slow media to be enjoyed by the wayside

The world spins on its axis in twenty four hours.

We expect our news much faster than that these days. While i'm on Twitter, i get real time updates from my fellow human beings halfway across the world. I am twelve hours ahead of them. Not counting the things I get to read of blogs, news sites, video sites and pictures.

I guess it can be perceived that the world is getting smaller, or as Thomas Friedman says, The World Is Flat.

I say, learn to slow down every now and then. While the earth keeps spinning, perhaps twice as fast these days in the social media universe, there is a whole other world that still sticks to the same 24 hours we've always had.

You want to achieve work life balance, unplug yourself and start appreciating the world as you know it, not just through the social media's lenses.

Social media is best utilised to achieve a pulse on trends, communities, ideas, connections. but it backfires when you face an information overload. I think our brains can take it, but..

you also have to train your brain to not just consume information, but actually derive some value from it.

It's not just about how much you consume, it's how you interpret data, apply it, make it work for you, your counterparts, your businesses.

And that's why i still value "slow media". when you sacrifice speed for a great media product. a craft, where time and energy has been invested to make something easily understood so that MORE may understand and enjoy.

So what is slow media?


Image credit: Crackskullbob

For now, I'll define it as media that has large investments in time, energies, manpower, conceptualisation, production and even channel planning to maximise exposure to said media product.

Slow media can be social media. Slow media is purposeful, intricate cuisine, as opposed to fast food.

Fast food's a quick fix, fills your stomach, perhaps rough around the edges, not made from the best ingredients, perhaps even for mass consumption but with little value.

You just feel satisfied, and better about yourself and your surroundings when you consume slow media without rushing through it. when you come out of it, knowing more, eager to tell your peers just where you had this gastronomical epiphany.

And that my friends, is how i see "slow media". I guess the fact that i'm about to start looking for lunch had something to do with this post.

why do we have blogger events?

it was gonna happen sooner or later, but i think people might be starting to get sick of reading about blogger events, or at least start making fun of them. -)

but Shelly does make a very important crtique about the state of the way social media is being engaged in Singapore.

if you're wondering what this means to the PR practitioner, new social marketer, the digital advertiser, blogger or all-in-one communications extraordinaire, have a read and we can always discuss -)

Singapore's social media landscape background: agencies and corporations in Singapore probably started experimenting with blogger engagement in early 2006. i remember Fleishman Hillard's LG Blogger seeding programme quite well. Seed bloggers with LG Shine phones, no strings attached and invite them to write an honest review.

2007, i joined Ogilvy Singapore's Digital Influence practice, and promptly got started connecting and engaging with some of Singapore's bloggers. Other agencies and marketing managers also started their own engagement programmes, and blogger events became the 'standard' way of engaging bloggers.

engagement is one thing. what about community building? what about building the relationship between brand and blogger?

i guess these are the signs of Singapore's blogosphere maturing. as communications practitioners, we should be ready to meet the present and future needs of communications.

what are such future needs?

1. community building / involvement
- whether you like it or not, the net has brought us closer together. some bloggers have chosen to maintain their privacy, let's respect that. but there is also a growing community of well.. communities. Ping.SG, Singapore Plurkers, fans of local bands, political advocates, social media enthusiasts, photography groups, driving enthusiasts, food reviewers, travel writers, philanthropic bloggers, technopreneurs.. etc.

is your BRAND getting involved?
and as a blogger, what is your PASSION?

2. the cutting edge of communications
- i'm never satisfied with doing what everyone else is doing. call it divine discontent. if you look right, i look left. and because i've always been critical of the media, i decided to study about it in university, and found myself working a job in the media industry.

- the net has given everyone a voice, but some voices are louder than others. but the net has also connected people, and made it easier to communicate, spread information, organise events, and where i find a lot of value, bringing people together.

- this means, i meet like-minded people who talk about social media, who see it as more than just events, and coverage, but the walking together of owning your own community. not that you're the leader, but you're a part of. in church, we talk about taking ownership of one's ministry, or responsibility. it's the same thing, taking ownership of your community, is to work to build, improve, and make each community you're a part of, the best that it can be.

- having said that, we have to be on the cutting edge, laying a good foundation that "social media" has helped empower her users, and not merely be a house of cards or dot.com bubble 2.0

3. Your audience matures
- there's only so much longer before people become more media literate. my parent's generation didn't necessarily grow up with a television

- i grew up with the television, and to a certain extent, the Internet.

