Social Media is a Sound Salvation
Just today, a few posts around the Web crossed paths with a discussion I had yesterday that is worth bringing to your attention.
First was a conversation in which I was speaking about social media and viral marketing with a prospective client who knew a lot about radio promotions, formats, and stations, but knew little about how to use that PR knowledge across digital media.
But radio strategy and social media strategy do have some commonalities. In fact, social media might just be the new radio.
In radio, you have a format. Within that format you have DJ’s who play songs selected for the format that fit the tastes of the local audience. A few people call-in and engage with the radio station, but most listen and enjoy it. If not, they find another station.
The same goes for social media, except the groups of audience members are gathered around a node of any shared interest. And that interest, unlike radio (in its best cases) is not built around location.
Sure, radio does have it’s large syndicates (CBS, ESPN, Disney to name a few) and corporate owners (Clearchannel, et al.), just as social media has its own FaceBooks and MySpaces.
Communication is best is where you’re listening to the stations, and taking part in those conversations. Radio has live billboards, songs, and commercials as tactics, but the strategy is about choosing the stations that will carry your message most effectively because of the format, location, DJ, and audience.
In the most meta of posts, and proving this point, the idea of bloggers as DJs started with Gerd Leonhard, who tweeted this almost a month ago:
Bloggers are now like DJs: They pick bands to play and talk about, and become powerful super-nodes (me;) http://tinyurl.com/5zf2td
09:31 PM July 15, 2008 from web
I couldn’t agree more. But David Cushman tangentially disagreed in his article on /Message. I Am a DJ, I Am What I Play pivots from Gerd’s article to say that every node is a remix, and every person their own DJ: making their own mashed-up albums from a variety of sources and presenting them to their own small network of an audience.
The flaw in his premise is supported by his own example. While the David Bowie song he chose makes the point that every person serves an audience, it also shows that professional content, like professionally written and recorded songs do stand the test of time, and become in fact even more important in this world of fringe nodes.
So yes, there is a never ending remix, but that isn’t necessarily any more or less powered by people now than it ever was: just a different way to present and consume professionally prepared content. There’s no difference in the amount of hegemony available today or in the future than mass media has neatly presented to us in the past. We’re only coalescing into different groups.
The hegemonic abilities of any social network will certainly be derided upon by the next generation of digital artists and communicators, just as Elvis Costello proposed in Radio, Radio:
I was tuning in the shine on the light night dial
Doing anything my radio advised
With every one of those late night stations
Playing songs bringing tears to my eyes
Social media is every bit as emotional and persuasive as any other form of communication. The radio of our past is, in fact, the recommendation systems and social networks of our future. Just different groups in different spots.
You either shut up or get cut up, they don’t wanna hear about it
It’s only inches on the reel-to-reel
And the radio is in the hands of such a lot of fools
Tryin’ to anaesthetise the way that you feel
And thus ends yet another few inches on the massive reel-to-reel of digital media.
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