The conversation around the content

While traditional media fights to hang on to linear audiences, they are also tasked with cultivating new viewers in an increasingly fragmented media space. These audiences, empowered with multiple screens and recommendations from their social graphs, look to news feeds in social networks as their new electronic program guide.

Meanwhile, nimble, niche content internet TV networks like Revision3 are building these experiences from the ground up – further testing established media.  Marketing and promotion of television poses more challenge than ever before. Yet at the same time, there are unique opportunities to truly engage audiences as people, not just ratings. Bus backs and billboards don’t build trust or program loyalty,  real human conversation does.

Today, I have the privilege of sitting on a panel at the 140 conference in New York that will explore how news organizations are engaging in conversations on the web to drive viewership. Social TV is complicated and has a lot of moving parts. For many, it is the new “TV Guide”.

Simpler Times

When I was growing up, my family would gather around a 19 inch black and white TV – the only one in the house – that sat perched on a rickety aluminum framed patio table.  We didn’t have a remote, so we would actually have to get up from our seat to “surf” the five VHF and handful of UHF channels that our rabbit ears were capable of picking up.

TV was a planned event. In terms of news, we were a NBC family. The recommendation engine that informed our viewing came by way of the TV guide that arrived with each Sunday newspaper. (remember them?) Gosh, it was simple back then.  Everyone gathered around their boxes and all of the available viewing choices fit into a thin weekly circular.  Lack of options made program loyalty a pretty simple proposition.

Social TV and the Transmedia Experience

Today, viewers not only have boundless choices of what to watch, but they are also unlimited in terms of how, when, where and on what devices the enjoy content. So from a viewer standpoint, the challenge is search and discovery of meaningful content on a variety of platforms. From a content creator perspective, the challenge is much more complex.

Facebook Becoming Key to Audience Loyalty and Development
Some pretty compelling statistics come in report from Inside Facebook citing data from Facebook’s Media Partnerships Director Justin Osofsky.

• around 1.65 billion “likes” of TV shows
• 275 million Facebook users have liked a TV show
• 17 of the top 100 most like pages on Facebook are TV shows

No longer is it a matter of simply coming up with formulaic show concept and promoting it across traditional channels.  Audiences expect a level of what the hipsters now call a “transmedia” experience.  Whether that conversation comes in the form of a Facebook friend “like” -ing a show, a Twitter conversation with actors in a drama or reporters from a newscast , or an expanded experience on the web  - there are a dizzying array of touchpoints where audiences can encounter content on their social entertainment operating systems.

Further Reading

Comcast Taps Facebook for Enhanced TV Experience

Good Social TV Roundup Curated by Mo Kromchal

Let my start by saying that my career in media has been paying the bills since 1988.  So I firmly embrace corporate media, advertising revenue and all media endeavors that enjoy commercial success. The lure of a life in TV (i’m a news cameraman by trade) was its combined appeal of an adventurous lifestyle and comfortable livelihood.  This is what prodded me to take my plunge into TV news.  But as with many things in life, my timing was off.  I came up in the ranks of cameramen well into cable’s affront on broadcast dominance,  admiring the legendary lenslingers before me, or more precisely their glorious tales of lavish travel and limitless budgets. Those were the glory days of TV news, and I got to see the vanishing apparitions – the vestigial remnants of those times.

Disruption Past

As a child of cable’s disruptive power,  I understood that challenge, that shift, that imperative for change.  So when blogging, podcasting and social networking emerged on the radar screen of my consciousness,  I wasn’t prepared to grasp their nascent and then unrealized impact on mainstream media.  Not until an unlikely series of events prompted the purchase of an iPod, did I come to realize that great numbers of people out there were dissatisfied with passively consuming mainstream content and advertising.  They were out there creating their own content and speaking to each other and were quickly becoming disintermediated.  With revolutionary zeal, web-preneurs sprang up like weeds creating platforms empowering people to share content and ideas.  Brands, of course, took note and migrated their messaging and their spending from TV, print, radio to the then “new” media.

Join the Conver$ation

This media revolution made YOU Time magazine’s Person of the Year back in 2006 – and was at once an empowering energizing force, but at the same time, made me fear for the future of my career.  Back then, it was all about the “conversation”.  As a brand, one couldn’t just stumble in and “sell”, one had to honest, transparent, conversational.  As social media has matured,  I get the sense that we have moved beyond that – and now we’re back to where we once were.  Brands just want access to us and the transaction remains the same.  Look, I understand that companies need to make money and that investors need to get returns on hopes of 10x exits.  But i’m struck by the rapacious speed with which social media, its adherents, and platforms are pursuing the buck.  Ironic to me, considering that it was dissatisfaction with traditional media and “push” advertising that in many respects gave rise to social media.

