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How Writers Can Use QR Codes

November 28, 2011 By Erik Deckers 6 Comments

What can writers do with QR codes? Do we even need them? When most writers still have that “I’m a writer, not a marketer” attitude, embracing something as 21st century as a smartphone, let alone a QR code, is going to be difficult.

But, if you’re trying to reach a particular kind of audience — let’s say a tech-savvy audience — or people who might not otherwise discover your work, a QR code could be a great way to market your work in some surprising and creative ways.

QR Code to my About.me page

The whole point of a QR code is to reach a mobile audience. People who use their mobile phones to read articles and watch videos. People who use their tablets to read ebooks. Basically anyone not using a laptop or desktop computer, or reading paper-based articles and stories.

By tapping into the growing mobile market — and it’s growing fast — writers can get their words in front of a brand new audience, or at least an audience who can access your old work in new ways.

You can reach that mobile market in a few different ways, including emails, or making people tap long URLs into their web browser. But a QR code — that funny looking pixelated square — is something people can scan with their mobile phones to perform a certain action, like open a website or a video.

For writers, you can point a QR code at some of your work, and allow people to read it on their mobile phones. Here are a few places you can point them:

At one of your best articles or short stories: This should be the first place your QR codes should go. Point them at some of your best work, and then put the QR code on a business card or writer’s resume. Or if you’re at a conference, put it on a t-shirt. Make sure that your website is mobile-friendly. Best way to do this? Install WP-Touch on your WordPress.org blog, or use Blogger, Posterous, or WordPress.com for a mobile-ready blog. Warning: Do not just point a QR code at your main website. For one thing, it’s boring and unimaginative. Hopefully you’ve already got a short, and clever, domain name, so a QR code is wasted. But if you don’t have anywhere else to point it, at least make sure your site is mobile friendly. A site designed for a desktop is awful to negotiate with a mobile phone.
Your book page on Amazon.com: Have a book flyer or sales card? Put a QR code on it and let people scan it. They can make their purchase right on their mobile phone and have it shipped to their house or office.
A mobile-only video: If you have a book trailer, consider making one especially for mobile use, and maybe even specifically for QR users. Speak directly to the user — “Hi, thanks for scanning the QR code and checking out the video.” — and tell them what is so special about this particular video. (“I’m sharing three additional personal branding secrets you won’t find in the Branding Yourself book.”) Make sure the video works on your mobile phone too. Some videos can’t play on mobile phones, so make sure you choose the right format and size.
At your ebook: If you’ve got an ebook for sale, whether it’s on Amazon.com or another ecommerce page, write up a small card about the book, and put a QR code on it. People can read the ebook on their phone or tablet, especially if they’re using the Amazon Kindle app.
At a secret page on your website: One of the best uses I saw of a QR code was a friend who put it on a t-shirt that he wore to conferences. People who scanned the code were immediately taken to a hidden page on his website where they could find how to connect with him via Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., as well as some special information that wasn’t available on his regular website.

The nice thing about QR codes is that you can point them anywhere you want. When you want to change pages, just edit the QR code. No need to create a new one or get rid of anything with the old code on it. Just go to the place where you created it, change the destination URL and you’re set.

You can put your code just about anywhere it can effectively be scanned, and point it anywhere that makes sense. On your business cards pointing to your book pages. T-shirts to your About.me page. Book covers to mobile videos. Anywhere you can think of, you can point it. Just don’t point it at your regular website, or put it on a highway billboard.

Watch Scott Stratten (@unmarketing) talk about QR codes and how they should and should not be used.

Author : Erik Deckers • Content Location : Indianapolis, IN • Copyright Year : 2011 • Headline : How Writers Can Use QR Codes • Keywords : qr codes, writers, marketing, social media, smartphones •

Filed Under: Blog Writing, Blogging, Marketing, Personal Branding, QR Codes, Social Media, Video, Writing Tagged With: Marketing, qr codes, smartphones, Social Media, writers

Scott Stratten Smacks Down Realtors Who Misuse Social Media

September 4, 2011 By Erik Deckers Leave a Comment

Scott Stratten is pleading with Realtors to stop misusing QR codes, social media, and even advertising claims. He’s having a go at Canadian Realtors, but the message applies to American ones as well.

