It’s called social media, because it’s about being social. You don’t broadcast your message anymore, you share it.

If you’re a newspaper, you move to the web. If you’re a radio station, you add video. If you’re a television station, you add blogs. You become multi-dimensional and engage your audience in participatory media.

The New York Times is a newspaper. Yet on their website, they have video and audio interviews. They have taken their single media product and turned it into a multimedia web presence.

The radio station I work at, 95 Crave, is doing the same thing today.

We are live at a mall doing a Madonnathon dance contest for Madonna tickets. Radio stations do live, on site events all the time. Usually to a small crowd. However, this event is being streamed online with a camera hooked in to a laptop over Ustream.

Your radio station probably already has a video camera. It already has a laptop. Ustream is free.

A one dimensional event can become multimedia, and experienced by virtually your entire audience.

catch the buzz … pass it on.

This entry was originally posted November 14, 2008 on my Old Media New Tricks blog. I’m collecting those entries here to gather a more comprehensive list of my media insight posts.

Old media talks down to its audience. New media engages its audience.

Do you recognize how vastly different those two sentences are? Those two simple sentences hold all the answers to all the problems old media, and old companies, have when it comes to new media. You can’t preach to your consumers, you have to inspire them.

Radio station websites need to not only have the recent chart and concert listings, it needs to have a two way dialogue between host and listener.

Blogs, Facebook pages and Twitter accounts are VITAL for the survival of the radio station brand, but they need to be a two way street. Just shouting out content at the listeners, without a way for them to interact, is like a radio station without a request line.

Whether or not you actually take requests is not the point, the listener needs to feel like they’re engaged in the process and have ownership of the station.

Social media gives the audience the ability to interact with the brand, but only if the brand interacts back. If you’re not listening to your Twitter stream responding to @ replies or questions on your Facebook page, you’re still broadcasting.

New media is not about me, it’s about you.

catch the buzz … pass it on.

This entry was originally posted November 10, 2008 on my Old Media New Tricks blog. I’m collecting those entries here to gather a more comprehensive list of my media insight posts.

Traditional media outlets on the web are notorious for not providing link love. They simply post the content from print to the web with no annotation, link or way for readers to learn more or examine the sources. Even articles they write about technology or websites are devoid of links. Sure, they’ll put the address in the article, but the link won’t be active.

They build a fortress around their content. The only links allowed keep visitors within the garden through the nav bar, or take them off to buy soap and shampoo through sponsors.

This is no way to build loyalty, trust or respect from your audience.

Because of that wall, old media doesn’t get the proper credit when word of mouth spreads the stories they, habitually, break.

People say “I heard it on the news,” or “I read it in the paper,” or “I saw it on tv.” They credit the medium, but they don’t credit the actual source.

However, when a message is spread in new media, the source is an integral part of the sharing.

We don’t email someone to say we read about something. We send them the link.

When we blog, we don’t just randomly quote a news story, we link back to the original story.
The credit is given. The link is mentioned.

In new media, we don’t say “I heard it on the radio,” we say “I heard Buzz Bishop do an awesome interview with Robbie Williams and here’s the link.”

Many old media outlets don’t provide active links within their stories, even when writing about websites. If they would activate the links, bloggers would know when they’re mentioned and help publicize the story.

Many articles don’t have sharing functions attached to the stories allowing readers and listeners a chance to instantly add the story to their Stumblog, Facebook page, or Delicious bookmarks.

By not giving the audience the chance to share your content, you are creating a one dimensional online presence. One that is basically worthless.

By giving the audience the opportunity to share the message, you not only give the audience the chance to spread the message beyond your original reach, but you get credit for it.

Word of mouth is the most valuable advertising you can get, but is your brand the message, or is the medium getting all the credit?

catch the buzz … pass it on.

This entry was originally posted November 5, 2008 on my Old Media New Tricks blog. I’m collecting those entries here to gather a more comprehensive list of my media insight posts.

This entry was originally posted August 12, 2008 on my Old Media New Tricks blog. I’m collecting those entries here to gather a more comprehensive list of my media insight posts.

George Stroumboulopolous‘ show, The Hour, does a great job at taking news stories and not dumbing them down.

It does that by first explaining the story, giving some background and context before going deeper. You know, getting us all on the same page.

I love this show. It explains all the details of those overly complex international issues in a way that’s easy to follow. Plus it also carries alot of stories that the mainstream won’t. [stumble upon]

Tonight, as I flipped on my local news, the two lead stories were about animals. A man with a pack of off leash pitbulls, and a new beluga calf at the aquarium.

