John Houghton's New Media Blog

In this new media world the ways of getting noticed as an advertiser (and an individual) have changed and that was nicely summed up in today’s Wall Street Journal article, “How to Be a Star in a YouTube World.” The first header in the article is “Be Consistent,” in other words, release your content consistently. A lot of companies want to try out new media such as podcasting and video podcasting and expect big returns after one or two episodes, but a lot of new media establishes itself over time. You can’t expect to be popular after one or two blog posts, nor can you have a large following after one or two podcasts. If you release weekly, you must stick to it; monthly, that’s not as frequent but you may see results in 9 months. If you release episodes daily, you’ll grow quickly, but make sure you have a staff to support you.

The article also exhorts us to “Act Like a Pro” and advises against “amateur” production values but that “the most popular material is definitely more polished than the rest of the pack.” Programs need to be well produced, thought out in advance, and depending on the subject matter, they require a lot of research.

I looked in today’s online Wall Street Journal and they still have posted in their Ecommerce/Media section the May 15, 2006 article TV + The Web = ? (subscription required) which quantifies facts that we have known for some time: Americans are surfing the web more than they are watching TV. Even though a year old, the article is still featured because we reached a key milestone which begs the question: If people have migrated from TV to the web, then why do advertisers continue to spend the majority of their budgets on TV while only a small percentage goes to web? There is still a lot of figuring out to do and it is not obvious where on the internet advertisers should invest; however, savvy advertisers are investing and learning and those that learn the fastest and execute first will win. The ones who sit back and wait for a clear model will find it hard to catch the early adopters.

I produced an audio documentary on the history of media my podcast New Media Currents which shows that the pace of technological and social change continues to increase at an exponential pace. Early adopters used to be considered money wasters and it might still be true that you should wait before buying the latest desktop software; however, when it comes to finding avenues to effectively sell the core competencies of your company, you should not wait. You should be learning as much as possible and executing your strategy. It’s a matter of survival.

I’m back and blogging again. It’s like working out, sometimes you get busy and fall out of the habit. In this case I got out of the habit after moving to a new data center as customers are demanding greater uptime for serving podcasts and video podcasts. We migrated everything starting last fall and I didn’t get to fixing my blog for a while.

Lots of new things going on. I’ve been speaking at conferences, specifically Social Media 2007 in Atlanta and Chicago. Now I’m speaking at PR Online Convergence 2007 on May 16 – 18 in Hollywood, CA. If all goes well, we will have podcast highlights from this conference available at www.newmediacurrents.com. There are also some podcasts from the Web 2.0 conference April 15 – 18 in San Francisco that are being edited and will be up soon – subject matter is corporate use of new media, including an interview with Robert Scoble. I also obtained permission to record a great conference track featuring P&G, Cisco, BEA, Social Text, and Intel where they talk specifically about how social media is being used in their organizations.