I need to stop writing about social media and web 2.0 because:
#1 - I'm a bystander with nothing new to say
#2 - Our Fenbi pals would rather have us talk about music and cultural things
#3 - It's more exciting to talk about scandalous things
But that said, let me give you my top three experiences that exemplify why I embrace social media and follow it through blogs and magazines.
#1 - Hot for Sarah - When I performed with the band The Young Immortals I created a scheme to write to all the Sarah's I could find on myspace to say:
"Hey Sarah! How are you! I just wanted to let you know we wrote a sweet little song juuuust for you! I hope you like it, cheers, TYI"
You'd be surprised how many Sarah's thought we were awesome for taking the time to write to them and how many loyal fans we created. It was verified when we toured across the country and met tons of Sarah's who said "Someone from your band emailed us and said ..... "
By pure coincidence I contacted the producer from Portland's AM 970 "The Rick Emerson Show" producer Sarah X Dylan. She humored us enough to bring us on the show, thereby my scheme earning us FREE MEDIA. Boo ya! When are they gonna bring the new band on? We are much more entertaining and exciting if I may say so ...
#2 - Writing blogs - Our current band - The Fenbi International Superstars has absolutely no music recorded or displayed on our myspace page (www.myspace.com/fenbi) aside from this 'Sheep Shearing' track that is really just Orion and myself goofing around to the backdrop of some hot Pogues tune.
In order to compensate for our lack of tunes I have been writing several blogs per day resulting in over 200 profile views per week on our myspace page. It is hard enough getting that when you HAVE music ... but we don't ... so we have to compensate somehow. And IT'S WORKING!!!
#3 - Confronting someone trash talking Tony Greene - We tried out for the Pizzazz talent show and lost miserably to some rad and talented kids - one of them being Tony Greene. When I checked out the blog of the sponsor I saw someone had written a comment degrading Tony's victory and since the kid was a genius 10 year old I rose to his defense - basically calling out the criticizer on her gross over-generalizations. How is this a beautiful example of the wonders of social media??? Because the person retracted all of their venom and retreated into their cold lonely dark cave ...
... annnnnd I got off a great zinger about them maybe checking out "Season 4 of the OC if they can't find better ways to entertain themselves." Or something like that. It was great, trust me.
It's a wondrous thing this social media ... it offers so many tricks for community building and image control ... and now I am going to shut up and hopefully start writing blogs about gypsies or tinkers or crazy arts scenes in Portland, OR starting with THURSDAY NIGHTS AT 9 MUSES ACOUSTIC TAVERN ON SE 28TH AND BELMONT, $1 PABST BLUE RIBBON, FOOLS,
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Sunday, October 19, 2008
you have to be in my headspace to understand what i am saying
I am a big fan of google reader. I promote it to my friends and I use it all the time to send headlines directly into my Reader inbox and I can pick and choose which stories I want to read. You can use this service for news sites such as the NY Times and Seattle Times (who just gave a questionable endorsement to Dino Rossi) but I tend to use it only to monitor blogs. To be honest ... I'm alone among my friends in Web 2.0 advancements outside of myspace and facebook.
One of my favorite blogs to read is Web Strategy by Jeremiah (www.web-strategist.com/). In many ways it is very strange that I enjoy reading it so much because I certainly don't currently hold any positions with any companies that might be able to take advantage of my interest. I just find it very interesting to see how "smart business people" are trying to use and embrace social technologies for their products. It's like this guy Jeremiah is a pre-school teacher directing all these business leaders on one of those leashes that you see little kids attached to in the big city.
Web 2.0 seems pretty simple to me. You have online communities ... certain people flock to them because of a given interest ... and they spend a little chunk of their time hanging out there a couple hours per week. But sometimes business leaders are like blood-sucking vampires and all they see is an opportunity to roll out the red carpet for yesteryear's advertising campaign.
It seems all the business leaders are freaking out about metrics; proving that advertising dollars are well spent on a social networking site ... but perhaps they need to take a step back and try not to use their old business models with this new technology.
How effective are billboards? How effective are commercials, both on television and radio? We've certainly learned to tune them out or change the channel ... so why would you try to do those things on the Internet? Yet they are allllll ovvvver the place!
The awesome power of the Internet enables you to go directly to these online communities where your target market may be congregating. Hell ... it allows you to create your own. It allows you to throw out that washed up 50's era marketing plan and create something real - based on community engagement. But I think when you lose sight of the community vision - THAT is where things go wrong quickly.
I personally feel we just HAVE to get back to community in all aspects of our lives whether it is where we live, how we interact, how we spend our money, or how we embark on marketing campaigns. We need to rebuild/rezone our cities so that everything we need is in walking distance. We need to build products that don't break after a few uses.
We need to understand our role in this mosaic of cultures living on earth in a way that doesn't make us better or richer or smarter than people from other countries. We need to respect our environment.
And if we're going to market a product - whether it's dominoes or milk we need to be honest, not cram it down peoples throats, and show respect for the consumer by creating a product in the first place that betters peoples lives. If you have to rely on 50's era marketing practices maybe your product suuuuucks.
And it makes sense to turn to people who either majored in communication, or have a strong interest in interpersonal communication to further your brands reach within social technologies.
Web 2.0 technologies are like a robotic representation of the flesh and blood of real communication. Communications professionals are the grease for that machine!
