Heard of Glen Gilmore? If you have the chances are you’ve won­dered whether he’s a social media expert, politi­cian or ex-mil­i­tary man. The fact is, he’s all three.

With over 200,000 fol­low­ers on Twit­ter, a legal prac­tise spe­cial­iz­ing in social media law and a posi­tion with How­ell Mar­ket­ing Strate­gies advis­ing For­tune 500 com­pa­nies, you could be for­giv­en for think­ing Glen Gilmore was just anoth­er mem­ber of the tech­nocrati, just grad­u­at­ed from MIT or Berkley with a string of star­tups to his name, but you’d be wrong.

Gilmore and Social Media

With his busi­ness Gilmore Busi­ness Net­work, Gilmore is ranked 7^th on the Forbes list of the Top 50 Social Media Pow­er Influ­encers and is in the Top 50 Social Media Blog­gers accord­ing to ana­lyt­ics firm Kred. He’s an inter­na­tion­al­ly renowned social media strate­gist and his skills are in demand from some of the country’s biggest and most influ­en­tial com­pa­nies either through GBN, or via his post as media advi­sor with Mem­phis-based How­ell Mar­ket­ing Strate­gies. He’s sought after as a pub­lic speak­er on social media law and mar­ket­ing and he’s still a prac­tis­ing attor­ney. Oh, and he’s also an adjunct pro­fes­sor with the Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty Cen­ter for Man­age­ment Development.

His thoughts on social media are pro­found and right on the money.

He said:“The worlds of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and mar­ket­ing have changed.  The chal­lenge is to seize the enor­mous oppor­tu­ni­ties cre­at­ed by a medi­um of com­mu­ni­ca­tion that has a stag­ger­ing scale of par­tic­i­pa­tion nev­er imag­ined before and a speed of deliv­ery that takes only as long as the send on a smartphone.

“Social media, the medi­um of the web, demands a “con­ver­sa­tion” –mono­logues are not accept­ed.  “Authen­tic­i­ty” and “trans­paren­cy” are min­i­mum require­ments of a dig­i­tal strat­e­gy that aims to con­nect real peo­ple with real oppor­tu­ni­ties.  Con­tent cre­ation and search engine opti­miza­tion go hand in hand.”

What’s His Story?

Glen Gilmore has been there and done it. Enrolled in the army out of high school, he under­went train­ing and Fort Knox before grad­u­at­ing from Fort Ben­ning and embark­ing on his under­grad­u­ate stud­ies at Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty. He trained as a lawyer at Widen­er Uni­ver­si­ty School of Law.

In 1999 Gilmore served as May­or of Hamil­ton Town­ship in New Jer­sey and was re-elect­ed for a sec­ond term in 2003, before los­ing out to John Ben­civen­go in 2007.  It’s dur­ing this time that Glen honed his peo­ple skills as, in 2001 and dur­ing his first term as May­or, the local postal facil­i­ty was tar­get­ed in an anthrax attack. Gilmore ral­lied the troops and quick­ly set up an emer­gency treat­ment cen­tre for the 1,000 postal work­ers exposed to the dead­ly bacteria.

He is a keen envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign­er and tes­ti­fied before the New Jer­sey Gen­er­al Assem­bly in sup­port of the Glob­al Warm­ing Response Act. So you see, Glen Gilmore is not just a flash-in-the-pan tech­nol­o­gy whizz with a bright idea.