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Do you believe the day will come when Social Media will replace television as the main news source? Or is time already there? What about the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, for example? They were communicated more quickly on Social Media sites than on the TV screen. According to Mike Elgan “the only thing TV news does better than social media is to display higher quality pictures and video. Otherwise, TV news is just like the Internet as a news source, after you take away user control, alternative opinions, timeliness and 99% of the stories.” (source) Do these examples show that Social Media has become a ‘competitor’ of traditional media?

Findings on the relationship of traditional and social media

Let’s take a look at some interesting findings of the “Analysis of the Increasing Impact of Social and Other New Media on Public Relations” by Donald Wright and Michelle Hinson, Institute for Public Relations, to get a better understanding of the relationship of traditional news media and social media. A sample of public relations practitioners from various parts of the world took part in this fourth annual trend study (overview):

On the one hand, 85% of the respondents believe that social media complement traditional news media, 92% think blogs and social media influence coverage in traditional news media and 88% believe blogs and social media have made communications more instantaneous. But on the other hand, the findings also show that traditional news media receive higher scores in terms of accuracy, credibility, telling the truth and being ethical than blogs and social media (source). Interestingly, respondents where especially uncertain when asked: “Do you agree or disagree that social media (including blogs) tell the truth.” (53% were uncertain about the answer). Generally, many respondents think that traditional mainstream media and social media influence each other.

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Complementation instead of conflict

In a nutshell, these findings of the “Analysis of the Increasing Impact of Social and Other New Media on Public Relations” show that Social Media and traditional media seem not to be in conflict with each other. But Social Media enhanced its influence in recent years: “Since first appearing about five years ago, social media networking sites have become increasingly popular each year. Bill Tancer (2008), the general manager of global research at Hitwise, the world’s leading online competitive service, says social media have overtaken pornography as the number one use of the internet.” (source) Nevertheless, the findings of the discussed research show that Social Media still has a long distance to go before it will be equal to traditional media in terms of accuracy, credibility, truth and ethics.

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Gandhi was fond of saying that we all have the same 24 hours in our day; it’s all in how we use them (source). Especially within the last days I often thought about this meaningful comment. Why? Well, I think from time to time we all blunder into a time trap, don’t we? Mine snapped recently due to a lot of work for university – exams and assignments needed to be done. But it was not the university work that caused me headaches from time to time – I rather think it was the little time left for my Social Media activities.

Social Media: A time suck?

Social Media gives me the great opportunity to communicate and share my ideas online. But I am sure you will agree with me that it can be extremely time consuming, too. Social Media activities could easily take over your day if you try to create new content on your blog frequently, want to respond to everyone who leaves a comment on your blog or be up to date what is going on on Facebook or Twitter constantly. And these are only some examples of how Social Media could suck your time (Brian Solis’ Conversation Prism gives a very good overview where conversations take place online in addition to that). But as I had to put the last finishing touches to important university tasks last week I hardly had the time to dive into Web 2.0 too deeply.

Scaling Social Media

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I believe the magic word to get out of the ‘Social Media Time Dilemma’ is Social Media Time Management. Looking for ways of Social Media Time Management I came across a lot of helpful tips. I don’t want to keep it from you; maybe you are hard pressed for time, too, and can benefit from one or another tip. Matt Churchill published my favourite tips. That’s why I’d like to give you a brief overview about them here – if you want to read more about these tips please read his blog post on socialmediatoday.com

§  Find the blogs that are most relevant to you, and stick with them. Prioritize material that will be most beneficial to you, and read other blogs and websites at your leisure later.

§  Restrict Your Twittering in using an application like Tweetdeck and monitoring specific key words related to your field of expertise. This means you don’t need to follow every single conversation that takes place in the group of people you follow and it introduces you to new people who are talking about the same topic.

§  Have a clear out of RSS feeds you don’t read.

§  Manage Your Social Networks and cull the services you don’t use regularly – focus on the few networks that make a difference to your online experience and engage with them more, making contacts will all of a sudden be a heck of a lot easier!

