Search This Blog

Saturday, January 28, 2017

“You used to call me on my cell phone…” – Just Like Drake Said

     This week’s theme in Strategic Communication and Emerging Media was all about mobile technologies.  The driving question was, “How can strategic communication professionals use mobile technologies/communications in an efficient and ethical manner?”  In order to answer this we need to look at just how much impact these mobile technologies have in our day-to-day lives.  To do so I've borrowed a graphic representation of a series of studies conducted by the Pew Research Center, published in 2017, showing the evolution of technology adoption and usage.



     For this blog I’d like to focus on the data relating to owning a smartphone.  Our reading, specifically a professional blog entry from our professor Dr. Padgett, covered the statistics for 2012.  In 2012, 44% of U.S. adults owned a smartphone.  Looking at the most recent data from the Pew Research Center we can see that the 2016 numbers have spiked to 77% of U.S. adults owning a smartphone.  Additional data shows that the greatest increase occurred in lower-income and age 50+ brackets.  The lower-income bracket was defined as households earning less than $30,000 per year.  The age 50+ bracket was defined as Americans aged 50-64.  So today, at 77%, over three-quarters of all U.S. adults own a smartphone.  Like the rapper Drake said, “You used to call me on my cell phone…” but today we are doing so very much more than just calling with our smartphones.  So what exactly are we doing with these devices?  Another infograph from the Pew Research Center, a 2015 finding, depicts some of the various activities we, as Americans, use our phones for:



     From this illustration it is clear that location-based services are the most widely used function for most Americans.  I can identify with this finding because I tend to use my phone for location based-services, listening to music, taking and sharing photos, social media updates, web searches, news alerts, text messaging, and checking email.  So what smartphone uses appeal to the various age-groups?  Pew research Center conducted a survey in July 2015 and I’d like to share that information with you:


      As a communication professional I find all of this information rich with important strategic data.  If we are looking into integrating mobile technologies into our communication strategies then this data helps us better understand our target audiences.  In researching how to efficiently use mobile technologies in communication strategy I came across a research article from Matti Leppaniemi, he possesses a PhD in Marketing and is a faculty member of Economics and Business Administration with the University of Oulu in Finland.  The piece was entitled, “Mobile Marketing: From Marketing Strategy to Mobile Marketing Campaign Implementation”.  For this blog I’d like to concentrate on the clear outline he provided for mobile campaigns.  It goes like this, first conduct a situational analysis.  In doing this we determine our objectives, we frame our end goals.  That is to say, what do we want to see as an outcome.  Are we looking for raising awareness, building a brand, responding to crisis, engagement, or calling our target audience to take action?  After establishing a clear objective we define our target audience.  We zero in on specifically who we want to reach and what their needs are.  Different audiences have different responses to and different uses of the mobile technologies that we’ve been discussing.  Once we have both the objective and the target audience determined we move on to strategy.  Leppaniemi states that, “strategies are the broad statements about how the objectives will be achieved” (2004).  Then we select our tactics, these are the specific details of the strategy.  The tactics will drive the message and shape the content.  These tactics also determine the best communication tools or methods we’ll use to implement our strategy and our overall campaign. 
     During the 2015 National Summit on Strategic Communications Jamie Pham from LinkedIn shared insight on content marketing during a Q&A session.  When asked what her definition was for content marketing she shared, “Content marketing is building a relationship with a key constituency by consistently delivering helpful, inspirational, or entertaining content…It’s about building a relationship, which means you can’t just take one message, push it out one time and think you’ve done your job” (2016).  One message, one tactic does not an effective mobile communication strategy make.  It’s like Amy Calhoun said, in her article “Keeping Up with Mobile: A Game-Changing Strategy”, “effective mobile management is about being strategic, not being everywhere” (2013).  Her comments illustrate the importance of clear mobile communication campaigns, “blanketing a campaign with videos, social media, a mobile app and more will only be successful if you manage it properly and target it to the right groups.  Where are the people you are trying to reach, and what are the appropriate media for your message?”  With the rise in smartphone ownership, the varied uses of these technologies, and the differing target audiences we, as communicators are charged with bringing in to focus, through situational analysis, the objectives, target audiences, strategy and tactics to provide a clearer view of what an effective communication plan looks like.  Calhoun adds, “Many believe that mobile technology is a game changer for communication professionals, forcing us to rethink how we develop and implement campaigns, and altering the face and pace of our industry as a whole.  In reality, the rules of the game haven’t changed.  With any campaign, the key is still – and always will be – strategy.  Mobile is simply adding a new dimension, enhancing the tools available to communicators so that we can respond more effectively and quickly whenever, and wherever they are.”
     An additional requirement for this week’s blog was to upload an original multimedia item to our content.  While working on this assignment and digging through my mobile upload gallery on my smartphone no less, I was keenly aware of three things: 1) I’ve been blessed with amazing travel experiences all around the world; 2) the Louvre in Paris is magnificent and by far one of my favorite museums in all of the world; 3) Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” can help me illustrate this blog's theme of a communication professionals’ guide to mobile strategy.  So I’ll share a couple of pics from our 2015 New Year’s family trip to the City of Light:
      The beauty that is “Mona Lisa” can be seen over the sea of people (all with smartphones at the ready) from all over the world who have come to meet her face to face (on canvas through glass).  Notice how difficult it is to really see her in this photo, I’m at the back of the crowd.



