• It isn’t a fad.
• It isn’t going away.
• You can’t stick your fingers in your ears and chant “La La La”

• It is changing the way you do business every day.
• It is as important as a telephone – a bank account – a storefront.
• It is already here and your competitors are already using it to build their businesses.
• New Media is instrumental to the continued success of your business.
• That means you can’t ignore it any longer.

Over the years it has been possible to drag your feet on new technologies. Our grandparents probably resisted adding a phone to their house, then a radio, then the television. Each new technology was hailed as a fad, an oddity, a toy. New Media is in the midst of that same cycle today. What should be clear, though, is that New Media is a collection of the most useful business tools ever delivered into the hands of business. The impacts of the telephone and television – as much as they changed our world – will be deeply eclipsed by the changes wrought by New Media, in all its forms.

I said it once, I’ll say it again – you can no longer ignore New Media.

Over the years, I have been pretty forgiving of people who decided, either by accident or on purpose, not to have and not to use an email account. I grew up in the years before email and even though I might have found it useful, I could understand how others might not. Five years ago, though, something changed in my thinking. I began to look at people without email as akin to someone who refused to use the telephone. Email had supplanted nearly every other device as my communication medium of choice. It provided an excellent way of communicating with individuals and groups in a way that paper or telephone could not. Not using email today is akin to deciding not to use the telephone in the 1950s. It simply makes no sense.

I have come to the same mind about New Media. To ignore New Media, either by inattention or design, is no longer an option. Those around you have already figured this out – and not just professional geeks like me either. Businesses are learning the painful lesson that newspapers, yellow pages and direct mail advertising are becoming less and less effective every day. They don’t reach the larger world of customers their business needs to survive and thrive. Throwing “good money after bad” doesn’t make sense in a world where you now have the ability to communicate easily and directly with your customers – and they with you. Look around you neighborhood. Do you see stacks of Yellow Pages lying on lawns and porches, or in recycle bins? Are your ads really doing you any good there.

Is this new world frightening? You bet! Change is always frightening  – but it is also filled with opportunity. Now is the time to dive into New Media. Every day you hesitate – every day you ignore New Media  — is a day when your competitors are moving ahead of you.

So now that you know you can no longer ignore New Media – Get started today!

• Start devoting at least 1/3 of your marketing budget to New Media tools
  • 1/2 if you can bring yourself to do it.  You’ll be amazed at how much more you can do for less.
• Look deeply at your current marketing methods and kill off those that don’t bring in a substantial amount of sales
  • Stop advertising in the newspaper, yellow pages, etc if they no longer work. You have alternatives now.
• Start engaging your customers in conversation, wherever they might congregate:
  • web site, email, Facebook, Twitter, and a host of new services yet to be invented
• Monitor closely how New Media tools effect your bottom line
  • use coupon codes, tracking codes, whatever to get hard numbers on which methods have the most effect

Over the next several months I am going to be challenging you to engage with New Media. I am going to be pushing you – hard – to explore these new tools. I will be providing some New Media prescriptions on how to get moving on your New Media campaigns. I am also going to be dealing some cold, hard truths on why you need to use New Media or risk becoming irrelevant to your customers.

Ready to dive into New Media?

See http://DouglasEWelch.com for all the ways we can work together – online and face to face.

Ignoring New Media, in all its forms, is no longer an option for businesspeople is a post from Careers in New Media and Podcasting

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If you want to enhance the impact of your new media efforts, and expose yourself to an entirely new set of listeners and viewers, you can’t do better than recording a series of interviews.

Why are interviews so powerful? It is a simple fact of ego. When you interview someone for your show what is the first thing they do? That’s right, they tell all their friends, family and business contacts to listen.

“Hey, you’ve got to listen to this interview I did for the XYZ show!”

This is exactly what you want them to do and you want to facilitate it as much as possible. In this relatively simple way you gain exposure to each person’s network of contacts so provide them with audio or video from the interview, send them links they can share and embed in thier own blogs and web sites and post the interview to public audio and video sharing sites.

While you might hesitate to ask someone for their entire mailing list so you could send out a  press release, interviewing someone, and asking that they share it with their friends and contacts is very natural. An interview provides valuable content and yet still achieves the goal of raising your profile and that of your interview subject.

Who do you interview? Start with the people you would most like to speak with.  Who are your influences? Who are your heroes? Whose opinions do you respect most? There is no need to shoot low, either. My fellow Friends in Tech members, Chuck Tomasi and Kreg Steppe of Technorama always make a point of reaching out to bigger names for their interviews. Their guests have included Mythbusters Adam Savage and Grant Imahara, author Stephen Covey,  explorer and discoverer of the Titanic, Dr. Robert Ballard and many others.