It’s strange, but I still haven’t completely shaken my nostalgia for the salad days of old media as I begin to feel twinges of longing for new media’s simpler times.  When old media was king it was advertisers buying access to passive audiences.  Now, marketers are paying to become part of this:

Power Shift

The mantra of the Social Media Club, “If you get it, share it” has been modified by “ninjas”, “gurus”, and “experts” in the field with the following addendum: “for a fee”. Meanwhile, tech/Web 2.0 headlines point to leaner, meaner more competitive times. Here are some trends pointing to a shift in social media from being people-powered media to corporate driven:

In a move akin to ABC News recent staff slashing, popular, free social network platform Ning is free no more and has cut its staff by 40%.
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How Facebook shares private information with third party companies is being scrutinized by Washington now, prompting one Senator to urge the FTC to get involved.
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Twitter has announced “sponsored tweets” prompting some to point out – if companies were using Twitter right, they wouldn’t need sponsored tweets.
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Pepsi passed on Super Bowl ads this year in favor of a $20 million social media campaign, and it’s probably not just about meeting new Twitter and Facebook friends.

So while this post may seem wistful, and perhaps critical of the direction that “people-powered” media has taken – none of this should be terribly surprising and it is perhaps inevitable. I still believe that successful, profit-motivated media can coexist with the community/individual driven kind. For my part, I’m just trying to stay ahead of it all and finding my place in this ever evolving landscape.

Most good blog posts, or at least the ones that attract the most traffic, draw a line in the sand – taking an unequivocal position. So just on the heels of the iPad launch, scores of tech bloggers are taking that stand against the onerous, closed nature of Apple’s latest offering. And the Church of Open Media has issued it’s doctrine against the iPad decreeing it a heretical, “retrograde” device.

The iPad is retrograde. It tries to turn us back into an audience again. That is why media companies and advertisers are embracing it so fervently, because they think it returns us all to their good old days when we just consumed, we didn’t create, when they controlled our media experience and business models and we came to them.

iPad danger: app v. web, consumer v. creator -Jeff Jarvis, Buzzmachine

Update – The Chorus of Returns Begins

Your humble blogger here, updating as I sit in an airport terminal waiting for a flight to Mexico City to cover the First Lady’s visit. I felt I had to update what I published yesterday as we’re now seeing the chorus of “I’m Returning my iPod” posts.  Jeff Jarvis even made a video outlining his reasons.  Maybe this is a shift that will ultimately prod Apple to re-think pricing and exclusivity agreements with publishers.  Maybe it’s a few high profile bloggers using their influence and reach to voice concerns that are valid and point to salient shortcomings in Apple’s offering.  Maybe folks should’ve read the label before they bought it?

Why I’m Returning My Apple iPad ($AAPL)

Why I’m Returning The iPad

Look, I’m no iPad fanboy. I may eventually buy one, but I’m not suffering from the technolust that swooned those first in line to get theirs. I’m more interested in how the device will change the worlds of publishing and advertising. And now, the conversation is being framed as either/or in terms of participatory vs. walled content. I think that’s a false choice, and that there always will be choices in how we consume, create, share and interact with content. It’s perfectly fine to simply, passively consume media and that is precisely what the device is designed to do.

Lean Forward – Lean Back

I’m not sure who originally coined the terms “lean forward” and “lean back” media, but the premise is simple. If you’re not familiar with the terms, lean forward media is the kind we create, engage with, mashup, share, link to, comment on, embed in our blogs etc. Lean back is the kind we passively consume.

Examples of “lean forward” media

• blogs and the comments on them
• embeddable video
• links to content within a blog
• Twitter

Examples of “lean back” media

• books
• movies
• certain TV shows
• certain iPad content

Both of these types of media have intrinsic value and I don’t think we need to frame this as one replacing the other.  This blog falls into the category of lean-forward and I hope all of you enlightened readers here engage me and each other in a robust dialogue in the comments.  But what is it that makes people think that ALL media has to be like this blog?

What is wrong with people wanting to just be part of the audience?  I don’t buy this notion that every bit of content needs to be open to some online peer review,  or worse – the ill tempered trolls of the interwebs.  I further don’t buy the notion that all content – from blog comment, to link,  to twitter mention – is sacrosanct. Most critics of the iPad seem to hold this belief. To them I say: if you’re REALLY worried about the iPad hobbling your generativity… DON’T BUY ONE.

