Online Media or Social Media?

Perspective is a funny thing.

For most of us who live in cyberspace, the answer is obvious. However, too many think that social media equals online media, digital media, or Internet media. While the last three are the same in my eyes, to another, one may not be like the other. Digital media means web design to universities and a web guy. Just like some web people think graphic design applies to them, too. Tell that to people who produce books.

Social media is all of the above, but not visa versa. Online media/digital media/Internet media include social media but they also include:

• Webinars
• Podcasts
• Video sites
• Blogs
• Online media
• Online articles
• Online press releases
• Virtual launch parties
• Online gaming
• Apps
• Mobile communications (i.e. text)
• Skype
• Online conferencing
• Instant messaging
• Google ads
• Pop-up ads
• Wikipedia
• Discussion boards
• Photography sharing sites, such as Flickr, Instagram
• Websites

There are many more elements to add, including those we haven't even invented yet.

Social media is one ball on the Christmas tree and the above are the rest of the decorations that hang on it. Social media sites are also a relationship-building sites that can incorporate the rest of the balls on the tree and visa versa.

Sudsy Brew a Cure for Wi-Fi Woes

Is it just me? These days it seems like too much time is spent in search of a decent Internet connection. 

Unless one is wired in at the source or you carry your own wi-fi on a stick, connections can be hit and miss. 

Saw this today in Mashable. Who knew that drinking beer can help your connection? 

http://mashable.com/2012/12/17/wi-fi-beer-can/  

We're Drowning in Data Overload

We are bombarded with messaging at every turn of the head. Commercials, billboards, bus signs, advertising, direct mail, inbox spam, social media spam, sponsor messages, packaging inserts, store displays...we can't get away from it. Most of it is hit and miss advertising -- meaningless and wasteful spending or effort to reach the masses instead of narrowing the message to the specific target demographic.

Given that there are more platforms available for the marketing assault, it is time to stop and figure out why you are really sending that tweet, posting that Pinterest board, or adding a corporate page on Facebook.

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

Murray Izenwasser is a respected social media strategist who says digital media isn't just a collection of venues to post and sell your stuff. It's a shift in how we relate to one another. For example, many businesses operate from home offices and will book client meetings at a coffee shop or rent a room that hosts audio-visual tools. At this meeting, the business person can access a document on his laptop, while his client can view it at the same time on his tablet, and several parties in other cities can also access the same document at the same time -- from a smartphone in their car. The setup of this meeting may have come from an email invite, Facebook event post or direct message, a tweet-up, or Google Chat. The participants in the other cities could be connected via Skype or Google Hangout or any other web conferencing platform.

These tools have brought the world right into our fingertips.

It's easy to get caught up in throwing up content and finding creative ways to attract followers, but Murray suggests we take a step back and know WHAT we want to achieve. In business, the end goal is revenue, which can be in the form of email capture or some other goal that ultimately ends up in a quest for dollars.

He says it is about three ingredients. Period.

1. Activity
2. Engagement
3. Conversion

No activity brings you any engagement thus no conversion.

I encourage you to watch this Spreecast and learn more from Murray. He'll teach you what to do and what not to do. Sound advice if you're just starting out, and great nuggets for those who have been active for years.

Blame Ted Turner

When did news programs turn into tabloid journalism?

I haven't done an in-depth scientific review but I suspect it began with the first bomb blasts of Desert Storm on January 16, 1991: the first Gulf War. Who can forget the compelling live reporting from the al-Rashid Hotel in Baghdad when CNN reporters Bernard Shaw, John Holliman, and Peter Arnett took cover and told us what they were seeing outside their window. That was the day we were hooked into the 24-hour news cycle. We saw war up front, close, and personal.

It wasn't the wonderful reporting that turned major events into one-story news systems. It was ratings. With most of the world hanging on every moment of coverage, CNN became the number one station for news, leaving the big three networks in the dust.

Fast forward to today's terrible shooting at a Connecticut school, where a gunman killed 20 elementary school children among six adults. As parents are escorting the survivors from the school grounds, reporters are interviewing the children as to what happened. Now, I completely understand the need to get to the most accurate report of what transpired at the scene. But really? You have to go there? Where in the brain of any reporter or editor (who sent the reporter and probably insisted they get that clip) says to interview young children immediately as they leave the bloody scene of where a gunman tried to kill them? And what parent with half a brain would allow the reporter to interview them?

That completely did me in ten minutes into watching the coverage. I was done. Nope, not watching anymore. Had enough. That's not news. That's exploitation. That is the same as the News of the World hacking the phone of a murdered girl and allowing the parents to think she was still alive.

So now, until the next tragedy or until the topic reverts back to more Fiscal Cliff discussions, expect 24/7 coverage of this shooting, with images run over and over of the same footage you saw in the first ten minutes, with the same pundits, the same interviews, speculation after speculation, more disturbing interviews with the children, and then when the editors get bored with that after about four days, they'll try and dig up dirt on the adults and maybe even the children that perished, as if to point the blame back to the victims.

The 24-hour news cycle and one-story news casts may have started with CNN (the brainchild of Ted Turner), but it has since spread to nearly every television station.

It's predictable coverage and it's been going on for so long, I forgot what real news coverage looks like. Oh wait. Yes I do. These same news stations used to try and discredit this one news outlet. Funny that. I challenge you to spend a day with it and it will help you through missing the days of Tom Brokaw and Walter Cronkite. Of course, I'm talking about Al Jazeera.

User/Password Overload

Amazon, Air Miles, utility companies, banks, blogs, retail, social media...everything requires a user name/password. 

Do you use the same one for everything? It is not the most secure thing to do but that would make things a log easier. 

I have to keep updating the list, usually adding to the 12 pages of login information for all the sites I go to. There is no way I will ever remember them. 

My email, bank, and a handful of others I have at the tip of my brain. The rest, I have to look up. If I misplace the list, I'm done. So I have the list saved in many places...just in case.

Is it just me?

I have so many logins that when a newsletter, website, or information source asks me to create a user name/password for the sake of reading their stuff, I move on to the next one. Except for a select few, chances are I do not need the information that badly. I have to really want your stuff to stretch my Word doc to page 13.

We are being user name/passworded to death. Somewhere out in cyberspace, there are user/passwords set up for those who forgot where they've logged in.  

Logging out...

Presentation Helps, But Connections Are Everything

I did something I don't normally do on a Sunday morning, I attended a real church service at the Victory Outreach in West Phoenix.

Most of the time, and perhaps it's negative influence of religion in politics and media, and that most services I've attended in Alberta, Canada--whether it was a Sunday service, funeral or wedding, I was not inspired by a sermon. 

You could call me Christian, but I really don't have a denomination. My thought is that God lives inside of our hearts, not a building.

Today, I saw a building -- not a traditional stand-alone church -- but a corner of an industrial building that housed the most uplifting service I had ever experienced. Don't let the outside fool you. The inside was staged professionally with all the trimmings technology can provide. 

The gospel choir was culled from audience members, not robed singers in the background.

Latinos and African Americans made up 95% of the congregation, mixed in ages.

The messages connected because many doing the preaching had lived the same life as some of their audience. For some reason, for me, that made the sermon carry more weight.  

"God did not design you to fit in, He designed you to stand out. You were not an accident. You were created for a purpose." "Do you ever feel like no one understands you?"

Preaching is an art form. It is about presentation, but it is more than that. The preacher interprets a passage in the Bible and finds a real-life example to hone the message. How that is presented is the difference between the audience "getting it" or falling asleep in the pews.

Try and sleep to this guy. He's pretty inspiring.