Here’s the gist of his complaint:

QR codes are for mobile phones. Don’t point a QR code at a desktop website. Create a mobile-friendly website. If you can’t do that, don’t use a QR code.
Don’t just put Facebook and Twitter logos on your advertising. Tell us where to actually find you on Facebook and Twitter. Make it easy for your clients to find you.
Don’t treat your Twitter feed like a listing service. If you’re not engaging buyers and sellers, then you’re not going to get any benefit out of social media at all.

Coming up this week, I’ll have a post about five ways Realtors can properly use social media.

Author : Erik Deckers • Content Location : Indianapolis, IN • Copyright Year : 2011 • Headline : Scott Stratten Smacks Down Realtors Who Misuse Social Media • Keywords : social media, Realtors, Scott Stratten •

Filed Under: Facebook, Marketing, QR Codes, Social Media, Twitter, Video Tagged With: Realtors, Scott Stratten, Social Media

15 Social Media Tactics to Promote Your Upcoming Theatrical Show

August 30, 2011 By Erik Deckers Leave a Comment

We just finished the 10-day festival of independent theatre and weirdness known as the Indianapolis Fringe Theatre Festival, and I had a chance to see a few shows, including a couple of old favorites.

I also had a chance to talk social media — because I’m an annoying geek that way — with a couple performers, and decided to write a blog post based on what I told a couple of them.

Didi Panache and Wayburn Sassy of the Screw You Revue

This post is written for any musician or performer, especially the independent theatrical types who depend on ticket sales to make their living. For some of these performers, they bounce from festival to festival and make a good portion of their income from their take. Some even use one festival to pay for the next one.

This is a strategy they can use to improve their take next year.

What You’ll Need

A laptop computer
A digital camera with video capabilities. If not, your laptop’s camera will do.
A Twitter account.
A blog (WordPress.com or Blogger.com are great free platforms, as is Posterous.com and Tumblr.com)
A YouTube account.
A Facebook page. (This is different from a personal profile. You want an Artist’s page.)

What You’ll Do

These are in a general chronological order, but not in a do-one-then-the-next lockstep order. I’m using the Indianapolis Fringe (#IndyFringe) as an example, but this will work for any concert, performance, show, or festival.

First, make sure your Twitter bio includes a line about the name of your show, or your most famous character’s name. If you only performed in one festival, put the name of that in the bio too. “You may have seen me at the #IndyFringe Festival!” You can always change your bio, especially as you move from festival to festival, or follow specific groups of people.

Start following people on Twitter. People will follow you back, especially once they see that you’re a performer at the festival they went to, and even moreso if they were at your show. To find people who were at the festival, do these steps:

Go to FollowBlast.com and do a search for #indyfringe, and follow anyone using that term. Keep in mind that these hashtags only work for about 30 minutes, so it’s actually a good idea to access this site while you’ve got some downtime at next year’s show.
Build a hashtag archive at TwapperKeeper.com. I’m still trying this out, but I’m hoping it will collect old hashtags, unlike FollowBlast.com. However, it only goes back 7 – 10 days, and back for 1,500 tweets. It will then go forward and continue to save tweets. You should set this up before your next festival starts. Work in conjunction with the festival organizers, because they may want to use your archive as well. Also, before you start, search to see if anyone else set up an archive before you so you don’t duplicate efforts.
Go to search.twitter.com as another way to search for #hashtags. Put in #indyfringe and see what you can find. Search results are somewhat limited, but you may be able to find older tweets that FollowBlast and Twapper Keeper couldn’t, especially if you’re seeing this now, and are scrambling to recover those old tweets.
If all else fails, try Topsy. It’s not 100% accurate, but it gives you more than you might get if you’re looking for a festival that ended three weeks ago.

Check out the festival organizer’s Twitter page and follow everyone they follow (not everyone who follows them). If they have been good Twitter stewards, they have vetted the people they’re following. Those people will include other performers, supporters, festival-goers, and other people in the industry or festival business. (This last group could be a good connection to getting into other festivals!) Do this with any festivals you plan on going to next year as well.