Walls, Windows, and Doors

Apple is building walls around it’s media empire. It want’s to set the price for apps and subscriptions and much of the content thus far doesn’t allow for much by way of sharing or commenting.  So what?  Apple is a company that’s in the business of delivering value to their shareholders.  How they get there – whether by open source or DRM ensconced walls -is up to them, not us.  The iPad is not a tool of individual media empowerment and as such, I’d equate it to a really great piece of stereo equipment.  It’s an entertainment appliance.

That’s just fine for most people.  If you’re reading this blog, you’re exceptional (on many levels).  Not just because you’re reading my blog, but that’s certainly a plus. You are part of my social graph, and I have to get your attention on Twitter or Facebook first to get you over here.   But most people aren’t this connected on the web.  In that respect, we are exceptional. We are the digerati.  But the self-ordained high priests of the Church of Open Media would have us believe that everyone is out there contributing content. That’s where I and others are given pause.

This is the place where this brand of critics fall most deeply into the same kind of echo-chambered trap as the news industry — by thinking that most people should think and behave like themselves. But most people are not and will not ever become creators of sophisticated media. Instead they’re working in bakeries and insurance offices and having babies and teaching people to play the fiddle.

Have iPad critics fallen into an echo-chambered trap like the news industry? -Howard Weaver

The social web allows us to create, collaborate and connect in ways constantly being innovated.  Social media, citizen media – whatever you want to call it – at the minimum, gives us a window into power structures like media, press and government – transparencey.  At it’s most open, we’re allowed through the doors and given an opportunity to help shape and create content.  Increasingly traditional media are opening windows and doors and extending their brands to online audiences. By and large these are good things.

But I think there will continue to be a strong desire for people like you and me to lean forward, engage, share, embed, post, comment and shout out to the world.  I also think there are more people in this world, who are just as happy to read, watch, absorb and ponder while leaning back.  Both of these approaches are just fine and I simply don’t understand all of the histrionics of this non debate – debate.  Am I missing something here?  Please lean forward in the comments below.

Related Reading

Consumers vs. Creators (or Will the iPad Destroy the World?)

Here Is Why The iPad Won’t Save The Magazine Industry

The iPad Luddites

Speaking at IMS09 - Photo courtesy Steve Garfield

Earlier this month I had the opportunity to speak at the Inbound Marketing Summit in Foxborough, Massachusetts.  (video of the presentation at the end of this post)   It was back in August, in a cramped, dimly lit Jimmy Seas restaurant on Martha’s Vineyard where Justin Levy and Nick Saber first approached me about presenting at #IMS09.  Over generous pans of of pasta, we shared stories and ideas about social media, traditional media, marketing and where all of those things intersect.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been asked to speak publicly about my perch at the intersection of old and new media, but each time forces me out of my comfort zone.  As a network news cameraman, I’m far more accustomed to leaving the public speaking to the folks in my viewfinder.  Telling cocktail party stories about my life as a news camerman – flying in Chinooks over Afghanistan,  rocket attacks in Baghdad, or traveling on Air Force One – is great among friends.  But  my challenge was to create value for the few hundred marketing professionals who would be listening to the story of a news cameraman cum early adopter of social media.  It’s flattering to be asked to speak, but unless you deliver valuable, useful information to business professionals, you’re wasting their time.   So here’s the condensed version.

OVERVIEW

Organizations often cringe at the notion of employees speaking openly about the company on social networks. Many regulate, or downright ban the practice. The risks have been well established, and there are plenty of horror stories about workers going off-reservation online. But the rewards are abundant if companies provide guidelines and encourage those passionate about social media. Who are your best brand ambassadors? Believe it or not, empowering rank and file staff to engage the social web can often result in more promise than peril.  Conversely there are scant rewards for ham-fisted, clumsy, corporate social media efforts.  As Comcast’s Frank Eliason aptly put it at the Blog World Expo this past week

“Don’t force people into this social space if it’s not a natural fit for them.”

@comcastcares

I’m reminded of a story told to me by a PR person I had worked with on a shoot.  A reporter from a major national daily newspaper was told to produce a pre-determined number of Tweets per day and those Twitter posts would be “graded”.  Really???  Wow, talk about sucking the oxygen out of the experience.  We’ve got to do better than that.