There is no explanation needed for these stories. They’re easy to understand, readily consumable and don’t require a lot of thinking. You have an instant emotional reaction to the story. There’s nothing to really understand here, we love animals, we’re afraid of mean dogs. Easy.

Earlier this week Russia invaded Georgia. I dont know much about the story, yet the news will toss 30 second highlight reels of tanks and bombs towards the end of the news with no explanation, context or basis for understanding.

It became even curiouser when Russia faced off against Georgia on the beach volleyball court at the Beijing Olympics today.

I’m sure we’ll see lots of the bikini coverage before we have any real explanation of why Russia did what it did, why it’s important and what the implications are.

I’m not asking for round tables with talking heads and experts and opinions and talking points, I’d like a 30s breakdown of the facts, sort of what you see on wikipedia. Why not call it wikimedia?

The Ossetians are a distinct Iranian ethnic group whose origin lies along the Don River. They came to the Caucasus after they were driven out of their homeland by Mongol invasions in the 13th century. Some of them settled in the territory now known as North Ossetia (currently part of Russia), and South Ossetia (currently part of Georgia). [wikipedia]

Sure, wikipedia is not the best source of information, but it can draw a nice thumbnail sketch when you need one. Wouldn’t it be nice if the local news tried to do that every now and again?

The news, as it is presented right now, is dumbed down, but it can smarten up. Editors and producers just have to take a second to do some research, explain the facts and set the table.

catch the buzz… pass it on.

Steve Jobs is dead. At 56, the biggest visionary of a generation is gone far too soon.

Much will be written of the technological contributions Steve has made. I am writing this on a Macbook with an iPhone in my pocket an iPad on the counter and an Apple TV on the shelf. He revolutionized our lives, it’s true. And it almost never happened.

56 years ago a girl got pregnant. Her parents didn’t approve. All of this almost never happened.

In 1954, Abdulfattah John Jandali and Joanne Simpson were a young couple in Wisconsin. Joanne became pregnant and her parents forbid the couple from marrying. Without notice, the Simpsons left for San Francisco where she would give birth to a boy on February 24, 1955. Days later the infant was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs and given the same Steve.

It almost never happened.

One of the reasons Joanne Simpson was giving her son up for adoption was she was in the middle of her own graduate studies. She insisted that the adoptive family for her son would be an academic one. A lawyer and his wife agreed to adopt her child, but when a boy was born, they withdrew. They wanted a girl.

Paul and Clara Jobs, a high school dropout and college dropout were next on the list. Simpson hesitated and refused to sign the adoption papers until the couple promised that Steve would go to college. They promised and the adoption went though.

It was only a few years ago that Jobs’ birth father, now 80 year old casino vice president in Reno, found out Steve Jobs was his son. He told his story to the Daily Telegraph and admits that apart from a few unresponded emails sent to Jobs on his birthday, he had had no contact with his son.

Jobs never spoke about his biological father, but did keep in touch with Joanne Simpson inviting her to some of his family gatherings. In a 1997 New York Times article he appeared grateful for her long-ago decision to have him and put him up for adoption.

“There was never any acrimony between us,” he says. Yet, biological roots aside, Jobs holds a firm belief that Paul and Clara Jobs were his true parents. A mention of his “adoptive parents” is quickly cut off. “They [were] my parents,” he says emphatically. [source]

Thank you Steve, but, more importantly thanks to Paul and Clara Jobs for opening their hearts, their homes and their lives.

Without them, we wouldn’t have this.

Disclosure: This subject is close to me. My wife is adopted. All of my life as I know it almost never happened too.

You see Twitter disclaimers more and more these days. It’s a variation on the “the views are mine and not my employer”, or “opinions expressed here are mine and mine alone” theme.

Guess what?

Those opinions may be yours and they may not reflect the opinions of your employer, but they reflect you.

Which brand do you care more about?

Whenever I see that disclaimer I immediately think this person is saying “Yo, I’m an asshole. Please don’t tell my boss.”

If you need to put a warning ahead of your tweets that your behaviour may not be acceptable in the staff room, then you need to check your behaviour. Yes, personal time is personal time and we all can’t be expected to be on the clock 24/7; however, when it comes to social media, anything you tweet or facebook can and will be used against you.

Just ask former Rogers Sportsnet anchor Damian Goddard. Moments after Goddard tweeted support of an agent attacking Sean Avery for appearing in a gay marriage ad he was fired.

