Think About Goals

It’s easy if you’re a company. When I think about our client, Citrix Online, the folks who make GoToMeeting, I know that they’d like more customers. That’s a goal. You might not always have that cut and dry of a goal. You might want to inform. You might want to make money somehow. You might just want to talk about the city where you live.

If you don’t start at the goal, how will you know what kind of product to make? For instance, a few years back, I produced a podcast for moms called Career Mom Radio. My idea was simple: there are tons of mommy bloggers, but not all moms can sit still to read. I reasoned that I’d get a show together that a busy mom could listen to via an iPod. (Easier to have 1 earbud in while the kid watches Barney than it is to crack open the laptop and read through a post, was my logic).

The goal was: reach busy moms in a medium where the marketplace wasn’t over crowded. (For the record, there are still way more blogs for moms than podcasts, despite the fact that I still believe it’s easier or a mom to keep a Shuffle clipped to her shirt and an earbud in. (Anyone?)

After the Goal, some Research

Once you have the idea for your project, you might look into the space around it. For instance, if you’re thinking you want to start a tech blog today and hope to live off it, good luck. Ditto general opinion blogs. Ditto general review blogs. At this point, you’ve really got to figure out a unique angle for pretty much any product.

Some quick ideas for research:

1. Search for terms that you’d use to find this new project’s URL using Google Blogsearch. Do the same on Technorati.
2. Check out Alltop and see if there’s a category for your idea. If so, read a few example blogs in the space (even if you’re doing a podcast, a book, a whatever).
3. Now, depending on the goals of your project, you might also want to see whether there is a market for the information. For instance, if you’re hoping to monetize and sell ads, you might check out platforms like Commission Junction, or LinkShare or Share a Sale and see if there’s anyone selling affiliate opportunities in your project’s space. (Again, if you’re thinking of making money.)

Format, Function, and Your “Customer”

Here’s a thought: what if your project isn’t best suited to be a blog? Or, what if a blog is just one format, and there could be others? Take a site like Instructables. I could see them making a killing on selling little $1.99 downloads, either as a PDF or maybe to your iPhone for their various DIY projects.

What’s the best format for what you do? Is it text? Think about Gary Vaynerchuk. Would he come off as interesting if all you did was read him? Should J.C. Hutchins stop making books and podcasts? Hell no.

Think hard about the format you intend to use for your project, and then think about function.

By function, think about this: how will someone use this work? For instance, look at this very same blog post. I’m writing something that you will read, and then hopefully, you’ll take it to heart, and consider for your next projects. However, this post, as a reference piece, is very much poorly designed. It’s an informational piece.

Thus, if I went further with this, what would be the right function to build in, would be an attached PDF file with the ideas bulleted out, that you could refer to when starting a new project. Now that would add some functionality. Make sense?

Think of your readers/consumers/audience/participants as your customers in this case. This piece is getting long, and I’m not really done writing it. Should I go back and add pictures? Should I do something to break it up? Should it be in three parts? That’s what I think when I think of you as my customer, and consider this post. What do you believe your “customers” want from your media product?

Go back and answer that truthfully, not with what YOU wish they’d want.

Do What You Like

Technically, you can do whatever you want. Never let others tell you you’re doing it wrong. Not even me.

My dad, Steve Brogan, is writing Dad’s Poker Blog, about his experiences as a semi-professional poker player. I read him every day as a completely amateur (and bad at it) poker player. He and I didn’t do any research before making the site. We didn’t see if the world needed another poker blog. We did look at http://poker.alltop.com, but we didn’t think much about whether or not we should do it.

Sometimes, you might just want to blog about something or make a project of another kind just because that’s what you want to do. We’re doing the Media Hacks podcast in audio form on a phone dial in, which means it’s not top audio quality, nor is it the more popular video format. Who cares? We just want it out there, and this is the best no-fuss way to get us all together.

Useful Matters

Attention is the new distribution. I’ll talk about this more at some other point, but just know this: the choices you make to better equip your would be audience of participants, the more you’ll benefit from that (in whatever form you’re seeking via your goals and strategy). It’s not good enough any more to just put something up without thinking.

So, what does this all make you think about your media? And if you’re not in the mood to pick apart what you’re doing, feel free to pick apart mine? What should I do differently? How can I help you even more?

Let’s talk about useful media, shall we?

Special side note. A new issue of my newsletter launches in a few days. Are you already newslettersubscribed for free? Hint: it’s not the same content as my blog.