DATA

A  Russell Herder and Ethos Business Law study, entitled “Social Media: Embracing the Opportunities, Averting the Risks”, surveyed over 400 marketing, HR, and management executives on their attitudes toward social media.  Some key data points:

• 73% increase in US use of social media (Neilsen)
• just over half of those surveyed believe social media is bad for productivity
• nearly half believe social media use can damage brand reputation
• 8 out of 10 believe social media, as corporate communications, can build relationships with customers and build brand reputation

OBJECTIVE

By sharing my story with the marketing professionals in attendance,  I hoped to demonstrate that empowering rank and file employees of an organization can be a useful, organic extension of a firm’s marketing and PR efforts. I wanted to show that it isn’t necessarily or SOLELY – the communications or marketing director, or the CEO who might be your best brand ambassador. 

Interestingly,  two presentations that preceded me helped frame and define my journey into social media.  Paul Gillin outlined some dismal trends in traditional media consumption in his talk entitled “World Without Media: What Will Fill the Void?”.  

He was followed by new media video visionary Steve Garfield who held a APEC sized photo-op, empowering the audience  with thier video cameras to become legions of content creators.    

It’s clear that the world of mainstream media will never be the same.  Also clear, is that I’m still figuring out how my skills mesh with that emerging landscape.  Legacy media needs to meet people where they are and engage them in the way they consume and produce media.

Below is the video of my presentation in it’s entirety. So assembled readers, did I deliver what I set out to achieve? And if you were at IMS09, did I meet your expectations? (Audio is thin, so you’ll have to strain a bit to hear it)

New Communications Forum 2008

gathering the lunch gang with Shel. (photo courtesy of Lunaweb)

On the eve of my trip to the 2008 New Communications Forum in Sonoma, CA, I’m looking back at a couple of inspiring and energizing conferences that I’ve had the opportunity to attend in the past month – South By Southwest Interactive in March, and Podcamp DC this past weekend. Both very different events, by way of scale and influence, but both great forums for sharing ideas and connecting face to face with the trailblazers of emerging, participatory media. Looking ahead to Sonoma, I’ll be sharing a stage with Shel Israel and Tom Foremski as well as a panel with Steve Lubetkin.It’s encouraging to me that there are many people who see value in the story of my journey into disruptive media, from the eyes of this old media footsoldier. Yes, i know.. “disruptive” is just more conference-speak. Look, let me assure you… ALL of these social media are very disruptive, and there are real economic and human consequence of this disruption. And while social media creates kool-aid drinker evangelists, and very vocal, antagonistic, contrarian detractors, the fact of the matter is that social media simply ARE.They are just communications tools that can be adopted by many – those with useful, meaningful things to say, and those with very little value to bring to the enterprise.So it’s worthwhile to me, as an “old media” dinosaur, to examine how and why these disruptions are taking place and to see where there may be areas where these worlds collide. That, I believe is where very extraordinary things can happen, right at that intersection. At the end of the day, I come at this from a guy witnessing upheaval in the industry that pays my mortgage and feeds my family. You better believe I want to get out there and meet these agents of change.

South by Southwest Interactive

NBC News sent me and two colleagues to Austin to attend SXSW interactive back in March and our team really came away energized and inspired. There are some really great platforms out there that are built on participation and community that are very eager to integrate with traditional media companies. From a strategic standpoint, there are some very smart firms like Forrester Research that are advising big media on how to develop their social web strategies. Forrester’s Charlene Li and Jeremiah Owyang are a formidable team in this space and Charlene’s SXSW presentation is well worth examining, and is outlined here.A very fun, kind of “rock star” moment for me was being interviewed live on Qik by Robert Scoble. We talked about the impact of this technology and how audience interaction becomes the real game changer here. Pictured below the video is me, CC Chapman and Rocky Barbanica. Love both of those guys, and Rocky, like me is tasked with keeping the talent like Scoble in check. The photo was taken by friend and very savvy Canadian marketing pro Adele McAlear.

