I’m having lunch with Intel’s Social media champion from the Corporate Communications department, Ken Kaplan. Of course we talked about the great work that Intel is doing (they just launched 3 blogs with multiple authors) and of course the ever passionatte Social Media Evangelist Josh Bancroft (who I’m subscribed to his blog and Twitter). If you’ve been reading my blog we’ve recently interviewed Ken on PodTech’s Marketing Voices.

We’re having an interesting discussion how companies and corporations are waking up to giving equal attention to Social Media (customers, prospects, and others) in addition to Press, Media, and Analysts.

Or vs And
I’ve talked to a lot of “Web 2.0″ marketers who believe that Social Media is the ONLY way to get heard and found, but in reality, it’s not an “Or” but an “And”.

We see on Techmeme how bloggers swarm stories from NY Times about Google’s Financials, and we also see how the SFGate picks up on stories that were broken from bloggers –it goes both ways.

Them vs Us
So please, if you’re crafting your strategy for communication for your company (big or small) please realize it’s an “AND” social media is yet another group to cater and connect with. These tools are being used by not just one group, but many groups.

Thinking a bit more advanced, we also know that Press, Analysts and Media use tools that were primarily started by customers and consumers, so everyone will be using these tools. I attended a conference in Miami a few months ago, although the conference was highly fragmented the name of it “We Media” seems so appropriate.

So let’s all remember that it’s an “And” and a “We”.