Photo credit indyplanets

Episode 1 is here. Please note: Julien has a potty mouth. He says a lot of curse words. A LOT. But hey, it’s expression, and he was full of energy.

The group who’ll speak on the show will rotate a bit from episode to episode, but we think you’ll enjoy it. What it will be is a somewhat guided, but very energetic discussion about the marketing (mostly online) space, and we expect it’ll evolve over time.

What’s fun about doing a group show like this is that we all come from this at different angles. What’s also of note is that we’re all veterans of PodCamp, but this idea didn’t stem from that directly. I love that we’ve evolved in knowing each other over the last few years, and that it’s a project where we can work together, make something, and hopefully spark conversations.

One part of all we should be doing in the social media space involves actually experimenting with the tools and making our own media. How can you stay current in the space if you’re not playing with the toys?

We’re using BlogTalk Radio to record it. Lickity easy. There are lots of ways to make a show like this, and you might use recorders and do it at one place. You might record Skype or Gizmo. In the old days, I was really worried about podcasting tools. Now? No way. Dial into BTR, let the control panel do the work, tidy up the file, and we’re done. (I was just the talent, but that’s how easy it is).

The first episode is ready for your perusal. More to come.

Photo credits (for the snaps that aren’t mine): C.C. and Me – C.C. Chapman
Hugh McGuire – C.C. Chapman
Mitch Joel – C.C. Chapman

Podcasting Isn’t Dead At All

Chris Brogan writes that Podcasting as we all thought it might be in 2006 is gone. 2006 was the year that I first met Chris. He emailed me with some suggestions for the Distributing The Future podcast I was producing for O’Reilly.

They were good suggestions and I took them. But he must have been looking at podcasting differently than I was because podcasting is a lot like I thought it would be in 2006. It’s a varied mix of offerings by people with different motives, talents, and audiences. There remains a lot of opportunity for podcasters — last year was my best year ever — and the future is even brighter.

Podcasting dead? That’s like a teenager complaining that they’re bored. There is so much creativity being captured in podcasts. It may be hard to find the content you want, but podcasting isn’t dead. It’s not even stunned.

I came out of radio, so for me podcasting was all about talking to one person at a time. But podcasting isn’t the same as radio. The listener’s commitment to us is different and our obligation to them must be different as well.

I recently complained on Twitter of a podcast I subscribe to that begins with a forty second canned intro before you get to any new material. As if that wasn’t bad enough the first words in the canned intro is “Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls.” Who are they talking to? Long time radio buddy Chuck Collins replied to my tweet with this “you are not onstage, you are inside the listeners head! Don’t invite a crowd.” Chuck should be podcasting.

There are people who say that the NPR shows that you’ll find on iTunes aren’t podcasts and there are others who say the impromptu shows that feature some friends around a microphone aren’t podcasts. They—and everything in between—are all podcasts. There is no podcast police. Just as there is room on the radio dial for everything from highly edited and produced shows like “This American Life” to call-in sports shows like “The Jim Rome Show” there is even more room in the world of podcasting for a diverse world of content and style. I subscribe to “On the Media”, “TWiT”, “Late Night Cocoa”, and “Stephen Fry’s PODGRAMS.” There all as different as can be but they are all podcasts.

Dave Winer writes in Chris’ comments that podcasting “just isn’t what these guys thought it would be. No big deal. Now we can get on with what it really is.” But we don’t know what podcasting really is any more than we know what photography really is.

In one sense I agree with Dave—radio really changed when the non-radio people started buying up stations and started focusing on short term profits. So if you, like Chris, are mainly interested in the business case for podcasts then some things have changed since 2006. But much hasn’t changed.

Podcasts are a great way to create, grow, and serve an audience in a very personal way.

Podcasts are a valuable channel that your businesses can use to talk directly to your customers. You need to understand how audio differs from other media and how podcasts differ from other delivery systems. If you do, you will benefit tremendously. Can any company benefit from a podcast? I think so. Let’s put together a few pitches for podcasts that don’t yet exist.

There is no end to worthwhile creative ideas for podcasts. You need to pair the pitch with a solid business case. Identify your audience and your goal. Find your story and think about who best can tell that story to that audience.

Let’s take two big pitches—one to Make Magazine and one to The Walt Disney Company—and rif on them a bit.

Start with Make Magazine, for example. This is a wildly popular magazine that features the cool things that people make and customize. But it only comes out quarterly… so they also have a blog where they’re always on the lookout for cool things. Many of these items will never make it to the magazine where space is a premium. In the magazine, for many of the items you have 200-300 words to tell your story. That’s not a lot.

