This topic was first presented on 5 March, 2008, to the Rotary Club of Grand Cayman Sunrise. It has been revised and updated for publication in The Chamber magazine. This is the second part of an article about the effects of new media on business today. If you missed the first part, it would be a good idea to read it in the previous issue of The Chamber magazine. 

Part 1:
Communication Paradigm Shift
 

Video comes of age 

Our time-travel abilities in the Way Back machine have us scoping out the new media scene in 2008. One of the new things Facebook had introduced were company-related “fan” pages.

Consider Forrester’s 2008-era fan page on Facebook; if you scrolled down a bit, you’d see that they had embedded videos. This verified Debbie Weil’s prediction about business communications embracing multiple media. Through the use of embedded video, companies could re-purpose events, allowing people to “participate” at their convenience and to review the information at will.

Of course when discussing online video, it’s difficult not to think about YouTube. Even by 2008, YouTube had become wildly popular because it allowed people to upload and share videos for free. This also represented an amazing business opportunity.

IBM, for example, had more than 4,000 videos on YouTube in 2008. That’s 4,000 videos they could show anyone for free. They didn’t have to tie up costly computer resources or host huge video files!

Of course, all that glitters isn’t gold. YouTube listed more than 75,000 Dell videos in 2008, but not all of them were created by Dell. Many of them were posted by people who HATED Dell.

Fortunately, negative videos really aren’t a problem. It’s actually important to know everything being said about your company, whether positive or negative. Pretending that everyone loves you is NOT a smart business strategy in the 21st Century when negative “word-of-mouse” can spread ill-will faster than a tsunami.

Rather than treating the Internet as a ticking time bomb of public embarrassment, smart companies embrace social media as virtual life-lines for staying in touch with their customers, providing vital opportunities to perform damage control in a timely and pro-active manner.

Everyone can be a star! 

Now let’s take a quick look at podcasting in 2008. Brent Leary created a blog for his small consulting company and then decided to add audio to it. A local radio station decided to run the audio component as a weekly show. The show became Business Technology Radio and attracted guest speakers who included many of the major players in social media.

The programme was not only available on radio and on the Web, you could also listen to previously aired episodes at any time or place by downloading podcast recordings of the show. The show even attracted major sponsors such as Research in Motion, the company that makes the BlackBerry mobile phone.

Of course, the biggest central location for podcasts was Apple’s iTunes Store. You see, the reason podcasts are called “pod”-casts is because of the Apple iPod, a portable media player that people use to customize the entertainment and information they listen to while working out at the gym, commuting to work in their car, or doing household chores.

And by 2008, iPods also had the ability to display videos. So the selections offered at the iTunes store included downloadable movies and video podcasts, in addition to the audio podcasts and audiobooks it had always offered.

People can also subscribe to podcasts. Because they can be produced on a regular basis, each sound file can be considered one episode of a continuing programme. In 2008, the iTunes store had more than 100,000 podcast episodes available. By subscribing to a podcast, every time that person re-charged his or her iPod, the latest episode was automatically downloaded into the portable player. It was like giving every business its own television or radio network!

In 1995, the current paradigm shift was just beginning. And it took me until 2008 to recognise the true impact that shift was having on business as we know it. But how does this impact your company today?

Once more, back into the Way Back machine, and we’ll return to the year 2011.

Back to the future… 

Today many pundits complain that reading and writing blogs consume too much time in a busy work day. As a result, micro-blogging via Twitter is the latest way to keep your customers and employees informed about your company or industry’s fast-paced changes and news-worthy events.

With Twitter’s 140-character limit on messages (called “tweets”), it forces the writer to get immediately to the point and gives the reader a fast way to stay knowledgeable. Tweets can include photos. (Worth a thousand words, right?) And tweets can be sent from a mobile phone, so keeping current updates flowing to your company’s Twitter followers is fast and easy.

As for Facebook, more than half a billion people now use it - 10 times more than in 2008! According to the research company Nielsen, Facebook has replaced e-mail and Instant Messaging as the communication medium of choice among computer users. It seems that e-mail usage has shifted from the desktop to mobile phones. With Facebook providing direct messages and instant chat capability, users seem to be consolidating their communications in this single service. Clearly, those company “fan” pages are more important than ever!

Meanwhile, YouTube received a boost from the new video capabilities in the iPad2, a 1.3-pound tablet computer with not one, but two built-in cameras and $4.99 state-of-the-art video editing software. And although it’s not specifically considered a social medium, Skype’s free international video calling capabilities turn the two-camera iPhone into a pocket-size multimedia show-and-tell device.

Perhaps one of the most interesting trends is how social-media based companies are starting to leverage each other’s strengths. For example, TripAdvisor - a site where travelers can post their reviews of the locations and businesses they encountered on a trip - has teamed up with Facebook to allow people to specifically view reviews posted by their Facebook friends. Studies have shown that Facebook users trust their online friends’ assessments more than anything marketers may say. Companies had better pay closer attention to online buzz.

Social media are clearly changing business practices and strategies. Whether you like it or not, the old ways are gone. Keep up with the times or be left behind.