A recent segment of 60 Minutes was devoted to the life and work of Don Hewitt, the new magazine’s creator, who passed away in August 2009. As you may know, 60 Minutes is the longest-running prime-time television broadcast in the country. I enjoyed learning about Hewitt’s perspective on the show’s phenomenal success, which he says boils down to this: “Tell Me A Story.”
I meditated on this mindset as I watched my 6-year old son “read” the newspaper this morning. While he does not read all of the words, he perceives some of the story elements by studying the pictures. After he finishes “reading” the story, he tells me about it. His rendition is always pretty close to the real thing. [Continue Reading…]
If you don’t already think The Media Is You, this will change your mind. YouTube recently announced YouTube Direct, a service that allows news organizations to customize YouTube’s uploader to receive video from people who want to share items of interest with the news organization’s audience. The potential of this new format is massive, both for small business owners and for news organizations. Here’s a video overview of the new service.
(If you are reading this post via email or in an RSS reader and cannot see the video, click here.)
Look for traditional news organizations that are starved for human resources and weary of having to “compete” with you and me for the attention of their readers, to implement this new technology quickly. The power of this new platform to marry the interests of small business owners and traditional media outlets is very promising. [Continue Reading…]
Small business owners often say they don’t want to be bothered with social media because the learning curve is too steep. Here’s what I have to say about that. Get over it. When isn’t the learning curve steep? Here’s an analogy. If you are a homeowner, you can’t let your front lawn grow wild. Not only will it look awful, but your neighbors will not like you.
Tall grasses and weeds can also harbor snakes and other potentially dangerous critters. So what do you do? You either hire someone to mow your lawn or you learn how to do it yourself. If you decide to do it yourself, you can’t just buy a mower and start mowing. [Continue Reading…]
On December 1 and 2, 2009, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will hold two days of workshops on how the Internet has affected journalism. The workshops come in the wake of the release last month of the Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, which become effective on the first day of the workshops.
If you are a small and independent business owner who uses technology to share your ideas, it is in your best interests to attend the hearings live or via webcast, or at least track progress, because the topics discussed will light on how you will use technology in the coming decade. Remember, The Media Is Y-O-U! And as the boundaries between you and traditional journalism continue to collide, it’s important to own your power in this regard, and to live up to certain responsibilities as well. [Continue Reading…]
Yesterday, I Tweeted my experience linking from a small business owner’s Twitter page to her website, and not finding her name anywhere. There was also no phone number and no address, yet her products were sold via a shopping cart at her site and her newsletter subscription form required subscribers to enter a first and last name along with an email address. My Tweet received a few replies, some of them asking why it was important for small business owners to use their names online.
I was a bit shocked that some online merchants thought there was nothing odd about asking people to do business with you anonymously. Here are some of the main reasons why I think business owners, regardless of size, should share their identities online, especially if they are relying on the Internet for the bulk of their sales. [Continue Reading…]
In case you haven’t heard, Oprah Winfrey will host the final episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show sometime in 2011 when her contract with CBS Corp. (which syndicates her show) expires. At that time, she will turn her attention to a 50-50 joint venture, announced last year, with Discovery Communications called, “OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network.” Oprah’s ability to draw sponsors could have resulted in a lucrative renegotiation of her CBS contract. She could have played network against network for the best deals. But no. After 25 years, Oprah has won the right to own not only the water, but also the pipe. And that is the very essence of power where your brand is concerned.
Your product is like water in a pipe. You can produce it until the cows come home, but if you can’t channel it to the people who need it, then you end up with too much water and not enough drinkers. But when you own the pipe through which you channel your water directly to the drinkers, you are in the driver’s seat and the sky is the limit. [Continue Reading…]
I recently received an email from a small business owner who said, “I hate social media.” In the next paragraph, she asked me what she could to do grow her business, which relies on the Internet for the vast majority of its sales. While the short answer to that question is, “Use social media,” I was smart enough not to say that, even though it’s true. Small business owners frequently tell me that social media makes them gag, so I thought I’d take a look at how to bypass the emotions that prevent so many people from using new media tools to maximize their success.
While many people hate the term, ’social media,” they don’t hate what it can do for them. Unfortunately, their hatred of the term prevents them from discovering what it can do for them. To overcome this unacceptable result, start by getting away from the term and start calling it what it is at its core — media. [Continue Reading…]
According to the today’s New York Times two Northwest Airlines pilots flew over 100 miles beyond their destination because they were distracted by their laptop computers. For the 90-minutes during which they were flying in the wrong direction, they did not hear more than a dozen air traffic controllers trying to get their attention. They apparently never looked at their flight navigation instruments as they used their personal laptops to (they say) train on a new computer-based company scheduling system.
They heard voices over their cockpit radios but ignored them. They did not notice that they were off course until when, five minutes before they were supposed to land, a flight attendant requested the estimated landing time. It was a disaster in the making with 144 lives at risk. [Continue Reading…]
One of the thousands of things I wanted to be when I grew up was a news anchor, and my major in college was Journalism. While I never worked as a journalist, the fact that I trained to be one explains why I have been an early adapter of the concept that small and independent business owners must be the principal media outlets for their businesses. A lot has changed since I attended the University of South Carolina’s (Go Gamecocks!!) School of Journalism & Mass Communications.
Journalism is different today, and the media world moves at a much faster pace than it did in my college days, but the fundamentals are still the same. Things like the need for honesty, integrity, clarity and consistency never change. And there’s something else that hasn’t changed much either, and that’s the notion that each journalist has a “beat.” A beat is the particular area(s) where a journalist concentrates her reporting efforts. [Continue Reading…]
But the fact that it was announced on Twitter in exactly 134 characters, including punctuation and spaces, is astounding evidence of Twitter’s ability to serve as a media outlet unto itself, even in the eyes of a media professional and the multi-million dollar media outlet that employs him.