Make has a video podcast that is perfect for their needs. They demonstrate weekend projects in a short and engaging way. Make is also about to debut a new television show on public television.

What could a weekly audio podcast add to all of these offerings? Through audio you can get to know the makers and what makes them tick. In the magazine we get a little of that in the longer pieces but we’re mainly focused on what they are making and how. We can include people who have created ideas that aren’t so visual and we can find them anywhere in the world without sending a camera crew.

We can also resell our food. The same reporters who have written articles for the magazine can tell the parts of the story that wouldn’t fit into the 300 words they were given. They can talk to people who tried the project themselves and have advice on where things can go wrong. I wandered around the Maker Faire last year with a microphone and captured some amazing compelling audio from Makers and fans that could have been edited down into a compelling series of podcasts. This is a show full of stories, inexpensive to produce (compared to a magazine or television), with amazing audio, and high sponsorship potential.

But there’s only one Make magazine and maybe they aren’t interested in a podcast or maybe they hire someone else to do it. What then? Look closer to home. Newspapers are in trouble and are cutting back and you, as a podcaster, can help them. How about a weekly podcast from the Arts section where the regular columnists and critics contributed pieces.

In a typical show the music critic could do an audio preview of the music that would be performed by the Orchestra this week and the food critic could visit local restaurants and talk to chefs and patrons. Why the arts section? Because this is a targeted demographic that you can sell to advertisers. This is also an area of the paper that does not tend to be served by other media. A sports podcast would probably not go over as well because your local radio and television cover the same stories the newspaper does. The arts are probably undercovered on radio and tv. If you’re going to pitch a sports podcast, look for holes in area coverage—maybe you do a high school sports roundup instead of focusing on the same pro games as everyone else.

Audio is great for communicating personalities and emotion. Audio paints great pictures that include the listener. With video the consumer sits outside the scene while with audio the consumer creates the scene. Audio brings me into a story quickly.

The key to audio is great stories and good story tellers. Walt Disney World has both. The parks and resorts are filled with great stories and their guests and cast members (with your editing and directing help) are great story tellers.

A year ago I did an internal podcast for Disney for one of their technology groups and spent a week in Orlando. At the end of each day we would head over to one of the parks for a meal or just to wander around. Every cast member I spent time with had great stories. They showed me an area of the parks I’d never noticed. They talked about some feature they particularly liked. They pointed out why the lions sit on that same rock in the Animal Kingdom Safari. They talked about time they’d spent in the park in Paris.

As an experiment, I called a couple of friends when I got home and asked them for their favorite Disney memories. One told me how his parents had taught him his phone number growing up to the tune of “It’s a Small World”. Another plans to run in a Disney marathon some day. I hadn’t even known there was a Disney marathon. Another loved walking out the back of Epcot and taking a quick boat ride over to the Hollywood Studios.

It’s not hard to imagine a weekly 15-20 minute WDW podcast for existing fans that isn’t marketing driven. Sure the American Idol attraction is opening in a couple of months—but everyone will be covering that. This show is a nod and a wink at people who are in the know. As for the business case, you are encouraging visitors to come back more often than they might otherwise have done, to stay a day longer to fit in everything they are hearing about, to come for some special event they didn’t know about, or to stay on property for the first time.

But again, you don’t need to sell a show to Disney to be successful. Look closer to home at entities that have existing fans that want to encourage them to come more often or to try new things when they do come. I produced a weekly show for a local jazz club that featured artists coming to town in the next month. It took people who were listening to the show for one artist that they knew and liked and introduced them to other artists they might want to come see. I’ve produced podcasts from conference presentations—people who can’t make it to your conference listen to these. Some conferences see this as money lost, but it is also a great way to interest someone enough that they might attend the following year. And you can often get a sponsor for these podcasts. Local colleges always have something going on. There are lectures, sporting events, shows, and more. A regular podcast serves the existing students, touches alumns in a way that encourages them to give money, and can be an effective recruiting tool.

Podcasting isn’t dead. I produced well over one hundred shows last year and have had great success with clients who understand their audience and have a story to tell them.

Daniel Steinberg is a podcaster, author, editor, trainer, and developer at Dim Sum Thinking. He co-authored the book Zero Configuration Networking: The Definitive Guide. He is also the author for two Pragmatic titles, Producing Compelling Audio and Podcasting Tricks.