Use Twellow.com and Twellowhood.com as a way to find other people who are in the cities where you’ll be next year.

Why You’ll Do It

Okay so far? You’ve built your Twitter list for a very important reason: Promoting stuff! You’re going to promote next year’s show through videos, your blog, and even email newsletters. Here’s how.

Zan Aufderheide of Welcome to Zanland

Now you need your camera. Start shooting some short videos. Update us on what you’re doing, where you’ll be, thoughts on stuff you did this year. Treat it like a diary. If you’re an actor playing a part, do it in character, especially if that character is going to be back at the festivals next year. Shoot the videos in character, or tell some jokes, or give people a preview of what you’ve been working on. Shoot some rehearsals, some special messages to individuals, or perform a new song.
Post those on YouTube.com (make them public), and make sure you fill out all the details, like Title, Description, etc. (all this stuff is indexed by Google, which makes your videos found more easily by people searching for you or the festival).
Share these videos on Twitter and your Facebook page, and post them to your blog (do the same with any photos you take). This will accomplish a lot of pre-show promo before you ever set foot in the city. And if you can get people buzzing about the show before you start, you’ll be selling out more shows.

You can get a Flip camera for as low as $170 now, and if you think that’s still high, use the money you were going to spend on fancy-schmancy postcards and spend it on the camera instead. The postcards are immediately dated once the festival ends, and you can’t reuse them. The video camera will pay for itself with all the videos you shoot and the postcards you don’t buy.

Finally, there are a few things you want to do next year, to get ready for the next off-season.

Build a mailing list of all your attendees. Send around a clipboard before your show begins, or have them sign up before they leave. Ask people for their HOME email, not their work email — especially if your show is laden with profanities and cross-dressers. Guard this with your life. Promise to never, ever spam them. Use it only for newsletters and occasional social media communication.
Load that list into a Gmail account (here’s why you should use Gmail), and then either use the Rapportive.com Gmail plugin, or upload the email list to Gist.com, to start finding where your list members can be found on the different social media networks. Follow them on Twitter, and connect with them on Facebook.
Send out an occasional newsletter — no more than once a month — and email it to them. Let them know what you’re working on for next year so they get excited about your upcoming visit. Give them an opportunity to unsubscribe, but try to give them useful information so they won’t want to.
Use your video camera to shoot post-show testimonials and get them up on your blog as soon as a show ends. Tweet the new blog posts to your Twitter network during the show, so you can continue to remind people you’re there and you’ve got an awesome show. Ask your Twitter network to retweet your show information, so they can help you spread the word.

There is so much more you can do with social media. Believe it or not, this is just scratching the surface of what can be done. But while it seems overwhelming, keep in mind two things:

This will get easier as you do it more often.
It beats the hell out of busking and handing out postcards in 90 degree heat.

Photo credit: Erik Deckers

Filed Under: Blogging, Facebook, Marketing, Personal Branding, Public Relations, Reputation Management, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Tools, Twitter, Video Tagged With: blogging, facebook, Social Media, tactics, twitter, video, youtube

Video Book Review – Get Seen, by Steve Garfield

May 3, 2011 By Erik Deckers Leave a Comment

I recently read Steve Garfield’s Get Seen: Online Video Secrets to Building Your Business (New Rules Social Media Series) (affiliate link) because of my growing interest in video, especially as it relates to citizen journalism and crisis communication.

Get Seen is a great book for this, since Steve pretty much made a name for himself as being “that guy” when it comes to video blogging, scoring an interview with Congressman Duncan Hunter — scooping CNN in the process — and Jimmy Fallon, getting a press pass to a Barack Obama rally, and having videos appear on BBC and CNN. He’s got the knowledge and experience to tell you everything you need to know about creating fast videos with a small camera and your laptop.

If you have a hankering to do video, Steve’s book can be a little bad for you, because he talks about all the different cameras he’s been using for the last several years, making you want at least a couple of the cameras he’s got. I’m going to stick with my little Flip camera right now (I’m part of 12 Stars Media’s You Do Video program), but now I’ve already started looking at some new options to include lights and an external mic jack.

So check out the video, check out the book, and see if you can start adding video to your business or personal blog.