         In this next photo, I’ve zoomed in and even cropped out the crowd to direct focus solely on her.




     As communication professionals this is exactly how we must prepare ourselves when creating an effective mobile communication plan.  Just like how we focus and edit our photos for clarity and content, likewise we must do similarly by using an outline such as Leppaniemi proposed.  We must analyze the situation and determine our objectives, define our target audience, develop a strategy and streamline our tactics to ensure our mobile communication plans are met with success.  Only then can the desired result come into crystal clarity for our communication plan’s message sender and message recipient(s).

Strategically Yours,
Autumn


WORKS CITED:
Anderson, M. (Jan. 2016). “More Americans Using Smartphones For Getting Directions, Streaming
TV.”  Retrieved on 24 January 2017 from http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/01/29/us-smartphone-use.
Calhoun, A. (Oct. 2013). “Keeping Up with Mobile: A Game Changing Stratgey.”  Retrieved on 24
Leppaniemi, M. (Oct. 2004).  “Mobile Marketing: From Marketing Strategy to Mobile Marketing
Campaign Implementation.”  Retrieved on 23 January 2017 from http://www/jultika.oulu.fi/files/isbn9789514288159.pdf.
Padgett, S. (unknown).  “Journalism and Communication's Future? It's Exciting!”  Retrieved on 23
Pham, J. (Apr. 2016) “Content Marketing: Be Helpful, Human and Inspirational.” Retrieved on 24
Smith, A. (Jan. 2017). “Record Shares of Americans Now Own Smartphones, Have Home 
            Broadband.” Retrieved on 24 January 2017 from http://www.pewresearch.org/fact- 

Saturday, January 21, 2017

"Come Together" - Just Like Lennon Said

     Welcome back to week #2 with me, Autumn, here at Strategically Yours, my professional blog in the Troy University graduate course "Strategic Communication and Emerging Media".  This week we were introduced to research regarding digital technologies and media convergence.  We were tasked with reading numerous business-based articles, scholarly communication publications, and with watching a few TedTalks that covered this important topic.  Before I lose any reader to the seemingly "overhead my head" self-identification let me assure you I'm going to put into practice a favorite Lombardi-family communication approach.  Simply put it is the "spaghetti" concept for communicating information.  Yes, I've done all of the required readings for this topic and I promise to serve you a delicious bowl of communication spaghetti, I'll strain the information and serve up just the noodles.  So let's have some "Media Convergence" pasta -- Buon appetito!
     One of Merriam-Webster’s definitions of convergence is, “the merging of distinct technologies, industries, or devices into a unified whole.”  The same dictionary even shares this as an example: “Many companies are combining rapidly converging communication technology into one device that can act as a phone, take photographs, and send e-mail.”  So in the basic sense the convergence of digital technologies and media is evidenced by the different all-in-one technologies available to consumers today.    It is the video game console that allows the user to not only play games, but to also search the internet, watch tv and movies, and listen to music.  It’s also the smartphone that can do more than just call someone.  From the smartphones a user can search the internet for multi-media, network socially, watch tv and movies, listen to music, track personal health, serve as a home monitoring device, and much more (Ballard, 2013).  Taking it a step further and looking closer within that convergence it can be seen that television and the internet have converged as well.  We now have access to television, movies, and music through online streaming websites like Hulu, Netflix, and Spotify.  All of this media convergence brings to my mind the chorus of a Beatles tune written by John Lennon, “Come Together”.  The similarity ends with the chorus because I don’t know about you but I can’t make sense out of the rest of those lyrics.  Actually, why would the lyrics make sense?  Lennon wrote the song as a campaign rally for the “tune in, turn on, drop out” phrase-creator and LSD-use advocate Timothy Leary’s bid for California Governor.  But I digress, back to media convergence and how communications have been and continue to “come together”.  Before we do here’s a quick video of a “Come Together” live performance in New York City:



    I’d like to present one more quick (pasta-side) example of media convergence and the coming together of the traditional and the digital formats.  Consider “Star Wars”, now note how it was originally a movie and then a book.  More convergence came along in the form of audio books, traditional and digital comics, merchandise, music, and video games where people could play games as the characters of the original movie (Ballard, 2013).  This example best represents the www.vocabulary.com definition that explains convergence can be “things that have already come together.”