Apart from Matt Churchill’s steps to manage Social Media time more effectively I really liked the simple but useful advice of Chris Brogan who suggests to use the divine tool of WordPress, for instance, to write some posts in advance and schedule them to launch when you are hard pressed for time. Brogan says: “This has proven very valuable on days when I’m too busy with other projects to get a post out, but when I know I’d rather you have something new to consider.”

Blogs about Social Media Time Management

If you like to read more about Social Media Time Management I found some other interesting blogs for you:

Time Management in the Age of Social Media

My Half Hour Social Networking Plan: The First Ten Minutes

The 10-Minute Daily Guide to Building Your Social Media Profile

Social Media Time Management

7 Ways to Own Social Media Before it Owns You

3 STEPS TO BETTER TIME MANAGEMENT OF YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Social media time management strategy

If you are generally interested in information about how to listen and in turn, participate transparently, sincerely, and effectively in social media and new media marketing I recommend reading Brian Solis’ eBook ‘The Essential Guide to Social Media’.

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At the end I almost missed one essential tip I found out: Set Social Media time and log off when that time is over. Well then, I log of for today

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“The Web has become our workplace, our water cooler, and our social mixer.” Doesn’t this quote of Chris Brogan hit the nail on the head? To my mind it definitely gets to the heart of Web 2.0. I came across this convincing quote in relation to personal branding – a topic that has been around for a while but that has become much more prevalent in recent years. In his ebook ‘Personal Branding for the Business Professional’ Brogan claims that the reason why personal branding has become more prevalent in recent years partly relates to how the web has become our workplace, our water cooler, and our social mixer. I agree with him. Nevertheless, I am convinced that it is very difficult to convey as much information online as in person.

Shaping the personal brand

An interesting example of how to create a digital identity is Brisbane IT-worker Hailey Turner, 20. She was among the top 50 vying for Tourism Queensland’s ‘Best Job in the World’ (read my recent posts one, two and three to get more information about the context). Apart from the demanded application video she travelled to seven cities in 12 days including Tokyo, London, Copenhagen, New York and Los Angeles to promote her application and the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef. Besides, she raised funds and sponsors and created a website where she uploaded videos, photos and blogs (source one, two, three). Everything Hailey Turner contributed to the Social Web shaped and contributed her personal brand: the pictures and videos she uploaded, the profile she defined on social networks like Facebook, the blog posts she published and the comments she shared on other blogs or the tweets she sent on twitter.

Authenticity and passion matter

Although Hailey Turner did not succeed to get the job in the end her personal brand gave her the ability to stand out in a sea of similar ‘products’ – her competitors. I think she succeeded in marketing herself as something different than the rest of the applicants in any case. According to Chris Brogan in some ways the difference on brands is what you deliver: “Doing something new is a great way to get people to be interested in what you do. (…) In a world full of people doing somewhat similar stuff the person who innovates is definitely ahead of the game.” That’s what Hailey Turner did with her journey, the funds and sponsors and her website.

Apart from that, there is another factor that strengthened Hailey Turner’s personal brand: the mixture of authenticity and passion she delivered in the contents she shared online. In my opinion, passion and authenticity are the two sides of the same coin: Because passion is hard to fake authenticity matters in building your personal brand online and it is very important to be yourself. Branding isn’t playing a role. With reference to Chris Brogan “a strong personal brand is a mix of reputation, trust, attention and execution. (…) Brands are complex and not especially one dimensional.” To my mind, the ‘brand’ Hailey Turner was colourful and interesting.

If you wish to find out more about personal branding I recommend reading ‘Personal Branding for the Business Professional’ by Chris Brogan and Brian Solis’ blog posts ‘The Socialization of Your Personal Brand’ part one, part two and part three.