Filed Under: Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Citizen Journalism, Communication, Social Media, Tools, Video Tagged With: book review, Steve Garfield, video blogging, video book review, Wiley

Five Reasons to Use Posterous as a Social Media Distribution Point

January 31, 2011 By Erik Deckers 1 Comment

I’ve been enjoying playing with Posterous for about a year now, and while I don’t recommend it for everyone, it can be a great tool for some people. You should consider using Posterous if you are a:

Beginning blogger
Social media specialist
Mobile blogger
Crisis communicator

Posterous is an email submission blog. You send your post as an email to your own Posterous.com address, treat the subject line as the headline, and any attachments you send are incorporated into the post itself. It’s not pretty at times, but if you need something fast, this is it. Plus, you can go in and edit stuff to make it look better later.

My Posterous.com blog

I’ve often said, “Using a blog interface is a lot like sending an email.” Now, thanks to Posterous, it really is sending an email.

Here are five reasons to use Posterous as a blog platform and social media distribution point:

It’s ideal for mobile phone users. If you’re constantly on the go, and want to blog about the things you see, Posterous allows you to upload photos or videos to your site, along with any accompanying text. Posterous takes advantage of the overall computing power of today’s mobile phones. When I need to demonstrate Posterous during a talk, a few minutes before I go on, I’ll snap a picture of the gathering audience on my mobile phone, attach it to an email, and type in a couple of lines. Before my talk begins, I tell the audience, “I’m going to hit send on this email right now. You’ll see why it’s important in 10 minutes.” Then, when I get to that point in my talk, I show them my Posterous page, which has the picture of them. If you’re a crisis communicator or a mobile blogger, this is an ideal tool for communicating with the public on the fly.
Posterous will automatically send videos and photos to other sites. I have tied my Flickr, Picasa, and YouTube accounts to my Posterous account; it also sends videos to Vimeo. Whenever I take photos or videos, and send them to Posterous, they are automatically uploaded to the appropriate networks. I don’t have to upload them first, and then download the embed code. The downside for anyone who is concerned about search engine optimization is that your digital properties are on Posterous, not on YouTube or Flickr, so you lose any search engine juice that would normally come from a well-optimized video or photo that links to your site. There are workarounds for this, but they take some extra time after your post has been uploaded. If you’re a social media specialist, you’ll love this feature.
Posterous will automatically repopulate content to other blog platforms. You can tell Posterous to re-send your content on to your WordPress, Blogger, Drupal, TypePad, LiveJournal, Xanga, or Tumblr site. Publish a post on Posterous, republish it on your “official” blog. Yes, there are plugins and apps that let you email your posts in to these platforms, but they won’t necessarily upload your video and photos to YouTube and Flickr. Again, crisis communicators or mobile bloggers who need to get information out to several networks will love this feature.
Tell Posterous NOT to post to certain networks. The default setting for Posterous is to repost everything to every network you want it to (i.e. email my post to post@posterous.com. But what if you have a photo you don’t want to send to Flickr, or you don’t want a post to show up on your WordPress blog? By using a specific email address — for example facebook+youtube+blog+twitter@posterous.com — I can tell Posterous to post to my different properties, but leave out a specific network. In this example, I’m leaving out Flickr.
Posterous can automatically notify Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz, etc. about new blog posts. Tie your Posterous blog into your different social networks, and notify your followers when a new post is up.

Filed Under: Blog Writing, Blogging, Communication, Crisis Communication, Photo, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Tools, Twitter, Video Tagged With: blog writing, blogging, Crisis Communication, Flickr, photos, Posterous, video, WordPress, youtube

Indianapolis Motor Speedway President & CEO Jeff Belskus Turning to Video Blogging

September 23, 2010 By Erik Deckers 3 Comments

As an Indianapolis 500 blogger, I occasionally get news from the folks at Indy Car and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (although they’re part of the same family, Indy Car is the governing body of the sport of Indy Car racing, and the IMS is the track the Indianapolis 500 is held on).

Anyway, I got something yesterday that caught my professional eye: the IMS President & CEO Jeff Belskus is going to start video blogging as a way to reach Indy 500 fans.