     So while we have just illustrated and discussed one of the primary areas of digital convergence in existence today, and also the focal point of this week’s reading assignments, there remains an area in the digital world that needs to be addressed.  An area that doesn’t seem to be having much luck in coming together, but it can and probably should.  The area was found in this week’s required course materials, and this is where the spaghetti and the straining comes in to play.  We find ourselves in a time of great possibilities provided by the internet.  But it is there, an area existing just above the internet, and there is a need for a convergent co-evolution to occur. This convergent co-evolution might just help the divide in what is happening with the world wide web and semi-closed platforms.  Convergence would exist because of change to already existing parts of the web and platforms, and co-evolution could exist because of the new parts being created there above the internet (Latzer, 2013).  So let’s define convergent co-evolution.  Simplified, it occurs when things having different origins affect each other, developing similarities, as they grow and develop over time.  The web developed, and continues to operate, from an open source mind-set.  The emerging platforms developed, and continue to operate, from a semi-closed mind-set.  (Shirky, 2012).  It is here that there is a real disconnect.  How can an open source mind-set, free of cost, all about sharing seem to converge and evolve with a semi-closed mind-set, for profit, all about consumer accessibility?  For this I say let’s take a look at crops.  Wait, what?  That’s right, just as Everett Rogers, whose earliest beginnings were as a crop-working son of a farmer, gave us Communication's powerful “Diffusion of Innovation” theory I think there is more to be learned from crops that could prove beneficial to these two communication areas.
     From an article in the journal of Theoretical and Applied Genetics (not part of the assigned readings) 3Cs are looked at to learn how crop mixtures not only survive, but thrive in a plant community.  When used as a conceptual framework for the web/platform mixture within the internet community I find those 3Cs might offer some insight in to how these seemingly opposed mind-sets might just survive and thrive too.  The 3Cs are: Competition, Coexistence, and Co-evolution.  The first, competition means that when demand exceeds supply and creates pressure within the community, a niche diversification needs to occur to offset that pressure.  In his work, “Net Effects” Tom Wheeler noted that competition is the “lifeblood of innovation” (2013).  Coexistence means they would need to adapt to each other and adapt to their shared community.  After all, I think it is fair to say that both web/platform mind-sets want to, as Jeff Bezhos from Amazon said, “make the most of the gifts of the internet” (Novaes, 2015).   Finally, co-evolution means that they reciprocally affect each other’s evolution (Hill, 1990).  I honestly hope to see a coexisting convergent co-evolutionary future driven by competition for both the web and the platform areas of the internet.  Change is never easy.  As Wheeler mentioned, “History teaches us that while new networks create great opportunities, it is only through torment and tumult that these opportunities become manifest.  The economic dislocation, ideological confrontation and uncertainty that dog us today repeat similar experiences during previous periods of network change.”  I personally am an optimist, and a believer in innovation.  I agree with the inventor of the world wide web, Time Berners-Lee, when he said, “the goal of the web is to serve humanity.  We build it now so that those who come to it later will be able to create things that we cannot ourselves imagine” (Berners-Lee, 2010).  And then, I also agree that it is important for the semi-closed platforms to continue to provide a “more designed, directed, and polished experience” to users willing to pay for that experience.  So I say again, the 3Cs to survive and thrive in a mixed plant crop community might be worth framing the open/semi-closed mind-sets of the internet community – COMPETITION, COEXISTENCE, and CO-EVOLUTION.                                                                      
     Since we began this week’s blog with a Beatle’s reference to convergence, and coming together I’d like to close out with them as well.  All of this talk of convergence, co-evolution and framing a digital paradigm all stem from the same deeply humanistic desire to change the world.  Key lyrics for me were found in the opening line:  
You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it's evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world…
     I can think of no better song to reflect that feeling, that desire to innovate and to inspire than the Beatles’ “Revolution”, I submit for your pleasure a live-performance video:



And as always…
Strategically Yours,
Autumn

Works Cited:
Anderson, C. & Wolff, M.  (2010, Aug.). “The Web is Dead. Long Live the Internet.”  Retrieved on        17 January 2017 from http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_webrip/.
Ballard, B. (2013).  “Media Convergence and Its Impact on Our Changing Culture.”  Retrieved on 19      January from https://storify.com/brittballard2/media-convergence-and-its-impact-on-our-       
     changing-c.
Berners-Lee, T.  (2010, Dec.). “Long Live the Web.” Retrieved on 17 January from         
Hill, J. (1990, Aug.) “The three C's — competition, coexistence and coevolution — and their impact 
    on the breeding of forage crop mixtures.”  Retrieved on 19 January 2017 from 
Latzer, M. (2013, Apr.). “Media Convergence”. Retrieved on 19 January 2017 from 
Novaes, L. (2015, Jan.) “The Future of News--How the BBC Is Thinking About Its Future.”   
     Retrieved on 17 January from 
Shirky, C. (2012, Jun.).  “How the Internet Will (One Day) Transform Government.”  Retrieved on 
     17 January 2017 from 