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Golden seashore, blue ocean made of sparkling breakwater, warm sunbeams stroking your skin – finally, the tropical dream came true. Unfortunately, not for me but for the British charity fundraiser Ben Southall, 34: He was one of the 16 finalists who recently spend three days swimming, snorkeling, diving and lounging under the close scrutiny of Queensland Tourism officials. They psychometrically tested the candidates for the ‘Best Job in the World’, the ‘Islandreef Job’ (read my recent posts number one and number two about the competition to get more information and the latest press release published by Queensland Tourism). Ben Southall staved off competition from almost 35,000 worldwide applicants to secure the post and was awarded the $150,000 (£73,000) contract beginning July 1 to serve as the caretaker of a tropical Australian Island. He now has the chance to swim, explore and relax on Hamilton island, in the Great Barrier Reef, for six months while writing a blog to (source: The Guardian). If you like to read his blog click here.

A successful social media campaign and its imitators

The recruitment for the ‘Best Job in the World’ was part of Tourism Queensland’s Islands of the Great Barrier Reef Campaign. The cooperative marketing campaign aimed to highlight the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef and showcase Australia’s own unique Island experience, to the global market (source: press release published by Tourism Queensland). I think, I don’t need to tell you again that influential newspapers like The Guardian, The Mirror or BBC or German newspapers like Der Spiegel or Der Focus picked up the story once more among other media. According to Der Spiegel the marketing campaign exceeded all expectations of Tourism Queensland: Tourism director Anthony Hayes is of the opinion that there will be more bookings within the next 12 month at the end of the campaign. Probably the ranger casting will become an annual event? In anyway, there are already imitators of the campaign: According to Der Spiegel Taiwan thinks about starting a similar competition to promote its tourism.

‘The moral of the story’

What remains to say? As mentioned in earlier posts the ‘Islandreef Job’ competition was a striking campaign idea which was based on some remarkable PR and marketing decisions like the concept of the admirable independent blogger like you and me, the integration of the audience in the voting and the content-rich website (read my recent blog post) and supported by social media tools like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube (read my recent blog post). Doubtlessly, a short-term campaign success. Will it become a long-term success, too? Only time can tell.

Old photos – horrific experiences or great fun? Whatever you think when you recognize yourself on an old photo I’m sure it evokes certain emotions. I think it’s a great fun to rummage in old photo albums with friends – sometimes wondering how different we looked when we where younger or just remembering good times we spent together. That is why I try to have my digital camera with me whenever possible to catch all the versatile chapters in life. Over the years my computer became my digital photo album which I can organize easily thanks to the technical development.

Welcome to the online photography world

If you not only want to share your photos with your family and friends at home Flickr gives you the easy opportunity to share them with the whole internet (klick here to read wikipedia’s description). To say it with Amy Shuen’s words: “Flickr essentially gives away the services that amateur photographers need and want most: Photo sharing; online storage; and indexing, tagging and photo inventory.”

But Flickr is not only to the amateur photographer’s advantage who can organize his photos, drops into a creative photo database or may even be discovered if talented – it is an interesting communication platform from the corporate perspective, too.

Flickr stream: “Michel Comte Retrospektive”

I’m sure you have heard of Michel Comte, one of the most sought-after fashion and magazine photographers in the world (he portrays numerous celebrities from the world of art, music and entertainment. In addition to portrait photography and fashion he moved towards photo-reportage and documentary). Currently, the exhibition “Michel Comte Retrospektive” can be visited in the ‚NRW-Forum Kultur und Wirtschaft’ in Duesseldorf, Germany.

Michel Comte – 360° from nrwforumduesseldorf on Vimeo.

To promote the exhibition a number of Web. 2.0 tools were used like communication via the website of the ‘NRW Forum’ and a blog which reflects the course of the exhibition. But the most noteworthy idea was to create a Flickr stream. Especially in this case it was a very good idea to put a photo show on Flickr – a platform where all the passionate photographer’s come together to share and exchange their experiences about photography. Doubtlessly, these people are the prospective visitors of the exhibition. To my mind a promising step in the communication concept of the exhibition.

Benefit from Flickr as a professional

To end up for today I’d like to point out two tips of Seth Godin how you can benefit from Flickr as a professional. You will find a full description of them in his blog post ‘Where to find great ideas and arresting images (for free)’:

1. If you need photos for a presentation or website or brochure, try Flickr.

2. When you are trying to brainstorm, Flickr is a great place to find connections between ideas that hadn’t occurred to you.

Why not try them out on the job floor?