Goddard had the disclaimer on his account, but it didn’t matter. Everyone knew who he was, what he did and which company he represented.

Today, Calgary Sun City Editor, Dave Naylor is experiencing a similar situation. While his Twitter handle is @Nobby7694, his proper name and job are listed in his Twitter bio – along with a disclaimer.

This evening he tweeted something inappropriate about Jack Layton and subsequently apologized for said tweet. The reaction on the twittersphere was immediate to not only take Naylor to task, but also his employer.

I consistently quote Gillian Shaw from the Vancouver Sun and her social media advice: “if you don’t want it on the front page of the newspaper, don’t tweet it.”

Putting “these opinions are mine” doesn’t change the comments you make. Especially when your name and occupation are listed in your Twitter bio or easily found.

When you say something stupid they don’t include your disclaimer on the front page of the paper, they just say “Joe Schmo from Asshat Industries said …”

Think twice. Tweet once. Look after the most important brand in your career – your own.

catch the buzz … pass it on.

Globe Technology posed a twitter question this morning:

So tweeps, do you consider jumping geoblocks in order to access content we can’t get in Canada as unethical?

I hate to answer a question with a question, but let’s spin that back on it’s head and ask the opposite: Does the simple act of geoblocking make any sense?

Information wants to be free. Throw up a paywall or a geoblock and someone will find a way to tunnel under, jump over or blast through the obstruction.

We saw a perfect example with Canada’s 41st Election. Elections Canada insisted that Canadians not tweet the results before all the polls were closed under threat of a steep fine or jail time. In the end, many Canadians violated the ban brazenly, while others simply emailed the results to friends outside Canada and had them tweet the results. Ban violated, no rules broken.

When I stumble into a piece of content that has been geoblocked – usually it’s Saturday Night Live clips on Hulu – I’ll simply go to YouTube to get the content free from shackles.

There are ways to mask your IP address to get access to content from outside of restricted borders – people do that to get Hockey Night in Canada streams .

Is geoblocking unethical? Is violating geoblocks unethical? Neither answer matters, because the internet has no borders.

catch the buzz … pass it on.

Facebook has unveiled a tool that will help many people convert Facebook profiles to pages. Until recently, if you had a business, you had to create a Facebook profile to get that business online. You had to make your business seem like a person, and people had to friend it. That was awkward.

With the ability to create Facebook pages, you can have your brand stand alone and still interact with people on Facebook. The problem, for early adopters, is there wasnt a way to transfer profiles into pages – now there is. It’s a simple one click process that will transfer everyone who “friended” you in the past to a list of people who “like” you now.

My Facebook page is a hodge podge of personal and professional contacts and I’ve long been searching for a way to separate church and state. As Tod Maffin has described, you can sort your followers into lists – but I’ve been looking for a more isolated solution.

I jumped at the chance to change my profile to a page, but you might not want to do it yet. Here’s why:

1. Facebook will treat you like a business. If your profile was the account you used to manage all your pages, that account (and email address) are now linked to a page. You cannot start from scratch and attach a new and fresh profile to that address. It’s in use and locked up.

My workaround was to start a fresh profile with one of my tertiary email addresses, add that new profile as an admin to all my pages and then go back and delete the original account as an admin. Pain in the ass? Yes.

2. Re-establishing your friends list will get you blocked as a spammer. All your friends are transferred to the new page from your profile, however when you want to re-add them to your fresh profile with the new email address, you can get blocked if you get to eager.

I was re-adding friends to my new account and got stopped after about 2 dozen. Facebook didn’t like my rapid and bulk friend requesting (despite ACTUALLY knowing all the people I was requesting contact with) and blocked me from sending messages and adding friends for 2 days. Pain in the ass? Yes.

3. Your friends come with you, your data doesn’t. When you make the change, you will lose all your data, all your wall posts, all your images, all your videos. I find this part of the transfer process particularly confusing. If you have ever tried to delete a Facebook account before, you know it’s an arduous process with Facebook holding on to your data should you change your mind.

Make the switch from profile to page, however, and everything you’ve poured into the site is evaporated instantly. You can (and should) back up and download all your data from your profile before you turn it into a page, but re-establishing the photos and videos will have to be done one at a time. You’ll have an archive of your wall posts, but it won’t appear on your new page. Pain in the ass? Yes.

4. You can’t interact with people in the same way as a page as you did as a profile. Just because someone ‘likes’ you, doesnt mean you can communicate with them. Pages are limited from commenting directly on the walls of people who like them. You need to have a friended profile relationship to do that. The page is more of a broadcast tool, the profile is an interactive experience. Pain in the ass? Yes.

