New Media Expert Panel

[Steve]

YouTube. MySpace. Facebook. TypePad. Google. Most of us likely have an account on one of these websites or one like it. They are ultra popular and are the place to be online.

But the truth is, how to best make use of these new media/Web 2.0 tools from a business perspective continues to elude most marketing professionals.

That's why I'd like to explore the possibility of creating a panel of Spreenkler members who are, or would like to become, an expert in a new media category.

First things first. From your experience, are you seeing what I'm seeing? Are you, your clients, your colleagues or anyone else you know struggling with getting your arms around all the possibilities of new media? Let's start the discussion with this question.

I appreciate your feedback!

[al krueger | comet branding llc]

As we all know, New Media cannot be ignored. The landscape of connecting with our clients' publics is constantly changing and evolving. Plus, the skillsets and technologies needed to maximize these channels are becoming more specialized and segmented. However, the cost of the technology seems to be lowering and becoming more attainable, which means more people can play.

Talent will continue to be incredibly important and the strategies we use and the unique perspectives we are able to offer our clients will remain as a way to differentiate.

This gives me hope, especially when my agency is able to work with clients who want to focus on making their product or service (their core competencies) the best they can be and bring in experts to help them tell their stories (our core competency).

[Stephanie Kern]

Can I just say "dido" to what Al wrote? That about sums it up for me. But I would throw in my own personal challenges of trying to keep up! I suppose if I didn't want to sleep or spend time with my family I might be able to get to where I would like to be as far as my knowledge base of New Media. But in order to stay ahead of the curve you have to make sacrifices.

I see New Media as an awesome opportunity for my clients to really grow their businesses. Now the hard part…trying to get these small businesses on board with technology that they have no familiarity. This brings up the question posed to me earlier today, "how do you define Creativity?" For my struggling clients, I will take on the challenge of creativity – to generating new ideas and concepts that can be used in conjunction with New Media and encourage my clients to give them a try.

[Steve]

Stephanie - you raise an important question: how do we keep up? That is part of the reasoning behind this initiative. There are experts in our group because they're using the technology. They can help the rest of us keep up by sharing what they know, do and experience.

I also agree with both you and Al on new media being an opportunity that can't be ignored. Many of my clients, and just people in general that I talk to are not using these tools, they don't understand how their customers are using them, and they certainly don't know how they can use these tools to reach those customers.

[Ken Kuemmerlein]

I've actually done a great deal of research into new media and how to leverage it into marketing strategy. I think there is great possibility out there but it remains undefined. As marketers struggle to use the New Media I believe that a majority of products and services will foolishly chase this possibility like St.Elmo's fire. The actual thing Rob Lowe talked about in the movie (you know the scene with the hairspray and the lighter) not the movie itself.

The social networks or social operational networks (as they are being renamed) are like Thunderdome from a marketer’s perspective. There are no rules or understanding of how to make order out of the interactive chaos (plus Mel Gibson is all over youtube). Since the SON are essential self directed it becomes difficult to determine how to utilize them. Like my new adage goes MySpace pages and Blogs are like assholes...everyone's got one and they're usually full of shit. My current response is a great case in point.

This lack of definition leaves marketers feeling as helpless as a choking victim at a Christian scientist’s convention (stole that from Dennis Miller), and turning to outside agencies for answers.

The interactive landscape is littered with failed New Media experiments like Second Life. Remember back in mid 2006 when C-level types read articles about SL and didn't want to get left behind? The word went out from the top floor "get us on second life" they did. By rushing onto second life with out a purpose, strategy or even a full understanding of why they ended destroying that which they coveted. Don't belive me just ask the 6 people still on Second Life. I might be a little bitter here because I can't use the Linden dollars I have in Vegas casinos.

Ponder this does the very self directed and individualized nature of SON's make them inherently unpredictable and unusable as a marketing tool for a majority of traditional products and services? And the belief that any product can benefit from New Media strategy Pollyannaish at best?

[Steve]

All,
Here is additional rationale to how new media/web 2.0 is being used: What Is Crowdsourcing? The post talks about how companies can (and which few are) use these tools and how many consumers are willing to share via these tool and how all that can grow your business.

Steve

[Bishop]

The struggle lies in the ever changing landscape. It's tough to be an expert at this rate as what you have conquered has soon been disposed. We will soon find preferred partners as we pare down the options to the core tools that connect clients with customers, brand with buyers. Opportunity will create the brave that will lead and pave the way in showing how to use these tools effectively. If you are one of them, and your clients hope you are, then enjoy the engagement in learning and leading. In our favor is that ability to connect more readily with other users to share and find examples that have worked. We are alone together.

[Dan Knauss]

I do not see local small businesses and organizations using social media beyond a personal or rather superficial level. Those who are established in print publishing and actually have an audience--and an audience relationship conducive to social media--tend to see all the internets as the enemy.

I also believe that social media are useless for legitimate business purposes unless the users are 1) not idiots, and 2) on board with the old "cluetrain," which laid out the principles of honest, open communication online. It's not about learning to use a new tool, it's about whether you can use this new tool to begin engaging in honest communication with your customers and the general public, because phonies and frauds have no chance.

Corporate culture can't exist in that world, in that kind of discourse, in that kind of relationship with the public without fundamental changes to itself. How many "new media companies," like some of the leading web hosts, have wide open discussion forums, heavily use social media, and are known for their openness? Nooo, they want to funnel that stuff to their customer service and tech support lines.

Corporate culture, driven by the fear and paranoia generated by beancounters and lawyers, is a product of two world wars and the cold war--mass society, mass bureaucracy, mass insanity. This culture kills intelligence, quashes personality, and bans candor. The tiger won't change its stripes, but fortunately it's not all tigers out there. Social media is not for the tigers, but I'm sure they will invest in it as a new form of sheep's clothing, to mix my metaphors.