You should also seek to be interviewed by others. You gain content that can be shared on our own blog or podcast and your ideas get exposed to a new group of people. It also allows you to get your ideas out if you are having difficulty writing them down. This was the genesis of my New Media Answers series for New Media Interchange. Members would often be peppering me with questions during our meetings and I quickly realized that my answers would be beneficial to many more people if I captured them for the web site and podcast.

So I asked NMI member, Tracy Pattin, who does her own show, Sizzle in the Middle, to act as the interviewer and duplicate in the studio what happened so frequently at our meetings. She comes in with questions on a particular topic and I answer them to the best of my ability. This results in an engaging discussion and allows me to talk about new media issues and work through ideas that I can later present as more fully-formed articles here and on the New Media Interchange blog. This allows me to answer questions that a large majority of the members might have even when I am unable to talk with each of them individually.

Start interviewing today to spread your name and your message to an entirely new group of people.

New Media Prescription 004 – Interview others is a post from Careers in New Media and Podcasting

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Too many people I talk to look upon this as a challenging task. “Where am I going to find the time to create all this content?” The truth is, you don’t have to make more time to create your content. In most cases, you are already creating content every day. The sad part is, you are probably throwing away this content because you don’t recognize it when you see it.

Every person, every store, every charity, every restaurant, every business creates content every day…or should be. You have a unique message you want and need to communicate to your customers. You goal is to integrate new media into your work and business so that you take advantage of every opportunity to create new content.

Here are some examples from a variety of businesses:

Retail Store

Did you just receive a new product, new product line, an enhancement to an existing product or a promotional video from a vendor? Look for a way to make a short video, a piece of audio or a blog post about this product. Look for opportunities to interview manufacturers about their products. Have your staff create videos about products they really like. Your customers are there to buy your products. Give them as much information as you can to make their purchasing decisions easier. Even more, using your existing staff in your new media productions brings a personal feeling to them. Your customers will see the same people online and in the store and feel a closer relationship with your business.

Restaurant

Many restaurants work on a very seasonal menu. Peaches are in season one week, raspberries the next, strawberries another. Fall calls for comfort food and summer for lighter fare. This gives you a ready-made schedule and reason for new media. Show your customers how you are developing a new seasonal menu. Show them the special ways you are using the seasonal product. Celebrate the change of seasons with menu items, entertainment ideas, party information and more. You can also produce mini-series of cooking classes and recipes, showing some “behind-the-scenes” action that everyone loves.

Charities

One of the biggest goals of any charity is out-reach — telling potential donors what you do and why it needs to be done. If you are a medical charity, I would guess you have regular panel discussions and speakers that come to present to your staff and donors. Make a point of recording these events. While you may have 10-20 people at the in-house discussion, you have a potential audience of thousands on the Internet. If you have influential visitors to your offices, record an interview with them that can be used on your web site or sent out as a podcast.

If you have a yearly event, capture as much media as possible during your next event. Done right, you will have enough content to power a weekly or monthly podcast. This show then becomes a regular promotion for the next yearly event. Instead of making your PR push a few months before your regular event, you now have a series of regular promotions throughout the year leading up to the event. Your goal here is to be make the yearly event a culmination of a year-long event that you have been fueling using your new media productions. Ideally, by the time you open up ticket sales for your event, the demand will be so high that you will sell out almost immediately. Then you repeat the process, gathering more media at this event to fuel your show for another year.

Build your personal brand

Many of us are in the business of providing information and advice. Too often, we wait until customers come to us for information instead of proactively reaching out to them. In the case of one financial planner, the current mortgage and stock market crises has led to frightened customers rushing to their office to inquire about their portfolios. Imagine how you might allay fears by providing a regular informational update to your clients. When customers are clamoring for information, new media is a great way to provide it.

Providing this information also goes a long way towards building your own brand as an expert in your field. Your audience might begin with your clients, but it can quickly grow to include others who might eventually become your clients. It could even raise your profile enough to bring traditional media outlets like newspapers and television to come seeking your insight.

Content surrounds you and your business. You only need to reach out and capture it when it occurs. Starting a new media program isn’t about creating information out of whole cloth. It is about sharing what you already have and know. Start capturing your content and building your New Media future today.

Link: Prescription 001 – Get A Blog
Link: Prescription 002 – Start/Build Your Email List

New Media Prescription 003 – Capture your content is a post from Careers in New Media and Podcasting

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This is the second in a series of articles seeking to break down the overwhelming options and opportunities of New Media into a set of easy-to-implement steps that anyone can apply.

