Doug Ulman: Walks the talk when it comes to social media marketing

I watched the social media reports this week from Blog World and New Media Expo in Las Vegas with intense interest. LiveStrong CEO Doug Ulman, a leader in two areas near and dear to me — social media marketing and cancer survivorship — was one of the keynote speakers.

Seems hard to believe, but I met Doug through Twitter. I sent him a direct message when he was just setting up his account in 2008. The message contained a link to a post on our family and friends blog. The post shared the story of my wife Tami Boehmer, who is battling Stage IV breast cancer.  Tami had started interviewing people for what would become From Incurable to Incredible: Cancer Survivors Who Beat the Odds. She asked if Doug, a three-time survivor, would like to share his story. He graciously agreed. It became the foreword, and we decided to donate a portion of the proceeds to LiveStrong. LiveStrong helped Tami find some of the 27 people in the book.

In March 2009, we got to meet Doug in person during a vacation in Texas. He met with us at LiveStrong’s headquarters in Austin. (I even got a nice sound bite from him using Qik! It’s on Tami’s blog.)

I share this story to show you how Doug “walks the talk” when it comes to social media. He has used Twitter, mostly, to engage and mobilize nearly 1 million followers — including me. Doug is a sincere, kind person — and we get to stay connected to him through his daily tweets. We read about his meetings with survivors, supporters and celebrities. We get tidbits about his personal life (checkups, workouts, ties with Ohio State’s president, family in Maryland…). We learn about LiveStrong’s priorities.

He really follows the formula espoused by my friend and super social media marketer Kevin Dugan — mixing personal, promotional and sharing of useful information.

To learn more about his talk at Blog World, please see blog posts from Rohit Bhargava, Rob Cottingham and Sue Anne Reed.