- there's a whole generation that is now growing up with mobile broadband Internet. if i think i'm so great with my suite of web2.0 tools, i cannot begin to imagine what we'll see in the future.

- as hardware improves, so will software, so will communications, so will how we make use of technology

- growing up in a mediated environment might naturally make us more cynical and skeptical of what the mass mediums put out. today's underground is tomorrow's mainstream. people may find it harder and harder to believe something they've read, watched or heard. they need to make their own truths, and to believe in something, means they have to publish it themselves.

- i forsee an explosion of content producers in less than five years, as today's 14 year olds develop tomorrow's new web platform.

- as a communicator, will you mature along with your audience?

After thoughts of IDC's Directions'08 Panel Discussion

A big topic was the idea of "paying bloggers" from a public relations standpoint, we can't pay bloggers, because that's like paying journalists.

unfortunately, journalists get paid for the writing, and bloggers don't get paid for their hobby.

what we do see is blogs like Techcrunch paying their own writers. Hence, the blog needs to attract enough attention (can you beat TC's readership of 700K++ RSS sunscribers?) to attract sponsorship, or advertising dollars, or some way to sell content and pay their staff writers. not really different from a regular Traditional Media (TM) publication / broadcaster, but i see the business model of information bloggers evolving to something new. something more along the lines of a workable meatball sundae

with reference to "do bloggers have a code of ethics?" it's interesting that Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence open a discussion with bloggers in USA to hear what they had to say.

read their responses here: link and our own code of ethics as Digital Influencers / PR practitioners here

i also thought Uniquefrequency's comments about Twitter were awesome. the example of the airline contacting customers directly via Twitter as an instantaneous, anywhere, anytime feedback channel HAS to be a good thing. i refer also to this post of how Twitter helped save a journalist from incarceration

Finally, advertising should evolve past static banners or even microsites. PR helps connect bloggers and brands together by being real, Digital PR NEEDS to evolve as well, it's not about using traditional methodologies and just treating bloggers like journalists and expecting certain things of them.. at it's heart, if you are only interested in a 'media hit' your bloggers become nothing more than statistics and you're doomed to failure. Brian Solis writes expertly about the concept of PR2.0

embrace the social element of SOCIAL media, understand the communities, be a part of it, add to it, find out what help bloggers need from your clients and join the dots! We're launching The Open Room to do just that, and i am oh so psyched!

i'm from public relations, do you hate me?

since there are only a couple of us here in singapore who are practicing public relations and are also active in new media or social media (links on the right under the header public relations), i see it as a sort of corporate responsibility to talk about the topic of where public relations fits in the grand scheme of all things new and social media.

as a public relations practitioner, we cannot blindly charge into this new space with six-shooters blazing without a plan. when you engage a blogger, or a participant in this new social space, you cannot just treat them as professional journalists, nor can we just infiltrate and saturate the space with crappy public relations practices that might also explain the current mindset people draw when the public thinks of public relations. if you're a public relations practitioner, or a blogger approached by a public relations representative, or a communications student, i hope this post is for you.

many times, society has been burned by the more 'shadowy' tactics of public relations. while i know must of us practice with a high level of professionalism, all it takes is a few bad eggs to make a lasting negative impression. so now that we are all trying ways and means to come up with best practices for this new media, can we avoid the mistakes others have done? i hope so. for starters, i won't claim to be an expert or have all the answers, but i hope that i can keep to my integrity both personally and professionally, and i hope the same goes for you too.

some of our counterparts have come up with the term pr 2.0. now we have to be clear that this does not just mean practicing public relations using new technology. what brian solis stresses is that because of the new publishing power bestowed onto everyone now, and not just people in the media and publishing industries, user-generated content is a force to be reckoned with. so remember, its not just about blogs, rss feeds, video and audio podcasts, it is ultimately about the people. that is pr 2.0, valuing the people, and the communities that people form, both virtually and in real life.

so if i could put down in point form, what i've learnt so far while working as part of ogilvy public relation's digital influence team, interacting with some bloggers and my own challenges when walking through a digital strategy with clients, it would be this:

1. engage and understand the space by reading blogs, forums, online magazines, watch youtube, chat on msn, use facebook

2. when you find that you have too much to read and consume, start looking to RSS and starting an online reader like google reader and start syncing feeds to your reader and watch how it magically updates so you don't have two millions tabs or windows open.

3. now, you've got tonnes of individuals updating you about what's going on in their lives, their areas of expertise and their industries, what you need to do now is identify the communities that are forming.