One great way to introduce people to your New Media project is through an email mailing list. In the best cases, you already have a mailing list that you can use to jump start your projects at their onset. This means you won’t have to struggle for every single reader, listener or viewer at the start. You can begin with a close set of friends and contacts that can help to spread the word about your project. Don’t fret if you don’t have a mailing list, just know it’s next on the list of things to do.

Why do you need a mailing list? Even today, with the explosion of audio and video information on the web, many people are still most familiar and most comfortable with email. Most already have an email address and know how to use it. Even better, email simply shows up in their inbox without any action on their part. This makes it an ideal way to spread the word about your project and shouldn’t be ignored for flashier methods.

Even more importantly, when someone gives you an email address, they are giving you permission to talk to them whenever you have something to say. This is a tremendous asset to you, but it also carries with it some responsibility. Once you have this permission, you need to use it wisely. Spamming your mailing list with too many messages or emails of little value will only cause your list to tune you out, if not outright unsubscribe. Treat those on your email list with respect and do not abuse the permission they have given you.

Setting up an email list

There are a variety of ways to setup and manage an email mailing list.

1. Create a email group in your existing email program

Most email software has the ability to create a group from any of the addresses in your address book and then address a message to the group, rather than to individual people. While this might sound like the simplest method, it has many drawbacks. Chief among these is the fact that your Internet Service Provider probably has some limit on how many people you can add to a single outgoing email. Once you get over this number you will manually have to split up your list, sending multiple emails. These lists are also difficult to manage and require you to add and remove people as they request.

1. Set up a Google Group

Google Groups (http://groups.google.com) provide a free way to setup and manage a mailing list for 10 people or thousands. You can invite and add people to your list manually and interested people can also add themselves whenever they wish. Google Groups also provides a form that can be embedded in any web page that allows users to subscribe to your mailing list with one click.

One limitation of Google Groups is that you will only be able to personally add 10 people a day to your mailing list. The number of self-subscriptions is unlimited, though i.e. anyone can add themselves at any time. Still, if you regularly collect email addresses at meetings or other events, this might slow down your ability to add people to the list.

In my own experience, I have found Google Groups to be an excellent, free, solution to running a number of email lists.

1. Use a commercial email list company

If you need a more professional approach to your email list, along with statistics on the number of people reading your emails, you might wish to contract a commercial email list provider. One of the largest and best known is Constant Contact (http://www.constantcontact.com/). If you receive any volume of email, I can almost guarantee you are on at least one Constant Contact email list.

Regardless of how you create or manage your email list, you must do it. Gaining the permission to speak to a wide variety of people on a regular basis is very powerful and gives you an excellent foundation for promoting your New Media project.

New Media Prescription 002 – Start/Build Your Email List is a post from Careers in New Media and Podcasting

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Talking with people about new media in all its forms is always interesting. I see such opportunities in new media and I want everyone to benefit. In my discussions, though, I find it is so easy to overwhelm people with all the possibilities new media can provide. After 10 minutes or so, they glaze over and we find it hard to move onto the next level. There are simply too many options and people start to move into analysis paralysis..unsure what to do first.

After a long talk with a client today, I realized that on of the best ways to approaching this problem is to provide a series of “new media prescriptions” to start them on their way. Taking a lead from David Allen’s Getting Things Done, we need to establish the next, concrete action to take. Over the next several weeks I will be presenting a series of prescriptions to help move people into the new media world, one small step at a time.

One of the first steps anyone needs to take is to create a blog. In order to start moving on any of your new media plans, you ned to place…a home…where you can start to post everything you are creating. In most cases, we all produce content every day, but without a place to share this information, it lanquishes.

So, today, I want you to start a blog. You can use Blogger.com, Typepad.com, Tumblr, My Space, and any number of other free sites. If you have your own web site already, you can start a blog there as well. It matters little where you set up your blog. it is much more important that you set it up somewhere.

Next, if you do have your own web site, find some way to place a link to your blog on the main page of your web site. Get help in doing this, if you need it, but please do it. It will go a long way towards exposing your new blog to the world. It also helps to mail a link for your blog to friends and family. Ask them to share it with thier friends, too.

Finally, start posting content to your blog. What content? Whatever strikes your fancy. If you have attended an event, write up your feelings about it, shoot some video, post some pictures. Blogging and podcasting need not take up extra time in your day. You simply need to capture the content that is part of each day and share it with others. You’ll find that capturing your content will be much easier, since you now have a place to put it. Don’t believe me? Give it a try.

Need help getting your blog started? Ask your questions using the comments link below. You can even leave a video comment, if you like.

Next time: Podcasting, Video and audio without a web site

New Media Prescription Intro and #001 – Get a blog is a post from Careers in New Media and Podcasting

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