Podcamp DC

Certainly smaller in scale than SXSW, Podcamp DC makes up for it with enthusiasm, knowledge base, and grassroots community. I had an opportunity to speak with NPR’s Andy Carvin about social media tools being used as a “new journalism”. We were able to cite the Midwest earthquake of last week, where people on Twitter were sharing pretty dramatic first-person accounts of the tremors. These messages caught the attention of NBC Nightly News, and were included as an element of our coverage.I wish I’d been able to spend more time at Podcamp DC. I want to extend special thanks to Tammy Munson and Joel Mark Witt for pulling this terrific event together. Fortunately, the very savvy DC blogging community provides excellent coverage of the un-conference.Helen MosherThursday Bramcaseysoftwaretechrepublicanwireless musejoelogonIf I’ve missed any please leave links in the commments! Looking forward to connecting with people in Sonoma, and feel very enriched to know some very smart trailblazers in this field.

your humble blogger in Iraq

Just on the heels of a trip to Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, I’ve got a moment to reflect before I hop on plane for South By Southwest Interactive. As we traveled to places with names like Hawijah, Kirkuk, and Jalalabad, I observed a recurring theme. Young battle hardened commanders in both Afghanistan and Iraq were passionately, perhaps with a certain evangelism, speaking about their work there. They weren’t talking body counts or offensives though, they were talking about micro-finance, road building, infrastructure, reconciliation banking, and grass roots governance. It occurred to me that their formal military training prepared them for precious little of this. And as I spoke with a General there, he said these soldiers were learning this stuff in theater, as he put it “at the speed of the network”. The speed of the network.. that concept really stuck with me.

Media is certainly evolving at the speed of the network. New web technologies and and platforms have ushered in a new era of personal publishing. These widely available tools are evolving faster than most traditional media companies can keep up with. I really enjoy experimenting with these technologies as a way to connect with very cool, interesting people on Twitter and Facebook, among others. Like those soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, employees of companies, including mainstream media, are adopting these new technologies as a way to engage in conversation. Any more, media is how we shake hands, it’s a how we define ourselves. A nifty little Pew research study echoes these observations about early adopters (us).

These days they are just as likely to produce material. One common refrain is that they think more change lies ahead and they are eager to watch and participate.
Pew Internet and American Life Project

That’s kind of where I find myself. I LOVE how social media allows us to connect with one another across cultural, professional, and social boundaries. Recently, I was on assignment in Africa and used the Qik platform along with my Nokia N95 to do a LIVE to web video interview with Sir Bob Geldof from Ghana.

As Jeff Jarvis points out in his post dubbing me the “human satellite truck”, the cool thing about Qik is the live chat function. As you watch the video, you’ll notice that I interrupt Geldof and my producer to take a question from Twitter friend Mike Neumann. So in addition to Meet the Press, now we can have “Meet the People” To Geldof’s credit, he didn’t miss a beat and answered Mike by name. Incidentally, he seemed fascinated with both Twitter and Qik. As powerful as Qik and a Nokia N95 are, they don’t replace, nor should they in my mind, the tools that traditional broadcast media use to gather the news. It’s important to note that my Nokia’s wifi connection was coming off the US TV Pool satellite. There was no mobile data network to be found in Ghana’s capitol city, Accra. Take a look at all of this gear.

one meter uplink dish in Arusha, Tanzania

interview gear in Arusha, Tanzania

This is what it took, along with the skills of an immensely talented NBC News team, to produce this live Today show interview with Ann Curry, the President and the First Lady.

I LOVE that I can finally embed NBC News video in my blog now! That aside, I don’t subscribe to zero sum notions of one type of media replacing another. What traditional media does is still, and I suspect always will be, relevant. Simply from a technical standpoint, there isn’t wifi or mobile data networks in many parts of the world. Sometimes it takes the knowledge base and technical expertise of seasoned pros to get the story out. Social media can complement it’s traditional older sibling in tremendously useful ways though, creating a rich experience for both traditional media and its fans. The interactivity of platforms like Qik not withstanding, the fans of your media brand, given an opportunity, want to be part of the process. They want to help!

When Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager stepped down, a wire service errantly captioned a photograph of the staffer. Many sites, including MSNBC.COM ran the picture. I was one of my Twitter friends who pointed out the mistake, and after a quick google image search to confirm, I called our desk to have them alert the the web folks.

So this correction came lightning-fast, and it was all because my friends on Twitter have an open social communication channel through me.