This is a rather bold step for the venerable institution, which will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Indianapolis 500 in 2011. I mean, it wasn’t until 2009 that they invited bloggers to the media center (giving some of us the recognition and confirmation that what we do is still journalism, even if it’s niche journalism or citizen journalism).

Fans are asked to post any questions, comments, or ideas for Belskus (along with their name and hometown) at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway blog.

While Belskus probably won’t do the customized Old Spice Guy YouTube videos, which included a pretty damn awesome marriage proposal — although if he did, I would become a lifelong fan of Jeff Belskus — I can see him doing shout outs to fans who took the time to ask a question. This kind of personalization can only further cement the relationship between fan and sport. Imagine how much more you would love your favorite team if they gave you special recognition, even once, during a game, match, or race.

Imagine hearing on a TV broadcast, “The Indianapolis Colts would like to personally thank Casey Mullins for the great comments and tweets during the game against the Giants last week. We appreciate your support.” How would you feel, especially if your name was Casey Mullins, if your favorite or even semi-favorite team did that for you? Wouldn’t you want to support the team even more?

Whether that’s the intention of Belskus and the IMS, that could be the side benefit: increased fan loyalty, increased participation in this growing communication channel, all for the price of taking 30 – 60 minutes to shoot 10 – 20 one-off videos with a Flip cam (or knowing the IMS and their technology, a kick-ass digital video camera that any self-respecting video production company would give their right arm to have).

So I’ll be interested to see what the IMS comes up with over the next few months with this experiment. I hope they can give it them time and energy a project like this deserves. The investment is minimal, since they already have the staff and expertise to do it, and the ROI should be huge.

Filed Under: Blogging, Communication, Marketing, Tools, Video

5 Photo & Video Sharing Sites Travel Destinations Should Use

July 20, 2010 By Erik Deckers 5 Comments

Yesterday, I talked about the 5 Reasons Why Travel & Tourism Destinations Need Social Media, and how social media is being used by more and more people than you may have realized.

Social media helps people share news about their lives with their friends and family. Not only are they telling people they went on vacation, they’re able to show them where they went, what they did, and all the good times they had. They’re especially doing it on the photo and video sharing sites. Here are fives sites you should use to promote your own travel and tourism destination.

YouTube (VIDEO)

What it is: This is the website everyone knows when it comes to video sharing. According to one source, there are 1,500 years worth of videos on YouTube right now. But that’s because they make it so easy.
Get started:Go to YouTube.com and set up your account. If you already have a Google account of some sort (Gmail, iGoogle, Google Docs), you already have an account, because Google owns YouTube. Start finding other friends and guests by importing your email address book. Then follow the instructions to upload your videos.
Strategy: Encourage guests to upload their own videos and tag your destination in it. (This helps you get found for any searches on YouTube.) Upload your own videos (regular or HD) and embed them in your blog or link to your Facebook account.

Vimeo (VIDEO)

What it is: Vimeo is another video sharing site that’s not nearly as big as YouTube. The benefit to you is that you get to be a bigger fish in a bigger pond. According to their website, it was originally “. . . created by filmmakers and video creators who wanted to share their creative work, along with intimate personal moments of their everyday life,” so there tends to be more of an artsy feel to it, but you’re not limited to only being a filmmaker or artist.
Get started: Go to Vimeo.com and set up an account. Import your email address book (Google or Yahoo), and make connections with your guests.
Strategy: Same as Facebook. If your guests use Vimeo, encourage them to upload videos and tag your destination in it. Upload your regular and HD videos, and then use the embed code to place them in your blog or link to your Facebook account.

Flickr

What it is: Flickr is one of the two most popular photo sharing sites. In fact, by strict definition, it’s a social network centered around photo sharing (actually, all the video and photo sharing tools are considered social networks). You upload your photos and share them with your friends, embed them in blog posts, and link to them in Twitter messages.(Note: Flickr has begun accepting 90 second videos for uploading. While they won’t give YouTube a run for their money, they are making it easier for Flickr fans to keep their video in one place too.)
Get started: If you already have a Yahoo account, you have a Flickr account. Otherwise, sign up, import your email address book, and then start uploading photos. If you have an iPhone or Android, you can also upload photos directly to Flickr from your phone. There is also a digital camera storage card called the Eye-Fi that will not only store your photos, but upload them whenever you’re in a wifi hotspot.
Strategy: Hold a best photo contest and encourage guests to upload the photos to Flickr and Picasa (next section), and then embed the photos in the comments section of your website or your Facebook page.. Post the entries to your website, and allow voting for the best photo (use SurveyMonkey.com). Use the best photo(s) on your promotional materials. Also, consider using a Creative Commons license with your photos (this lets other people use your photos as long as they give you credit), and let them use photos that link back to your Flickr page.