- for singaporeans, i recommend these wonderful aggregation sites that help sieve blogs for us, and actually some have formed their own little communities within them as well.

tomorrow.sg
ping.sg
sgblogger
singapore daily

4. finally, if you're up to it, start engaging! by this i mean, start your own blog, lifestreams, social bookmarks, youtube accounts, podcasts, upload pictures, get your own facebook accounts.. and with RSS, you can sync everything to one another.

and just to show off a 'lil bit, you can find me on all of these, if you know what i'm talking about, add me to your community or network, and you can be sure you'll receive only the best of what my clients can give you. in the end, you have information and i have information, let's tell more people and have a ball. that's one way of looking at public relations -)

my jaiku lifestream is found here: http://litford.jaiku.com

it syncs my flickr stream, blog, del.icio.us tags and latest music from last.fm to it and my twitter feed

most of these streams are linked to my facebook account as well. so add me on facebook from the side panel.

if you're on other social networks, i'm still on friendster and myspace

you can also watch my youtube videos here.

and contact me thru regular, old skool email at shamutheworld@yahoo.com or litford@gmail.com

so as a recap:
blog
flickr
youtube
del.icio.us
twitter
jaiku
last.fm
ping.sg
friendster
myspace
facebook
yahoo mail
gmail

and there you have it, times are changing quickly.. but remember, it ain't about the tech, it's about the people.

why blogs matter, even when everyone's doing it

this blog is not a diary. it is a publication that reaches out to the potential 6 billion people out there who can chance upon this space, with a computer, internet connection and a relatively good command of english.

while i exaggerate, the potential is there, not just for me, but for anybody who doesn't lock up his or her posts, and basically what we have here, is a virtual publication that is accessible via the use of the net.

extrapolate the future, worldwide wifi coverage, mobile devices subscribing to this blog's RSS feed, and you can receive real-time updates everytime i update, put new videos, pictures, audio, links and basically any sort of virtual content, anywhere, anytime and on the go.

mark my words, this is the future of digital communications.

although i'm sure you've heard it all before, which is why if you're reading this with interest, pay attention to these developments.

1. mobile devices
2. wifi
3. RSS
4. social bookmarking
5. lifestreams
6. convergence of services
7. simplicity in design

so if you're asking what this means for you, if everyone's doing the same thing, how will anyone get noticed?

8. aggregation <-- as more people link or direct to the source, that will raise the profile of a particular piece of content.

pay attention to the categories on the right hand side, with special emphasis on "theory" and "communication" if you like what you read in this post.

in the meantime, to demonstrate the power of linking or mixed media on a single blog post, check this video by cajun dance party below:



this song is definitely making it to my 2007 compilation.

when you think about it, i've linked media from youtube to my blog using an embedding code that displays a flash player on this blog post. when you think even further, google has acquired youtube, and that means a convergence in services.. and might we be too hasty to conclude that since blogger is owned by google, video-blogging is going to become even more common place in the future?

the virtualisation of our content is paramount to the future of digital communications. digitisation of analog content made it easier to share between peers. virtualisation allows all users to view, interact and share content using any browser connected to the net, independent of software. software and code exists in browsers, not your hard drives anymore.

you say blog, i say soul narrative

in continuation with our current series about brian finding his place again in the blogosphere, i now present in more tangible terms what blogging means to me.

it's a form of narrative for us life-bloggers who blog for cathartic purposes, maybe i'll term it soul-casting or my soul narrative. it won't allow you to read my mind, but at least i'm able to put down in words the things festering in my brain, and my heart-condition. in words that only mean something to you, and not for anyone else.

it's a flawed way of communication, which is a bit of the anti-thesis to blogging, or someone who works in the communications industry. but it keeps me sane, and also proud of the fact that i exist somewhere in the vast universe of the internet.

i'm not saying you'll know me after reading this blog, but you might understand me a little better, what i'm about, what makes me tick, and then hopefully you can start peddling me your wares and i'll consume like the consumer i am. if this voice is not relevant to you or doesn't mean anything to you, then i believe i've done my job, because i've been able to take something intrinsic and unquantifiable, and put it up for all to see on the web, and by speaking, i assert my right to live, or rather my right to blog.

so you say blog, but i say soul naratting, who knows if it'll become a trend or not, but i'm exorcising the demons in my head that say i need to speak the voice of our status quo to be popular. no, we don't have to be popular, we just have to be relevant to the ones that matter, even if your captive audience is yourself.