Media Rules

Maile gave me a great book for digesting and balancing all the innovations in communications technologies called “Media Rules: Mastering Today’s Technology To Connect With And Keep Your Audience,” by Dan Solomon and Brian Reich. She saw Brian speak and told me all about how he was talking about the same stuff she always hears from me. And though I’ve just started the book, I definitely feel as though Brian’s passions and talents are similar to my distractions and ambitions.

I’m working on blogging and social networking at McCombs right now, so I thought I’d pull out a few of the best quotes.

Technology Facilitates the Transfer of Experience
Everyone uses technology in a slightly different way, and understanding how people use technology must dictate how we, as organizations and individuals, operate and manage. How people create, consume, and share information should dictate how you prepare and distribute content, both in terms of format–written, audio, video, three-dimensional, and beyond–and what that technology should be.

Below the quote I wrote in my book: It’s because there are so many media options and habits that goals must be articulated before avenues of connections can be chosen, used.

There Are All Types Of Blogs
Blogging has taken online communication out of the hands of IT experts of the world and placed it in the hands of anyone with and Internet connection. You should not launch a blog, however, simply t make you content more available or to prove that you can. Like any other communication opportunity, you should look at blogging as an opportunity to add something interesting, or relevant, or timely tothe discussion with your audience. And if you can’t, then there are plenty of other ways to add you voice that may be more appropriate.

Everything is Social
You might not think of it this way, but Amazon.com is one of the most influential social networks in the world. They figured out long before anyones else that customers were more likely to buy a book that everyones said was good over a book that everyone said is terrible…And that same comcept has been applied to everything from stocks to shopping to medical choices to the delivery of individual grants to school teachers. All this is driven by social interaction, networking, and the power of people communicating with each other–facilitated by technology and the Web. All of it is reputation driven.