All Tomorrow’s Radios

Julien and I talk about how the skills we’re sharing in our upcoming book, Trust Agents, are not unlike the communicators (be they advertisers, marketers, entertainers, or others like politicians) who mastered the difference between print and radio. They shifted from one media type to another, were there first, and took their platform rapidly to the top. Same thing happened with TV, again with the Internet in general, and most recently with what we’ve called new media, social media, and whatever else.

Podcasting as we all thought it might be in 2006 is gone. That won’t happen. You can dispute the hell out of me in the comments, but I’ll truck out as many fallen gods as you want. I know them all.

Instead, what’s going to happen is actually a bit more like what PodTech was trying to do before it went awry. I have always admired the early business model Jon Furrier had in place for PodTech, which was more about making interesting paid content. The payload of the information was decent, and companies were paying to get that information out there. I used to subscribe to over a dozen PodTech shows as a software engineer, and Furrier’s interviews both inspired me, and also saved my company millions of dollars.

There are many people who made good money with podcasting and videoblogging. I’m friends with them, too. The difference was this: they weren’t trying to sell entertainment for entertainment’s sake. They had a product or a service and they had a business model around their use of podcasting as a medium. My two most cited examples: the Financial Aid Podcast and WineLibrary TV.

My Old Vending Machine / Candy Bar Analogy

Owning a company like Podango is like owning a vending machine. If you’re hungry, you don’t think, “I hope there’s a really innovative vending machine out in the hall. You think, “Man, I really hope they have a Snickers.” Simply, you want the candy bar, not the machine.

Podcasts are candy bars. They’re the content. The thing is, just like candy bars, it’s a volume game. People aren’t willing to pay $6 for a Snickers. So, you have to find a way to extract value elsewhere.

In the end, want to make money with podcasting? Figure out how to make money not on the media itself, but on what the media represents. Simple, and yet elusive.

Lastly, maybe you don’t have to make money on podcasting. Maybe it’s just a really great way to convey information, or to display feelings, or to share information in non-text ways.

What say you?

Photo credit KevinDooley

Want to organize a PodCamp? Though it’s not exactly “easy,” it’s also not especially rocket science. If it was, I wouldn’t have been able to pull off the first one with Christopher Penn. He could’ve, but boy, we learned SO MUCH just in the middle of the action. You could do the same, but if you want to cheat a bit, take advantage of all the cool blogs written about it out there. Want a place to start? Here are 10 of the most important points to getting started.

Quick PodCamp Starter Kit

1. Are there more than 10 podcasters or videobloggers or bloggers in your area? If yes, then you can probably do a PodCamp.
2. Make a wiki. We use http://pbwiki.com . Easy cheesy to edit.
3. List your PodCamp with a tentative time frame up on PodCamp.org
   • Remember that there are six rules listed on the page to make it an official podcamp.
4. Blog that you’re going to do it.
5. Ask for co-organizers. Assign them very specific tasks.
6. Find a venue. This is way harder than you think.
   • Room for ___ people (it’s your event. How many do you want?)

   • Wifi
   • A/V gear (unless you can get a sponsor to give you some)
   • Food costs – Some places charge 3x the venue costs for meals
   • If you can get a corporate venue, that often works the best
7. Seek sponsors to cover costs.
   • Be very clear on what they get back for their money.

   • Make sure this includes link love on the web. If you can, ask others to also blog about the sponsors.
   • Be very open about who will come, what type of people, and how the sponsors will interact.
8. Decide whether to charge for attendance (something nominal).
9. Delegate to the volunteers such that everyone knows what they own.
10. Hold a great event and write about it for years.

I’m sure that Christopher S. Penn and Whitney Hoffman have some other advice, but that’s a super tiny starter pack list for you to think about, should you want to start your own PodCamp, and hey, there have been 50 or so of them. Why not?

The mainstream stormed over the bulwarks and now owns the top of the iTunes video charts. Though a few examples of top shelf independent video exist, like Epic Fu and Something to be Desired, and a few others exist, it’s not like we took over the airwaves. In fact, they took us over.

BUT personal media, making conversations using internet video, seems to be on the rise. With tools like Seesmic and ooVoo and Skype Video, there are lots of ways to have conversations between interested people. This could be business. It might be church. What do YOU know about it? Some quick thoughts to start the conversation.

How Did Personal Video Eclipse Entertainment VideoThinking about personal video and how it seems to have taken over enteraintment-style video.

What happened? Are you involved in Internet video? Do you use Ustream.tv, BlogTV.com, Mogulus, or any of the other video platforms out there? How do you incorporate it into your media making?

