ToysRUs Great Customer Service | Social Media Squander

During the Christmas shopping season my wife and I had a tremendous customer service experience at ToysRUs in Wesley Chapel, Florida. No offense ToysRUs staff reading this, but we ended up at this stores electronics department after coming up short at Best Buy. We had intended on going to ToysRUs to grab some board games, but never really thought of purchasing any electronics at this store. After... [Read more]

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Chris Brogan | On Social Media And Law Enforcement

While attending the Blog World and New Media Expo 2009 I had the privilege of hearing Chris Brogan speak several times throughout the conference. I also had a chance to speak with him for a few seconds, but I took full advantage of those seconds and went right after my niche, Social/New Media and law enforcement. Chris was intrigued with the topic when I spoke with him and through email the following... [Read more]

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Facebook Fan Page Basics-101!

Facebook is the largest social media community in the world! In fact, I am sure most of you have heard that Facebook would be the third most populated country, if it were a country. So if you are a business, law enforcement agency, or anyone selling anything you should have a Faceboo Fan Page. Just to give you one more statistic if you’re not yet buying in. Facebook had just under 130,000,000... [Read more]

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Social Media Sites Trying To Get Rid Of Sex Offenders!

Sex offenders are being purged from social media sites due to new laws, “Amen.” Sex offenders being banned from social media sites is not a new tactic, but due to recent state laws in several states this process has been streamlined. There is also a national law under construction by the US Justice Department to require a national email registry for sex offenders. While this is an admirable... [Read more]

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When Protectors Become Victim’s | Lakewood, Washington Massacre

As a police officer working for the City of Tampa, Florida I went to a funeral for two detectives Randy Bell and Ricky Childers who were shot and killed in the line of duty story. But, these were not the only Police Officers that were killed in my 7 1/2 year career working for the Tampa P.D.. No matter what you think about Police, when a Police Officer is killed in the line of duty, it is a great loss... [Read more]

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Phishing, Don’t Become A Victim!

About two months ago I was minding my own business blogging when I received an email from PayPal, or at least I thought it was from PayPal. The email looked completely authentic down to the crappy little copyright information at the bottom of the email. The email was what appeared to be an official communication from PayPal that my account had been charged over $400.00. My heart was racing because... [Read more]

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The Police Blog 2.0 Podcast | 5 Reasons Police Should Be Using Twitter

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Beware! Email Scam’s Still Working!

Not a day goes by that I don’t receive an email notifying me that I have one a lottery, sweepstakes, or that I have an opportunity to help a descendant of an important person who has been murdered. Most of these are all a form of the infamous “Nigerian Letter” or “419″ fraud email scams. I encourage you to be vigilant and take caution, because these criminals would not... [Read more]

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Gangs Use Social Media | Police Not So Much

The Contra Costa Timeshad an interesting article about gangs using cell phones and social media to communicate. I wrote an article about this a few weeks ago Gangs Go Cyber which chronicled a similar problem, which is occurring in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It is rather apparent that criminals, specifically organized criminals such as gangs are able to identify the value of social networking sites for their... [Read more]

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Facebook | How Police Can Use As A Social Media Tool

Facebook is an extremely powerful social media community that has become larger than I am sure many Facebook executives would admit they thought was possible. Facebook had over 2.5 billion visits last month (10/2009), which is quite stunning. There are millions of people visiting Facebook billions of times a month to communicate with each other, but what is mostly missing from Facebook? A strong law... [Read more]

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5 Reasons Police Should Be Using Twitter!

As many of you know there is this crazy mircoblog platform called Twitter, which mystifies many on how or why to use this communication platform. Simple answer is because millions of people are using Twitter and the numbers are increasing everyday. If you have not noticed there is a cultural communication change occurring and you don’t want to be the last one to “get it.” Police... [Read more]

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DailySplice Law Enforcement 2.0 Podcast | Introducing, Mike Vallez

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Shhhhh…Do You Hear That?

Apparently there are still a lot of corporations that are very disconnected from their employees. The most disconnected corporations are those whose employees are their number one resource to generate revenue yet they don’t listen to them. The end result is a canoe going up a creek with holes in it and no one has a paddle, I think we all have heard that expression before. But why is there such... [Read more]

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The US Army Is Up Keeping Up With Social Media

The US army with approximately 1,050,000 active duty soldiers is keeping up with social media when a lot of others are still trying to figure out what a Tweet is. The Army’s brand for their social media efforts is appropriately called Army Live. Social media/new media’s use is only limited by one’s closed mind. In this case the folks at the US Army are paying attention to the communication... [Read more]

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Facebook Slowly Becoming Law Enforcement Tool!

A great article from Asiaone Digital called Booked through Facebook? provides a some very insightful vision on how law enforcement agencies can use Facebook as one of their tools. Progressive agencies like the Singapore Police Force (SPF) understand the reach Facebook provides and because of this the SPF use Facebook for several different law enforcement opportunities. They use Facebook for enforcement... [Read more]

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Why Honesty Is Coming Back Via Social Media

So to prep for this blog post I decided to post a question on two of my Twitter accounts CrazyMikesapps asking “what is honesty.” I got only one question, but no answers. Is that surprising? Does honesty mean different things to different people? Probably. So not to get too morally righteous, but honesty to me is telling the truth. The truth would be reality, what really happened as opposed... [Read more]

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Why Customer Service Reigns In Social Media

When I started this blog, Mike’s Social Media Blog I wanted one of my first post’s to be on customer service. Well this blog has been a little neglected due to simply being to damn busy. Yes, no excuse, but putting food on the table, being a good employee to my company Altegrity, and fitting in my family (notice they are last) has been to say the least a balancing act. So I have decided... [Read more]

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It’s Just A Little Bug Bite!

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Blog World & New Media Expo 2009

The week of the Blog World & New Media Expo 2009 is upon us. The event will take place at the Las Vegas Convention Center from 10/15 to 10/17 and there will be some heavy hitter social media experts at this event. Some big name social media experts like Guy Kawasaki, Chris Brogan, Scott Monty, Robert Scoble, Cali Lewis, and Jennifer Van Grove just to name a few. The Blog World & New Media... [Read more]

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These Guys Are Idiots!

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