I had a CEO compare Page One’s work to a tequila shot the other day. I took it as a compliment.

“I really feel like we’ve turned a corner,” he told me as he drove through the streets of San Francisco, clutching his blackberry. “I like being part of the conversation. And Page One, you guys were the lubricant. You were the shots of tequila.”

So what’s he talking about?

The most important aspect of media these days — no matter what community you’re trying to reach — is participating in a conversation. That’s why “social media” has become the Next Big Thing.

Nothing is one-way anymore and if you’re not having a two-way conversation you’re being left behind.

My two favorite social media tools for dipping into the online conversation are blogs and a Twitter feed. Twitter is great for rapid-fire, real-time exchanges, while blogs provide the opportunity for more thought out commentary, with room for all the blog bling: charts, links, graphs and photos.

Good PR is all about noticing openings in the conversation and finding a place for your client at the right table so they can join in. All these new social media tools are just more ways to grok the seating chart.

So why did this CEO compare our work to tequila? Well in addition to being a good-time guy he’s also smart. And when he piped up with a particularly timely blog post about the growing influence of Facebook online, we made sure the right people saw it and incorporated it into their conversation on the topic.

In one day, his blog saw a 600 percent traffic increase. He’s pulling his chair up to the table.

The work we do behind the scenes doesn’t go in a shot glass. It’s the relentless targeting of the right influencers in the right way, using all the tools at our disposal: A tweet, a note, a link. A few more.

But if the metaphor works for you, what we do is tequila in action. Just enough to get a good vibe going, never so much that you regret it in the morning.

Business headlines these days are anxiety- inducing to say the least. And for anyone trying to get the attention of business reporters, it can be an exercise about as troubling as looking at your 401(k) balance.

But there’s a phenomenon in journalism known as the man-bites-dog story. And in this environment, good economic news is the odd yarn that gets attention.

Last week Page One PR helped SolarWorld tell the story of their new manufacturing facility opening just outside Portland, Ore. Here’s a German company placing a hefty bet on U.S. manufacturing and providing hundreds of those high-paying “green” jobs U.S. politicians are so fond of talking about. It was a powerful economic story and it received powerful coverage in outlets from Fortune to Greentech Media; CNN to the Associated Press.

Call it clean tech, renewable energy or the Green New Deal every recession has its recovery driver and my money is on green. As Page One client Clean Edge put it in their recent Carbon-Free Prosperity 2025 report, “We stand at a unique crossroads in history: the transition from polluting, resource-constrained, fossil-based energy systems to those built on sustainable, renewable, resource-efficient systems.”

Eventually the jobs and economic growth propelled by the clean tech sector — which continues to lead in venture capital tallies — might be less remarkable. But I would argue that the increasing noise in the sector will continue to require (ahem) good storytellers.