The Conversation Agency blog excerpts this very interesting Virginia Heffernen piece in the New York Times about the demise of the critically acclaimed show “Friday Night Lights”. In it she emphasizes the imperative on media companies to give people a means to participate. While she specifically mentions “art and entertainment”, this applies to all media, including news.

art and entertainment in the digital age are highly collaborative, and none of it can thrive without engaging audiences more actively than ever before. Fans today see themselves as doing business with television shows, movies, even books. They want to rate, review, remix. They want to make tributes and parodies, create footnotes and concordances, mess with volume and color values, talk back and shout down.
New York Times, “Art in the Age of Franchising” January 20, 2008

The “how” of all this participation, and social media engagement is what leaves many companies, including media firms, scratching their heads. I think a good “un-strategy” is to to let employees who are already “operating at the speed of the network”, just keep doing what they’re doing. These people are your best brand ambassadors. Web strategist and Forrester Research analyst Jeremiah Owyang outlines three “impossible” but absolutely necessary conversations corporations need to have if they take social media seriously. He breaks them down to the following: ask for feedback, say positive things about competitors, and admit when you’re wrong. To me, the feedback conversation can reap huge rewards and social media allows for an open channel.

I’ve been ruminating these thoughts from Austin, Texas where I’ll be attending the South By Southwest Interactive festival. NBC News has given me this very unique opportunity, and I’m eager to walk amongst the new Saronoffs and Marconis of modern communication. Technology and web platforms allow people to speak with each other like never before. The question is, how do we fit in to these conversations, or foster them ourselves. This is what I’ll be asking some very smart people here in Austin. Stay tuned.

NBC’s Local Media Initiative

In a move that acknowledges the diminishing influence of one-way communication channels, NBC has renamed the Television Stations Division “Local Media Division”. There was a great deal of coverage in industry blogs. Media Week and Lost Remote have both framed the change as a fundamental shift in business.

NBC Local Media better reflects the full scope of our capabilities, as well as our ability to offer clients a fully-integrated, local media solution across the full portfolio of our assets.-John Wallace – President, NBC Local Media Division, from press release

As marketers continue to shift ad dollars from traditional media to online, it’s vital for companies like NBC to take the brand where the people are. Increasingly, that means web and mobile. As newspapers and TV move to build online, the distinction between the two becomes meaningless. Right now local “newspapers” appear to be winning online.

Creating an Engaging Experience While Building a Business

The static web sites of most TV and Radio stations have been eclipsed by the more interactive offerings of newspapers. Perhaps the economic imperative of the dying newspaper industry has forced print publishers bring online innovations to market faster. So the challenge for local media is to build an engaging, imersive, media platform that actually becomes something the community can’t live without – at the same time scaling the user base to a point where the enterprise is economically worthwhile.

What would that platform look like? What key elements would satisfy both the community and the media company? I took that question to my very smart Twitter posse and they came up with some great ideas. Here’s a small sampling:

All very smart ideas from early adopters of social web technology. Smart ideas about the evolution of local media can be found in practice and in theory, but ultimately big media companies are looking for the ones that will generate increased traffic and ad revenue. I do think it is vital for those in charge of any local media initiative to get input from outside the corporate meeting rooms. They should be talking to the local blogging, tech, and social media communities. They should be sponsoring conferences, discussions and meetups with the pioneers of the social web in their local communities.

I strongly feel that media companies need to discover and encourage the brand champions within their own organizations to use social media. While there may be some who grumble about already burdensome workloads – and believe me, TV news is a pretty thankless sausage factory – standing by and hoping that the sales and promotions departments will save careers is not a good career strategy. I’ve discovered that meeting and listening to people on the social web, through platforms like Twitter, blogging, Facebook, and meetups, has enriched my life both personally and professionally. It’s also allowed me to bring the NBC News brand into this space.

Envisioning Local Media

Mel Taylor outlines the key points of a recent speech by former CBS News chief Andrew Heyward. In it, Heyward outlines the current problems with the state of TV news, and discusses some forward-thinking approaches to building succssesful online platforms. Don Dodge, while blogging about newspaper strategy, puts forth ideas that are equally resonant in television’s web efforts. Essentially he says be local, be a marketplace, and be the best local search engine out there. A good example of very useful local search platform is the Boston local search platform Citysqaures.

I think the key to success in transforming local media is to build a platform that people can’t live without. It should be a place where people can connect around ideas and affinities, build their own social netowrk profile, network and create events, have a robust mobile component, and should recommend content and events based on the users profile. People want to share and create content and links. Making that easy and customizable, in a locally relevant way, is key to getting the Facebook generation passionate about local media.The bottom line is, of course, the bottom line. But while media companies have to focus on profits, they should not look at their web presence as a secondary effort, or simply repository for recycled newscast content.

For local media platforms to be successful, they will have to implement imersive, relevant, engaging, and useful experiences for the community. So my assembled readers, how would you build a successful local media platform? What are some good examples of ones you’ve come across?

