highlighted on the EMC Buzz Board throughout the conference area and featured on SiliconANGLE.tv EMC World webcasts!

Need I say more for this team?

(Hey, I said this is *my* blog. I’ll be vain if I want to!)

That sounds simple enough, right?

It’s not. I’ll explain why.

My 4th grade school teacher sister likes EMC on Facebook. She’s proud of her two brothers who work at EMC. Especially *this guy* who posts all the fun stuff on said Facebook wall. Sorry, Lee. Anyway, I’m pretty sure she ain’t buyin’ a VNX for her classroom.

Social media is so much more than the folks who like or follow you. It’s knowing the value of those follows. EMC needs (and should have) fans like my sister. That’s just general good practice for brand awareness and community outreach. But the ROI isn’t great. At best, sis might know the IT admin for her school district and ask if he (or she) knows one of the Paul boys at EMC. They won’t. But that type of interaction helps cement EMC in that IT admin’s memory. The value there is minimal. It can’t be measured.

A targeted activity becoming prevalent for Facebook is called “fan gating.” Fan Gating requires a Facebook user to “like” a page in order to access “exclusive” content. EMC has done this with its EMC Challenge tab. It’s been hugely successful. Through users “liking” EMC on Facebook, we earned over 6,000 qualified fans. Huge ROI. But how are they qualified? Good question. We dangled a huge tasty carrot across the web around a huge global product launch in January.

We aligned our strategy to grow our Facebook fan base with this “mega” launch goal to attract as many IT folk as possible to a simulcast microsite. From the outset, we had a highly reasonable expectation that most of these new fans hold some level of interest in EMC. Whether a customer, prospect or intern in some data center, we captured an audience predisposed to our message. As of today, we KNOW that roughly three-quarters of our Facebook audience is there because they want to hear what EMC has to say. We acheived similar success with another awareness campaign, where we featured a sweeps with iPads as the prize. The other 1/4 of our Facebook audience is roughly represented as organically earned fans, competitors, EMC employees and yes, my sister.

Expect to see more of this from EMC, and from every other brand on Facebook. It’s the new wave of marketing enabled by social: permission-based marketing.

Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated,
personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them.
- Seth Godin

So as you begin to include social metrics within your measures of success, stop and think of the value those metrics bring. If you increased your Twitter following by 50 people, great. Your message is reaching a few hundred more people through new networks of people. But who are those 50? The value in that social graph is knowing (with reasonable certainly) that your audience is *interested* in what you have to say. The payoff comes when those 50 retweet your message and influence others to follow.

Adapted from a blog post on EMC’s internal community.

Love the very subtle irony, intended or not

Okay, there’s the line

Here’s the reality: I have a BA in sociology from UMass and manage social media marketing for the world’s leader in enterprise storage solutions.

My advice will focus on your passions and how UMass will help you achieve them, no matter what you think you’ll be when you grow up. Indirectly related to my UMass degree, my UMass experience gave me my current career trajectory. Be open to new paths, but remember your roots.

• I’ve been involved with the Minuteman Band since I was a freshman in 1993
• I teach Online Journalism through UMassOnline
• I serve on the Alumni Association’s Technology and Online Services committee

Just do and love what you do. And do it well. And Go UMass.

Please reach out by any of the channels noted above. If interested in a position at EMC, email me at keith.paul@emc.com.

So y’all know, 413-545-1451 is the Caller ID number when someone at UMass Amherst calls. Should such a call come between the hours of 6 and 9 pm, odds are the caller is a student working in the Annual Fund call center. Give them a few minutes, they often have a good story to share. And yes, they’ll ask you for money.

So, give.

NOTE: You can’t call the number above. It’s a system number. Connects to nothing.

To make a gift by phone, dial 866-450-UMASS.

The entire show was patently UNFUNNY and not entertaining in the slightest. James Franco in drag??? Lame autotune. If I had a wife, I’d hide her.

But I watched. Kinda.

The TV was tuned to ABC for the entire broadcast. I even left the volume at a normal level. But I actually “watched” the 2011 Oscars on my iPhone. On Twitter.

The real fun was on Twitter. And not because @JamesFranco was tweeting from backstage. You could sometimes spot his phone in his hand while on stage. There was a special hashtag, apparently only he was using… #oscarsrealtime.  That was a missed opportunity to connect with the hoardes tweeting to #oscars to present exclusive content the TV audience couldn’t get.

In fact, it was suggested by one tweep that the producers of the 2012 Oscars watch Twitter “in real time” to prevent this kind of calamity from repeating.

All-in-all, “watching” the Oscars on Twitter (instead of TV) proved hysterically funny and entertaining. The power social media (and Twitter) has to bring together an audience is great. It just needs to be done WITH an event and not MOCKING it.

My favorite Tweet of the night? This gem came amidst ridicule of Trent Reznor’s (of Nine Inch Nails fame) thank you speech for his score to “Social Network”:

Your dedicated and hard-working state trooper did a fine job this morning pulling over a blonde-little-something who clearly must have volated a traffic law here in Hopkinton.

However, in pulling this blonde-little-something over at the bottom of South Street, mere feet from a major 6-lane, 4-way intersection…

…where many thousands of workers head to their jobs each morning and afternoon…

…150 yards from the 495 off-ramps…

…which where completely backed-up…

…therefore backing a quarter mile each way on 495…

…potentially setting off a catastrophic chain of events…

…on a major interstate highway very busy during the morning rush hour…

…you might rethink the consequences of pulling over that blonde-little-something…

…in that particular spot…

…even if your quota hasn’t been met on say, JANUARY 31st…

…especially when there is NEVER a cop anywhere in sight at that time of day…

…and almost never a traffic accident in that area during commute hours…

…just sayin’…

She was a cute blonde-little-something. I’ll give you that.