Second, Lon provides a great case study and “non-techie” look at how the ALS Association is using social media tools to help the people they serve:

Check that — a huge fan of the Chicago White Sox.  (Although I’m also a nominal fan of Washington Nationals from my days of living in the Beltway.)

So tonight, as I was browsing the WhiteSox.com news feed in Google Reader, it dawned on me — organizations should absolutely follow the example set by Major League Baseball’s online communications.

As we’ve written before, modern media tools allow any organization — corporations, political campaigns, non-profits — to become its own news organization.  Major League Baseball is doing just that for each of its teams.

It used to be that MLB teams were at the mercy of sports talk radio or sportswriters to get out their news information.

Not any more.

Each MLB team now has a few reporters assigned to it — and they produce regular news stories (several per day) of the caliber and type usually reserved for the sports pages.  And not every story is rosy — some are even critical of the team.

MLB has turned every one of its teams into a news organization.

What type of content can you produce on a regular basis to mirror the MLB example?  Please read our recent posts — here and here — about how you implement your own content strategy.

Every organization needs to re-tool its communications department from one that relies on press releases and phone calls to reporters — to one that is fanatical about the production and dissemination of content across many different channels.

If MLB can do it — so can you.

The big story of the last ten days has been the important role that online tools, such as Twitter, FriendFeed and YouTube, have been playing in empowering Iranian citizens to protest and communicate.  A constant sub-theme of that story has been traditional media’s failure to initially cover the story.

Even now, as traditional media organizations have been “blacked out” by the Iranian government, people across the globe are relying on user-generated videos, tweets and posts to get their news.

The old media elites see the writing on the wall. They are obsolete. An outdated empire that hasn’t yet figured out how to adapt to the new realities of the online world.

So they’re fighting back.

Stories are starting to appear that discount the role of online tools in the current crisis:

This Washington Post story proclaims:

“No amount of Twittering will force Iran’s leaders to change course, as supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made clear Friday with his rebuke of the protesters…”

That’s just absurd.  Nobody is saying Twitter is the end-all, be-all of the current protests.  And it’s crazy to measure the power of these tools solely on the basis of whether or not the despotic Iranian government “changes course.”

These protests would be large and effective with or without Twitter.  But they are important tools that are empowering these protestors to communicate with one another and the outside world to tell a story that isn’t getting told anywhere else.

Also this week, longtime Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page wrote of the Iranian protests:

“To me, Twitter is the great enabler for those who are intent on doing what’s ruining literature and political discourse today: Writing without thinking.”

Well, that’s an interesting statement coming from an opinion columnist who makes a living writing … about what he is thinking.

I can understand why the titans of old media would feel threatened.  If millions of consumers are getting their news via tweets, re-tweets and FriendFeed posts — then they’re not getting it from the pages of the news organizations’ ad-revenue-generating Web sites.

Further, I seem to remember a ton of news stories touting the vital role that “social media” played in the Obama campaign last year.  Not too many stories (none that I can remember) labeled the campaign’s online activities “overrated.”  That’s probably because the media played such a vital role in that victory — no need for them to feel quite as threatened.

But this is different.  Old media’s failure to cover the Iranian protests has become a story in and of itself.

Rather than lash out, these traditional media organizations should instead adapt to fill the wide-open gap they have left in recent years.  That is, (as we wrote in this previous post) their large scale failure to produce, aggregate and disseminate content in a manner that adapts to the ways in which we are consuming media and information.

If they fail to adapt, that gap will continue to be filled by ordinary citizens, corporations, organizations, and campaigns empowered by an increasing amount of simple, free online tools at their disposal.

We run into clients and potential clients all the time who think social media tools are little more than a playground for fans of Ashton Kutcher and place for college students to swap party pictures. Building 43 helps dispel that myth with real business case studies.

I wanted to share the following video which very simply shows how a professional in a “non-tech” profession (Hotel Manager of the Four Seasons in Palo Alto, CA) is utilizing social media tools to help promote her company’s brand.

Timpone launched Blockshopper back in May 2006 as a residential news site focused solely on the Lincoln Park and Lake View neighborhoods in Chicago, billed as a “residential real estate news service for… eureka … actual residents themselves.”

Blockshopper has steadily built a growing audience and now has sites in Illinois (Chicago and Lake County); New York (the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens); Cleveland; Washington, D.C.; Las Vegas; Los Angeles; Philadelphia; Phoenix; Seattle; St. Louis; and, South Florida.

Unlike the mainstream newspapers, it isn’t a site with tips and advice on how to sell your home. In fact, it’s a real estate site that isn’t about homes. It’s about people … people who are buying and selling homes in your neighborhood. You can search by street, by date sold, and by price range.

The stories carry photos of the people who are buying and selling, a short bio sketch of the person, and the amounts for which they are buying or selling their home. It even has a Google Maps mashup so you can view the location.

According to Timpone, the site is getting several hundred thousand visitors per month, it has been featured in the Chicago Tribune and here in Builder Magazine.

We can all learn a lot from the Blockshopper model.

How?  The Blockshopper model is driving traffic and followers … because it is telling stories.

It’s telling stories about the people buying and selling in your neighborhood.  And it’s telling stories about your neighborhood itself — the property taxes people pay, the schools they attend, the people who live there.

The content is fresh. It’s original. It contains easily aggregated data you can’t find anywhere else.

Through the data they are collecting, they are also able to hyper-target advertising not just to zip codes — but to actual neighborhoods.  This provides an advertising model with opportunities that go well beyond these publications or the real estate market.

Blockshopper continues to grow and looks to have a bright future — especially with the opportunities provided as so-called “mainstream” news sources continue to whither (they actually partner with the Chicago Sun-Times and Florida Sun-Sentinel).  And, as they grow, their business model continues to evolve … and new opportunities are presenting themselves along the way.

U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform (ILR), the nation’s largest legal reform advocacy organization. ILR is fighting against lawsuit abuse — active in the states and in Washington, DC, working for reforms that will make America’s legal system simpler, fairer and faster.

For the past several years, they’ve engaged in a very successful online campaign, called FacesofLawsuitAbuse.org. Earlier this week, I sat down with Bryan Quigley, Senior VP of Strategic Communications for ILR, to discuss the “Faces” program…you can watch the video above.