AUTHORS: Are You Using Using Social Media as a Blast and Broadbast Medium?

Send to KindleSO often I see authors do nothing more than barf out links to your books all over the social networks. I'll see the very same "buy my book" links on Facebook, GOogle+, LinkedIn andTwitter.

Broadcast advertising is for 1-way streets like TV, radio and periodicals.

Check out this post from +David Amerland . He provides some excellent insights that I believe will help you gain perspective.

#author   #socialmediamarketing   #socialmedia  

Reshared post from +David Amerland

There is nothing wrong with your Television set …

I am too young (still) to have been around in the 60s but the magic of all-night TV back in the days when this was a Friday night treat introduced me to The Outer Limits  (http://goo.gl/87x31p) and the iconic intro of a TV set being, somehow, controlled by a remote agency: http://goo.gl/AnJ9np

It boggled the mind, back then, that someone could somehow hijack your TV set like that. It implied invisible command-and-control dynamics and a power that allowed a ‘message’ to be broadcast directly to you without you being able to do anything about it. At the heart of it lay the notion of control (and before we go any further do check out this little pig (I am not kidding) learning to negotiate stairs for the first time: http://goo.gl/KjZTdv. 

If you watched the video above you will now be smiling and feel happier and the effect of the sentences preceding it will have largely evaporated, which raises my point for this week’s Sunday Read and it is control. The ability to affect those who come across what we post by the way we present the arguments we make. 

In social media we have found a means to assert our own sense of control. Technology is giving us an ever greater sense of control over our lives which is why, in 2011, we asked if YouTube would replace TV (http://goo.gl/FFt7U) only to decide a year later that no, this was not something that would happen (http://goo.gl/mLOnkJ) TV was so centrally embedded in our lives as a means of entertainment, news and information that it was unlikely to be ever dethroned. Yet just a year after that we had evidence it had already happened: http://goo.gl/yQkSy9. 

Social media, in its many forms, turns us all into media companies. We each have our own channel, our own audience and our own schedule, even. We even have our own subject matters: ‘tune’ into +Bruce Marko  (http://goo.gl/Tf452u) for a revelatory moment into the journey that makes a writer, +Daria Musk   (http://goo.gl/VMAFPk) if you want some music, +Rajini Rao  (http://goo.gl/FqfA2t) for science +Buddhini Samarasinghe  (http://goo.gl/Fqy4gz) for medical research or +Pam Adger  (http://goo.gl/eBQsqc) for some of the edgier posts and a sense of more adult content. The fact is that we are each now capable of doing, from our computer screens, what in the past would take a lot of expensive equipment, trained, expensive staff, expensive airwave spectrums and regulatory guidelines. 

While the ability to do all this without having a cartload of cash to burn is freedom (of many different shades) it can also be a recipe for disaster. Armed with nothing but our own sense of what is suitable, popular, right or wrong we can very easily become the lightning rods that coalesce defuse prejudices into concentrated bolts of harm. Case in point a post I put up on Friday (http://goo.gl/wuMXkd) that’s drawn over 150 comments as the discussion raged across some of the issues I highlighted. There are many instances of value to take away from it but perhaps one of the most enlightening came, towards the tail end of the discussion, +Vincent Messina popped in, alerted us that he had not read the comments fully and weighed in with his opinion. If that sounds like a recipe for disaster it’s because that is exactly what it usually is. Yet in this case as Vincent tried to get his point across he made an astute connection between this post and the infamous Techcrunch “Google+ is walking Dead” story (http://goo.gl/sjapZD) that led me to write a more detail rebuttal (http://goo.gl/Pq7uWt) [all part of ancient history, now]. 

Words (as well as ideas) can control us. They impact upon how we feel (remember the cute little pig video?) and can lead to responses that, like rage (http://goo.gl/vGtOZi) are uncontrollable. Worse than that they are undeniably linked to marketing (the focus of +Aaron Wood's  initial post) and behavioral finance, both of which examine mob mentality (http://goo.gl/nf1Z7U) one instance of which is amplified by the internet (http://goo.gl/d5CNGS). 

Connectivity then (which I frequently cite as a boon) can easily turn into its opposite given just a 5% accumulation of a perceived critical mass (http://goo.gl/NDppr) pointed towards a specific direction. We talk of objectivity here (http://goo.gl/p7VoKj) like social media is a kind of lab experiment. It is, but it’s more like a participant observation-led field study (http://goo.gl/gNrd2p) than a controlled conditions lab test. The distinction is important. The former places a lot of stress on its participants because the parameters are led by the fluidity of people, while the latter creates problems, primarily through its conditions (that need to be tighter and tighter controlled). 

Control, as in taking it back is what many may want as +James Dearsley  alludes to in his latest share (http://goo.gl/2ilQ6W) where +Mike Elgan discusses the possible impact of too many omissions from search. 

Going through the thread (http://goo.gl/wuMXkd) and its comments a few lessons are hard not to pick out. First, this is the digital world. None of us are here by accident. Our conduct and opinions therefore are not accidental either (even when we are responding emotionally). By the same token no conversation is useless or lost (+Aaron Wood's  initial thread, case in point) nor is any of us any less important than anyone else. Because what we do here can be a collective activity governed by the social instinct, what stops us from descending into herd behavior is the same connectivity that makes it possible in the first place. This creates a new set responsibilities (our engagements and interactions, our ability to self-organize and find common purpose and alignment of values) at a time when we have barely managed to completely understand and adequately use the old ones.  

We think that because we are connected it has to be enough. Because we can use search, everyone can. That because we have all these digital toys that make our world small, transparent and responsive, change is inevitable. But the critical mass we need has not yet been reached. Too many still are outside of this domain and I am not even talking about those trapped by circumstances, mere accidents of birth, in Third World countries. 

Our own backyards are an inconsistent landscape as +Ara Wagoner  (who works in television) points out in a plea that sounds forlorn (http://goo.gl/xzuqck), desperate in its paradoxical sense of isolation. 

There is true transformational value in the personal acknowledgement of the paradigm shift we experience: the fact that by elevating one of us, by asking the difficult questions, by demanding clarity and clarification but resisting the impulse to just lash out simply because we can, by demanding honesty in our connections, we help elevate us all. The gain then is immeasurable. The rewards shared by all.   

We cannot be controlled if we are aligned into seeking the best in each of us at all times. It is a small, conceptual shift in attitude that impacts directly upon the way we self-organize and the reasons we do so.  

It’s summer. The sun’s hot. The sea is alluring and coffee and donuts, cookies and cake should be at hand on a Sunday. This was a challenging thread to pull together because I found myself discovering new things about me, as I did so. Full credit to +Vincent Messina  for that. So, make each interaction count and make it gentle. As my favourite philosophizers usually say: we really all, ought to “Be Excellent to Each Other” http://goo.gl/5CB34u. Have a great Sunday wherever you are. 

#davidamerlandsundayread   #googleplus  

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