Greg Cangialosi over at The Trend Junkie has tagged me with the “measurement” meme in a post entitled “Metrics, Measurement, and Social Media”. In the same week author, entrepreneur and marketing strategist Geoff Livingston included me in a “DC Area’s Top 12 Social Media, Marketing, and PR blogs” list. So I’m scratching my head here. I’m a cameraman for a major network news organization, right? I’m not a marketer… or am I?

In my journey with social media, my blogging, and use of platforms like Twitter and Facebook, I’ve discovered that I’ve become somewhat of a personal micro-media brand. I’ve been able to measure the tangible results of my personal brand building in terms of hard data, and in terms of harder to measure, yet deeply enriching professional and personal connections. The hard data is readily available and demonstrates that listening to the very smart people in this space, and engaging them in meaningful conversation goes a long way in building your brand. By hard data, I’m talking about Google search ranking and analytics, Technorati ranking/authority, blog traffic data, and friends in my circle of influence on various social networking platforms.

That more difficult to define measure of my social media involvement is how it’s enabled me to connect with incredibly smart, visionary, driven entrepreneurs. With fourteen hundred Twitter friends, I have a knowledge base of deeply engaged, early adopters drawn from the ranks of venture capital, PR, marketing, social and traditional media, web strategy, and technology. Social media enabled CC Chapman to connect me to my first professional speaking engagement and meet Geoff Livingston and Valeria Maltoni. People like David Eckoff of Turner Broadcasting cite me as a case study of how to use social media on panels at Streaming Media West. I use Facebook to organize events and affinity groups. Recently, I hosted a breakfast for Seesmic CEO, Loic Lemeur here in Washington, DC. In short, I’ve become relevant in this space. None of this would have been possible without my deep engagement in social media. I see TREMENDOUS value in all of that.

Talking Twitter to marketers, Photo courtesy of CC Chapman

Twitter is my most front-facing social media tool. I post frequently every day, much of it on assignment for NBC News. People tell me they find this behind-the-scenes look into the news fascinating. Many have told me that I put a human face on “the media” that they would otherwise have no real connection with. So I think there is a real value here in being a bridge between the Facebook generation and traditional media. Those type of fuzzy metrics, while interesting, aren’t enough for corporations. They want ROI – and whether you define the “I” as “investment” or as Valeria Maltoni prefers “involvement” – a social media effort should produce measurable results. So it’s not enough that I’m the “crazy uncle” running around NBC evangelizing shiny new social media platforms. Big companies, like my current employer, want real definable results.

Kami Huyse points out that you should begin any social media effort with well defined relational objectives.

One of the things I will stress is the importance of having well-defined objectives. By definition, objectives have to be measurable, “What would you like to see happen and by when as a results of engaging in social media?”- Kami Huyse

John Bell, of Ogilvy’s 360 Digital Influence practice, helps us further define some of the nuance of social media measurement, exploring the distinction between influence, authority, engagement, and impact.

So, dear readers, how do you measure your social media activity, or in fact, do you measure at all? How are you defining reach, influence, and impact? Frankly, I’m still much of a noob at all of this. At the end of the day, at the core of my being, I’m just a cameraman..right?

Bringing together the brightest minds of new television

I just booked my travel to the fall Video on the Net Confernence in Boston. I’m very excited because the spring conference in San Jose was a great opportunity for me to connect with key players in this emerging ecosystem. Once again, looks like the best and brightest will be attending this one too. For those of you who missed it, here’s a look a back at VON ’07, San Jose.

It was fun meeting my neighbors last night and explaining “I have a TV station in my pocket.” That got wonderful stares.
Robert Scoble – Twitter/@scobleizer

Meanwhile, CBS Interactive’s purchase of online show Wallstrip has validated internet video as a vital component of a web content business model. That deal has received a lot of attention, as more and more content creators look to ink agreements with big media companies. So it’s no surprise that once again, VON will be well attended by reps from companies like NBC Universal (my current employer), AOL, Washington Post Newsweek Interactive, Turner Broadcasting, Spark Capital, Akami.. and the list goes on. Video on the Net will be another huge opportunity for me, and for anyone in this space, to network with key industry leaders and get a better idea of what’s on the horizon.

“Digital” media initiatives vs. listening, conversation, and the social web

I often hear about this media comany’s “digital media initiative”, or that this person is in charge of “digital efforts”. If you’re just thinking digital, I think you’re missing the point. I recently attended a seminar at my alma mater American University entitled: PHOTOJOURNALISM: Surviving the Digital Challenge. Overall, there was great discussion, but I heard no mention of engaging audiences in conversation and using video as the starting point. Hosted by the White House News Photographer’s Association and AU’s School of Communication, it was a useful and informative discourse on the imperative for photojournalists to think of themselves more as content creators and less as media workers, and an examination of the internet as a key distribution channel.