The New Media Expo Story

I read James Lewin’s coverage of the event, where he asks if tech trade shows still matter. Short answer: yes, but I’ll get back to that.

Tim Bourquin posted his frustrations about the business at large here. Gutsy move, actually, and I had a lot of thoughts about the post that I want to talk about, but maybe not here. (Note: remember, I also work for a media and events company.

Dave Peck voiced his dissatisfaction here. Part of the complaints in the comments were about the shift to Las Vegas (from Ontario, California). Vegas is tricky for events.

My Take

I think Tim and Emile Bourquin (and team) have put on a great show over the years. I enjoy their event. It’s worth paying for. I think they’ve done lots to bring together the tenuous “industry” that circles podcasting and media making. I would’ve been there this year, but a last-minute conflict pulled me out of the game. Otherwise, I was proud that I was asked to take the stage at an event I loved in 2006 when I first attended it. I hope Tim continues making a show, but if not, I understand his perspective.

For those who try comparing NME to PodCamp (note: I’m co-founder of PodCamp), it’s not the same thing. Tim’s show is worth the price of admission. He goes to a great expense to put it on. PodCamps are different, and we offset the costs by doing volunteer labor. One isn’t better than the other. They’re different. More about PodCamps later in the post.

But now, think about podcasting. Where is THAT going? If you can guess that one correctly, get back to us all. It’s been a crazy ride so far.

Blog World Expo

Rick Calvert and team are putting on Blog World Expo in a few weeks, and I will be in attendance. This event covers blogging heavily, but also has a new media track. It debuted last year in Las Vegas, and appears there this year, too. This means there were two events about social media (let’s not quibble over terms) within a month of each other. I planned on attending both. Why? Different crowds. Tim’s event has a history and brings lots of the podcasting world’s brightest. Rick’s event brought diverse people like religious, military, sports, and political bloggers, and I liked that.

Those are two events about social media, within a month of each other, in the same state.

And again, what’s the state of blogging? People are slipping off to twitter and tumble and seesmic. Some blogs are more and more like mainstream outfits now. Others are falling apart into lifestreams. Is there a blogging industry? Not sure.

Other events

Let’s add to that Gnomedex (I fly out later today), South by Southwest, Podcasters Across Borders, SOBCon, and several other social media events of varying prices.

Add on top of that the several dozen PodCamp events, lots of various social media events, meetups, tweetups, Mashable-ups, TechCrunch50, and we haven’t even spilled over into the bigger events like all of Tim O’Reilly’s stuff. And now, we have the crux of the issue.

As Goes the Social Media, So Goes the Events

Why aren’t we catching on that blogs are atomizing into blogs/twitter/friendfeed/seesmic/google reader comments/ etc, and thus, the events are going to start to feel that way, too? It’s like we need a FriendFeed for events at this point, to sum up all the experiences we’re having, and those we have to skip.

Want to see just how diffuse this is becoming? Look at Robert Scoble’s watchlist on Upcoming.org. And that’s not all of them. You need to get into Somewhat Frank’s Calendar, and a few other choice places to see all the social media events.

There are almost more events than there are bloggers and podcasters, and that’s in the US alone.

What Comes Next

If I knew this, I’d be a billionaire. But I can say this: the event space shifts and turns all the time. There used to be Comdex, a super-event will gazillions of people. That atomized and now several other events took its place. E3 used to be the gamer’s event of the year. Things rise, things fall. They swell up, they dissipate.

As a consumer of events (I go to dozens a year), I’m putting my personal value in attending into three camps:

1. Who will I meet there from the industry itself?
2. Who will I meet there are prospective clients who have also come to attend the event?
3. Where are my friends going?

Note that I didn’t say I wanted to see where the vendors and new technology are. Why? Because you’ll tell me that. (You= Paisano, Engadget, Louis Gray, Robert Scoble, Center Networks, etc).

Note that I didn’t say where all the great speakers will be. I love meeting great speakers, but I try do do that in the hallways between speeches.

Note that I don’t care which show is the biggest ,best, only, and all the other terms marketers want to use.

As a PRODUCER of events, I have certain goals and put my value in the following:

• How can I deliver the most value for a reasonable cost?
• How can I make the event last before, during, and after with online community?
• How can I empower others to make their own experiences?
• How can I deliver the most education?

To me, as things spread out, diffuse, and move differently between larger and smaller crowd sizes, I will focus on adjusting my expectations, making the ideas around the events more flexible, and trying to deliver as much to the community as I can around the constraints as they come up. I’m working, as always, from a passion for what comes next, and the goal of helping others learn and then execute.