One of my favorite blogs to read is Web Strategy by Jeremiah (www.web-strategist.com/). In many ways it is very strange that I enjoy reading it so much because I certainly don't currently hold any positions with any companies that might be able to take advantage of my interest. I just find it very interesting to see how "smart business people" are trying to use and embrace social technologies for their products. It's like this guy Jeremiah is a pre-school teacher directing all these business leaders on one of those leashes that you see little kids attached to in the big city.
Web 2.0 seems pretty simple to me. You have online communities ... certain people flock to them because of a given interest ... and they spend a little chunk of their time hanging out there a couple hours per week. But sometimes business leaders are like blood-sucking vampires and all they see is an opportunity to roll out the red carpet for yesteryear's advertising campaign.
It seems all the business leaders are freaking out about metrics; proving that advertising dollars are well spent on a social networking site ... but perhaps they need to take a step back and try not to use their old business models with this new technology.
How effective are billboards? How effective are commercials, both on television and radio? We've certainly learned to tune them out or change the channel ... so why would you try to do those things on the Internet? Yet they are allllll ovvvver the place!
The awesome power of the Internet enables you to go directly to these online communities where your target market may be congregating. Hell ... it allows you to create your own. It allows you to throw out that washed up 50's era marketing plan and create something real - based on community engagement. But I think when you lose sight of the community vision - THAT is where things go wrong quickly.
I personally feel we just HAVE to get back to community in all aspects of our lives whether it is where we live, how we interact, how we spend our money, or how we embark on marketing campaigns. We need to rebuild/rezone our cities so that everything we need is in walking distance. We need to build products that don't break after a few uses.
We need to understand our role in this mosaic of cultures living on earth in a way that doesn't make us better or richer or smarter than people from other countries. We need to respect our environment.
And if we're going to market a product - whether it's dominoes or milk we need to be honest, not cram it down peoples throats, and show respect for the consumer by creating a product in the first place that betters peoples lives. If you have to rely on 50's era marketing practices maybe your product suuuuucks.
And it makes sense to turn to people who either majored in communication, or have a strong interest in interpersonal communication to further your brands reach within social technologies.
Web 2.0 technologies are like a robotic representation of the flesh and blood of real communication. Communications professionals are the grease for that machine!
Monday, October 13, 2008
Employed ... almost REALLY employed ...
So ... I am not always the best decision maker.
Today I went to my third interview for a position that will include scanning and reading blogs for a PR company. That would be my job. I would be entry-level and the people above me would be the experts that I would be learning from.
I have been excited about this job for some time because I am very interested in social media and all the debates over metrics and how to measure your reach and the effectiveness of social media campaigns ... I really think my enthusiasm came across in the interview today and I will find out whether or not I got the job in a day or so.
Until I hear back from them I get to continue my wonderful delivery driving job. I have been back at work for less than two weeks and already I am training someone. That means I spent the entire day riding shotgun looking at the same scenery on the same route that I have had on and off for over two years. Being a passenger for five hours whilst driving in circles gives one time to think.
I pondered my interview performance and wondered what I might have said better ... what I may have forgotten to bring up ... what they might have thought of me dressed up in my fanciest outfit. I've never made more than $8,500 in a year and this job has the potential to triple or even quadruple that - doing something I clearly enjoy. I find that fascinating.
Anyway - as I cruised around crashing from my coffee buzz and thinking about my future I realized I had one skeleton in my closet ... THIS BLOG!!!!! And my myspace blog!!!!!!
Perhaps I shouldn't have told them about my band ... or perhaps I shouldn't have spelled out my band's name. Chances are ... since they are influential monitors and experts in searching through social media - they may have looked up my blogs. And they may not have appreciated what they found.
Up until about 20 minutes ago this blog was filled with entries saying crass things ... using the F word ... using all kinds of language as if I were some street punk from the inner city.
Potential employer ... please forgive me ... and please ignore what you may or may not have read earlier today ...
Today I went to my third interview for a position that will include scanning and reading blogs for a PR company. That would be my job. I would be entry-level and the people above me would be the experts that I would be learning from.
I have been excited about this job for some time because I am very interested in social media and all the debates over metrics and how to measure your reach and the effectiveness of social media campaigns ... I really think my enthusiasm came across in the interview today and I will find out whether or not I got the job in a day or so.
Until I hear back from them I get to continue my wonderful delivery driving job. I have been back at work for less than two weeks and already I am training someone. That means I spent the entire day riding shotgun looking at the same scenery on the same route that I have had on and off for over two years. Being a passenger for five hours whilst driving in circles gives one time to think.
I pondered my interview performance and wondered what I might have said better ... what I may have forgotten to bring up ... what they might have thought of me dressed up in my fanciest outfit. I've never made more than $8,500 in a year and this job has the potential to triple or even quadruple that - doing something I clearly enjoy. I find that fascinating.
Anyway - as I cruised around crashing from my coffee buzz and thinking about my future I realized I had one skeleton in my closet ... THIS BLOG!!!!! And my myspace blog!!!!!!
Perhaps I shouldn't have told them about my band ... or perhaps I shouldn't have spelled out my band's name. Chances are ... since they are influential monitors and experts in searching through social media - they may have looked up my blogs. And they may not have appreciated what they found.
Up until about 20 minutes ago this blog was filled with entries saying crass things ... using the F word ... using all kinds of language as if I were some street punk from the inner city.
Potential employer ... please forgive me ... and please ignore what you may or may not have read earlier today ...
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