Video journalism messiah and media raconteur Michael Rosenblum keynoted, and with no hyperbole, described shifts in media today as world-changing as Gutenburg’s printing press. He and I may not agree on everything, but on this, he’s dead right.

Michael Rosenblum “weighs” the merits of specializaton

While talented, smart media makers can hope to define themselves as bridge-builders between old and new media – integral to a media company charting a course into new territory – I’m personally not banking on it. I’m smack in the middle of this sea change in media, as the diminishing value proposition of a career as network news cameraman thrusts me into the empowering, enriching world of social media. While the “digital challenge” is an important discussion, nothing was really mentioned about video as conversation agent on the Social Web. The “social” part of this is often more of a challenge for traditional media companies. Social requires what VON organizer Chris Brogan deftly outlines as listening.

I think video can and should be an important part of a media company’s SOCIAL web efforts. That’s precisely why I’m attending Video on the Net, to build my personal brand, measure my media strategies with , connect with key industry leaders, and re-connect with the rock stars of internet video.

Speaking at the Direct Marketing Association of Washington’s “Era of Conversation” conferencePhoto by CC Chapman

Last Thursday, I had the unique pleasure of speaking before a group of marketing executives at the Direct Marketing Association of Washington’s confab in DC. I spoke to one of the many break-out sessions on “new media basics” – fitting for me as there there is SO much I’ve yet to absorb about the social web. In fact, I began by telling my breakout session: “I have no business speaking before a bunch of marketing executives, but..”

From that jumping off point, I discussed my nascent (only been blogging since March of this year), but reasonably engaging blogging efforts, and my use of Twitter as primary tools of social media. Essentially I riffed that if I can do it, you can do it, and basic tools are a good place to start, especially when shifting from less conversational communication. Fortunately for me, and for the rest of the attendees, there was an abundance of thought leadership on wide-ranging strategies for launching social media efforts. Overall I think it’s key to find the tools that are right for you or your organization.

For me, blogging is most rewarding when I leave my posts open-ended, and people WAY smarter than me complete my thoughts in the comments section.  Sure, you can be confrontational, and link-bait to generate traffic, but I like the notion of what Stephen Marino, of Ogilvy’s 360 Digital Influence practice calls “Return on Involvement”. The day was filled with terrific speakers, and I had the chance to meet some of the brightest minds in this space like keynote speaker Valeria Maltoni (she’s not yet convinced of Twitter so get over to her blog and give her a nudge!), and keynote speaker CC Chapman, who I’ve been eager to meet for some time. CC connected me with Geoff Livingston, another keynote at the conference who really did a great job of blogging the event with the help of Larissa Fair. Geoff pointed out, in support of Marino’s premise, that participation IS marketing.

In my presentation, I demonstrated how Twitter can be used and misused an engagement tool. At one point i called out to all of YOU on Twitter and asked if you’d say hello to the DMAW session. While waiting for some responses to generate, CC Chapman, in what can almost be described as a movie moment, stopped me and said almost chillingly: “Jim.. refresh the page”. You guys had come through!! Imagine if that hadn’t worked . There were no less than 80 immediate responses. (thank you!) I think that aptly demonstrated Twitter’s immediate, conversational, attention directing value. I also pointed out that Team Twitter had  helped shape my presentation in the comments on my blog. (again thank you!)

So despite this being my first ever presentation before a professional group, I think I was able to get people thinking about social media and what tools are right for them. Social media allows us to connect on a deep human level across social, cultural, and corporate barriers in a way we never could before. Conversations no longer happen from the top down. More importantly they are no longer controlled by corporations. Media that aren’t conversational or social are becoming less and less relevant. Funny that I felt like odd man out speaking at this event. At the end of the day I’m a network news cameraman, not a social media consultant. Ogilvy’s John Bell advises on his blog:

Spark ideas by mixing up odd-fellows and odd exepriences. Oh, and let go of the reins a bit.
John Bell

I think that’s fitting here. Social media enables the exchange of good ideas and allows the the best ones to take root and propagate, creating value, involvement, and engagement. So maybe that’s why I was invited. I want to thank Donna Tschiffely, Executive Director of DMAW, for bringing this all together. I hope i get a chance to do this again soon.