In the end, I do like having a professional page for my brand instantly filled with more than 1000 people, but it will be a long hike back up to re-establish my personal profile with people I actually know.

Should you turn your Facebook profile into a page? That depends. How much spare time do you have to get it all sorted out?

Piers Morgan‘s Twitter show was a lot of talk about something people should just be doing. It was filled with Martha Stewart, Alyssa Milano and celebrity tweeters and very little substance about how to actually use it.

In the waning seconds Gary Vee came on and talked about search.twitter.com as the greatest tool anyone can use to “get” Twitter. It’s about listening was the message Gary hammered home, a drum I’ve been banging too.

Twitter Is A Game Of Follow The Leaders – stop worrying about who follows you and instead focus on who you follow
The Audience Isn’t Listening – the world of broadcast is now a two way street, not one way

Here’s the repost of an article from from November 2008:

It’s one thing not to participate in the online conversation, but do you monitor the conversation others are having about you and your brand?

This is vital for not only old media, but any company trying to succeed in the modern era. No longer are people talking about you behind your back, whispering about their negative experiences at cocktail parties. Bouquets and bombs when it comes to customer service and brand opinion are now aired publicly with Facebook groups, blogs, message boards and live flow conversations on Twitter.

This past weekend Motrin had a major brandjack when the conversation about their new ad exploded into a huge negative backlash. The conversation was left unchecked for the entire weekend and nothing but hate, anger and vitriol spread amongst the active online community.

Motrin tried to reach into new media to spread a message, but instead of monitoring and nurturing it – they just planted the seed and left. Weeds grew and nobody knew, until Monday.

Starbucks goes about things a little differently.

They monitor the conversation, they participate in the community, they diffuse situations before they erupt.

This morning I tweeted about a negative experience at my local Starbucks. Double cupping was the default practice.

Within 2 hours I had received a tweet back from @MyStarbucksIdea responding to the situation.

If your radio station doesn’t have a twitter account, fine. If your radio station doesn’t have a facebook page, fine. If you’re not active in the social media conversation, that’s fine, but you’ve got to monitor the conversation others are having about your brand.

Go to Google, set up a Google Alert for keywords associated with your brand.

Go to Twitter Search and set up an RSS feed associated with your brand.

Not participating in the online conversation is a problem, not listening to the online conversation is a fatal flaw.

Here we go again, Canada is heading to the polls on May 2 – our 4th election in the past 7 years.  The only thing excellent about this track record of fallen minority governments is that party finances are getting tapped and they need to explore new ways to campaign.  That means social media is about to get even more important this time round.

Here are the tools you can use to get engaged.

The CBC has a great Vote Compass tool on their website that asks you questions based on the issues, how you feel about the parties and candidates and then places your X on the political spectrum.  It’s a great way to see how you fit in with each of the political parties.

Twitter has been used by the leaders before, but it was mostly a broadcast medium, this time there is engagement.  The leaders (or their team tweeting for them) are answering tweets from regular people while on the campaign trail.  I had an exchange with Michael Ignatieff the day the writ was dropped, Stephen Harper was also answering tweets.

Here are the accounts of the federal leaders and their parties.

Stephen Harper @pmhaper – Conservative Party of Canada
Michael Ignatieff @m_ignatieff – Liberal Party of Canada @liberal_party
Jack Layton @jacklayton -  NDP
Gilles Duceppe @gillesduceppe – Bloc Quebecois
Elizabeth May @elizabethmay – Green Party of Canada @canadiangreens

You can also follow the discussion by all Canadians on Twitter by monitoring the hashtags #cdnpoli and #elxn41.

In the past elections, it has been the NDP that were quick to mobilize to social media.  They appreciated you need to give the online campaign over to your fans and hand them the tools to spread the message.  And they’re doing it again – on the opening day of the campaign they had an app. (The only party to be in the App Store)

The tools the Greens bring out will be interesting to watch as Elizabeth May, in her opening speech, laid the groundwork for a social media campaign because the party is not as flush with green as the others.

We do have election fatigue in Canada, it’s true.  This election came from seemingly out of nowhere and there is no lightning rod issue to polarize the electorate.  But still, we have a choice.  Thousands are marching and dying on the streets of Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Tunisia and Libya to have that choice.  Our best way of honouring their plea is to respect our right and exercise it.

catch the buzz … pass it on.

This post was originally published at The Future Shop Tech Blog.