Picasa

What it is: Another photo sharing site, but this one is owned by Google. I like Picasa a little more because it’s easier to integrate with a Blogger blog, plus they have different paid subscription levels. You can get 20GB for $5, or 200GB for $50.
Get started: If you have a Gmail account or a YouTube account, you’re all set. Otherwise, go to picasaweb.google.com Next, go to Picasa.com and download the Photo Uploader. This will let you upload photos in batches, rather than a few at a time.
Strategy: First, don’t worry about whether you can upload videos to Picasa, because you can also use YouTube. (Remember, they’re both owned by Google.) Next, just like with Flickr, hold a photo contest, and use the best photos in your promotional material. And consider using a Creative Commons license with your Picasa photos.

Facebook

What it is: The biggest social network in the world. We talked about it previously.
Get started: Hopefully you already started a Facebook account, but if not, go to Facebook.com and start an account. Get comfortable with it and then start a business page (what they used to call a “Fan Page”) for your own business. Invite friends to “Like” your business page, and do it more than once (people need reminding).
Strategy: While this won’t be the hub of your social media campaign, it needs to be a major part of it. Facebook will have more of your guests and customers on it than any other social network. This is where you need to push a lot of your marketing message, which will drive people back to your main website or blog.

Where should you start?

While there is a chicken and egg question about whether you should join social networks first or start with photo and video sites, it ultimately doesn’t matter. It will take a few days to get everything ramped up. Focus on one video site and one photo site. Pick the one you like the best, and the one that is easiest to use, and just start using it.

At the same time, pick the social network you want to start on (I recommend Facebook, since that’s where everyone is), and work on that one as well. You’ll ultimately spend more time on Facebook than you will on your photo and video sites, so consider these sites as supporting sites for your social network.

Filed Under: Facebook, Lead Generation, Networking, Photo, Public Relations, Reputation Management, Social Media, Social Networks, Video Tagged With: facebook, Flickr, Picasa, social networking, social networks, tourism, travel, travel and tourism, Vimeo, youtube

5 Reasons Why Travel & Tourism Destinations Need Social Media

July 19, 2010 By Erik Deckers 6 Comments

I speak to a lot of travel and tourism destinations about social media, and often answer the same question, “why do we even need social media?” There are several reasons, so before I ever start talking about how you can do social media, let’s focus on the why first.

Photo of marina at Patoka Lake, taken by Erik Deckers

Patoka Lake in southern Indiana

Generation Y loooooves social media. Last year, Gen Y outnumbered Boomers 81 million to 78 million in this country. And while Gen Y doesn’t buy as many vacations as Boomers, they ARE responsible for about $2 – $3 billion in spending each year. They influence things like the family’s car purchase, where the family goes to eat, and of course, where the family goes on vacation. Combine that with the fact that nearly 96% of Generation Y is on a social network of some kind, and you start to see who you need to reach.
Boomers are huge consumers of social media too. While Generation Y is the biggest demographic on Facebook (which will tip the scales at 500 million members in the next couple of weeks), the fastest growing demographic is women between the ages of 50 – 60. And they’re on the network telling their friends about their kids and grandkids, catching up with old friends, sharing glimpses of their lives, and of course, telling their friends where they went on vacation. And they’re sharing photos and videos of those memories.
Social Media is free. All of the major social networks are free to join, and free to use. You can join Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube right now, and get started. Of course, there’s a significant amount of time involved, but if you can find even 30 minutes a day to do your social media marketing, you’ll make a huge dent in your campaign, and be miles ahead of your competition. We’ll talk about how to do this in a future post.
Social media lets others do the work for you Facebook, YouTube (video sharing), and Flickr and Picasa (photo sharing) are all considered social networks. And they make it easy for people to share information about their vacation. They upload photos and videos to their sites, and share them on Facebook. As their friends see where they went, they think about going there too. So they’re doing your marketing for you via word-of-mouth. Cost to you? Nothing
Social media is about telling a story. People don’t want to see newspaper ads or read brochures. They want stories. They want proof. They want to know what other people are doing at your place. Don’t just tell people you offer water skiing or horseback riding, show them other guests who are riding horses or water skiing. Let your other guests tell stories about how much they enjoyed it. Tell people your stories, let your guests tell their own stories, and then share them through your social network. Again, cost to you? Nothing.