And I know this, too: Tim, Rick, everyone else mentioned above, and everyone creating events is either thinking the same way, or they’re bound for some rough waters.

I’ve got my own event coming up with partners David Meerman Scott and Paul Gillin in October. This one is more geared towards helping marketers and PR professionals understand what all the other events listed above live and breathe on a daily basis. It’s a bit different in that way. And yet, I’m mindful of everything I’ve covered in this post.

Just the same, there’s a lot to learn, and many connections to be made, and many new people coming into the social media space every day. We’ll find ways to get everyone together face to face.

Just be mindful of everything going on around the actual ticket you bought, and the sessions you liked or didn’t like. You’re part of it with us. And that’s the good news.

– [chrisbrogan.com]

Photo credit, respres

One reason is that products like Twitter and Seesmic and uStream.tv all give us even faster, simpler conversations. We don’t have to synthesize information, compose a position, and build a post. Instead, we can talk back and forth about things we like. Another reason is that the feedback loop is so much tighter when doing a ping pong game of ideas instead of the blogger-to-comments model.

But wow. I sure miss you bloggers and podcasters that I know in love. Thanks to Mitch Joel and Christopher S. Penn and Valeria Maltoni and a whole host of others who keep writing and/or recording something interesting and useful daily. To the rest of you, come back?

**Update: Inspired in no small part by a great Mitch Joel post, though I didn’t realize it until Mitch commented. : )

Photo credit FotoDawg

Related articles by Zemanta

• Save me from the Twitter clones
• Blogs Will Benefit from “Comment Centralization”
• The Future of Blogging Revealed

You can listen to the first part of the interview here, and then Jim will release another episode each week.

One note: Jim was perhaps the most prepared podcasting host that I’ve ever sat with. He had amazing preparation skills, and the patience of a saint (to deal with my scheduling issues).

Anyhow, check out the podcast here.

By the way, Jim’s not just another pretty face. He wrote a really interesting book (I’m reading Chapter 3 now):

What Social Media Does Best

• Blogs allow chronological organization of thoughts, status, ideas. This means more permanence than emails.
• Podcasts (video and audio) encourage different types of learning, and in portable formats.
• Social networks encourage collaboration, can replace intranets and corporate directories, and can promote non-email conversation channels.
• Social networks can amass like-minded people around shared interests with little external force, no organizational center, and a group sense of what is important and what comes next.
• Social bookmarking means that entire groups can learn of new articles, tools, and other Web properties, instead of leaving them all on one machine, one browser, for one human.
• Blogs and wikis encourage conversations, sharing, creation.
• Social software, like Flickr and Last.fm and even Amazon.com, promote human-mediated information sharing. Similar mechanisms inside of larger organizations would be just as effective.
• Social news sites show the popularity of certain information, at least within certain demographics. Would roll-your-own voting within the company be useful?
• Social networks are full of prospecting and lead generation information for sales and marketing.
• Social networks make for great ways to understand the mindset of the online consumer, should that be of value to you.
• Online versions of your materials and media, especially in formats that let you share, mean that you’re equipping others to run with your message, should that be important (like if you’re a marketer).
• Online versions of your materials and media are searchable, and help Google help you find new visitors / customers / employees.
• Social networks contain lots of information about your prospective new hires, your customers, your competitors.
• Blogs allow you to speak your mind, and let the rest of the world know your thought processes and mindsets.
• Podcasts are a way to build intimacy with information.
• Podcasts reach people who are trying out new gadgets, like iPhones, iPods, Apple TVs, Zunes, and more.
• Tagging and sharing and all the other activities common on the social Web mean that information gets passed around much faster.
• Human aggregation and mediation improves the quality of data you find, and gives you more “exactly what I was looking for” help. (See also, Mahalo).
• Innovation works much faster in a social software environment, open source or otherwise.
• Conversations spread around, adding metadata and further potential business value.
• People feel heard.

And that’s a great place to ask you what I’ve missed. What else does social media do best, in your estimation?

—

The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.

Get the entire series by subscribing to this blog, and subscribe to my free newsletter here.

Photo credit, Boston Public Library

Related articles by Zemanta

• How Reddit is Flirting With The Future of Social News
• Circles of Expertise in 2.0 for Biz
• Marketing vs. Conversation
• Reddit Goes Open Source, Takes Aim at Digg’s Shady “Algorithm”
• Mind the Gap: Turning Vision into Reality