Social media is fast becoming the way people share information and news about themselves. We are becoming a society that values the opinions of our friends — and even online strangers — more than we value the marketers’ opinions. Social media lets you do all of that quickly and easily. We’ll show you how in the coming days and weeks.

Filed Under: Communication, Facebook, Lead Generation, Marketing, Social Media, Twitter, Video Tagged With: Social Media, tourism, travel, travel and tourism, travel destinations

Social Media Is NOT Socially Isolating

June 8, 2010 By Erik Deckers 3 Comments

A friend recently sent me a link to Tom Wright’s response to blogging and social media, wherein Wright called the two movements “cultural masturbation.” In it, he warned against the social isolationism of social media and blogging.

Blogging? Seriously? How is blogging any more socially isolating than just plain old writing? Writing a book, writing in your journal, writing a short story, writing a poem. Yes, these are all socially isolating in and of themselves, but what makes blogging soooo much different from every other form of writing?

(Hint: it doesn’t. It’s only believed to be a problem by people who don’t fully understand that blogging is just one more form of publishing.)

NT Wright on Blogging/Social Media from Bill Kinnon on Vimeo.

Bah!

It’s easy to say something creates isolationism. Tom Wright says it about blogging and social media, that it will somehow keep people from interacting with other people. He worries that if we spend too much time in front of a computer screen, we will lose regular face-to-face contact with real people. We will substitute computer time for real time, and completely ruin society.

Double Bah!

This is nothing new. Experts have been wringing their hands about something making us lose touch with our humanity for years.

“Experts” said it about email and the Internet in the mid-90s.
“Experts” said it about television in the 40s and 50s.
“Experts” said it about movies in the 20s and 30s.
“Experts” said it about radio in the 20s.
“Experts” said it about the telephone at the turn of the century.
“Experts” said it about the automobile at the turn of the century.

I think the only thing who are isolated from society are the experts.

Tom Wright admits he doesn’t use social media, doesn’t know how to use it, and this somehow qualifies him to speak about the social and relational ramifications of social media? (He does admit to being an avid texter and emailer though; so is he socially isolated?)

For one thing, if he used social media to any degree, he would also know that many social media users — at least in the business setting — turn their online contacts into real-world contacts. I have personally drunk gallons of coffee with people I’ve met online. I’ve had conversations with them, done business with them, become friends with them. All people I never would have met if it hadn’t been for social media.

And I’m not the only one. My entire industry is rife with people who use social media to enhance and even create their careers.

Social Media is Not the Bad Guy, Human Behavior Is

Anything can be a detriment to human relationships: food, sex, exercise, fashion, sports, shopping, work, play, sleep, collecting, hobbies, cooking. You name it, and I can find someone obsessed with it, and then say that __________ is a detriment to human relationships, because someone took it too far.

There are always people who will take something too far. But to look at the outlier, that one in a million person, and extrapolate a calamitous end for anyone and everyone who uses it is just being a sensationalist.

Wright assumes that the people who spend all this time in front of a computer screen don’t work or go to school, and are already teetering on the brink of being a hermit, when they were tipped over the edge into complete solitude by the siren call of the online relationship.

If you’re doing social media right, you’re using it to create relationships that expand and extend into the real world. If you’re not doing it right, well, you probably spend too much time indoors with your eight cats already.

Filed Under: Communication, Facebook, Networking, Social Media, Twitter, Video, Writing Tagged With: blogging, NT Wright, social isolationism, Social Media

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