Wheeler, T. (2013, Dec.).  “Net Effects: The Past, Present & Future Impact of Our Networks".  
     Retrieved on 17 January 2017 from https://www.fcc.gov/news-events/blog/2013/12/02/net-effects-

Saturday, January 14, 2017

"Times They Are A Changing" - Just Like Dylan Said

     Welcome to “Strategically Yours”, and welcome back to those who may have been here before.  My name is Autumn and I’m a grad student working on a second Master’s degree, this time in Strategic Communication.  As a former Public Affairs officer for the U.S. Air Force, one who loved that line of work, I’m invested in this degree program with the hopes of returning to the communication world.  I am working through this degree program at a pretty rapid clip, taking two courses a term while working full time and co-raising a family here in northern California.
     This blog serves as a course communication channel for sharing thoughts, new ideas, and reflections on weekly assignments.  The course is entitled, “Strategic Communication and Emerging Media”.  The blog plan is to post content on a weekly basis but don’t be surprised to find bonus material, as I mentioned I love this field.  If you’ve stumbled upon my blog for the first time, “Welcome”, and if you’re returning “Welcome Back” – either way please use the following link and save it to your favorites so you can return often, read and engage in discussion, or simply follow me on this scholarly journey:  https://communeok.blogspot.com.  In this course we, the class, do not have access to future assignments, it’s taught on a week to week schedule so I, like you the reader, won’t know what’s coming next.  It’s an “emerging topic” format on “Emerging Media” content.  Sounds interesting, right?  So let’s begin with week one: “Are Traditional Media Dying?”
     This week’s topic for consideration and much of the assigned reading materials bring to mind the opening line of a great literary piece, Charles Dickens’,  A Tale of Two Cities.  It reads, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…”.  I find a similar central tension when studying the current status and future possibilities for traditional media.  On the one hand are the readers and subscribers who support the past methods of content delivery, and on the other hand are the readers and subscribers who look to a digital, emerging format.  Let’s not forget the other audiences directly affected by this palpable pull of old and new.  There are the news industries themselves and their employees who are caught in the tension of drastically changing times.  So in short answer to the question, “are traditional media dying?” I reply “no.”  Are they changing, transforming, being revolutionized?  Absolutely!  And that is precisely what I’d like to look a bit closer at in this week’s blog.
     In order to understand what is currently happening in the world of media communications it is important to understand where some of their powerful leverage was lost.  According to a piece in Poynter, “How Traditional Media Are Rapidly Losing Ground to Mobile Apps” (2010) author Damon Kiesow noted that daily newspapers were losing sections that had once been solely theirs.  For instance: real estate has an app with Zillow; car buying has an app with AOL autos; local business listings and reviews were migrated to Yelp.com.  As pieces of the traditional daily newspaper were pulled away and repackaged as convenient apps the newspaper industry felt the lessening of its once all-powerful role.  Combine this with digital explosion of the citizen journalist in everything from blogs to tweets to social media news updates and it became, and remains that “the times they are a changing”, Bob Dylan had it right: 
“Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'”
(For your enjoyment here’s a video clip of Bob Dylan’s 2013 live performance of “Times They Are A Changing” at the White House)



     So with all of this talk of change and transformation what are some of the communication and media trends that have recently emerged and what is on the horizon for the industry?  In 2015 Mike Elgan contributed an article, “4 News Apps That Will Change Everything” to Computerworld, a publication website and digital magazine.  In this piece he begins by pointing out one of the primary advantages newspapers have over digital sources: human editors.  He says, “software is great, but computers are decades away from being able to even approximate a human editor’s ability to combine reason, experience, intuition, taste, judgement and other qualities in developing and presenting stories for human readers.”  I wholeheartedly agree with this well-made point.  He does go on to admit, “I’m also a fan of socially and/or algorithmically curated sources of news.  These have an advantage over newspapers because they can cherry pick the best stories from thousands of sources, including newspapers, magazines, blogs, and social networks.”  Yet again, on this point, I wholeheartedly agree.  It’s no wonder then that the four apps he claims will change everything all have two things in common: “these apps combine the eclectic harvesting of the best content from thousands of news sources with the curating power and skills of human editors.”  Here they are:

1)    Buzzfeed News – This app offers major news stories in a bulleted format of current stories which can be shared social media graphically.  There is also a related stories section and a summarized “what we know” section with established facts.  This is all curated by editors.    




2)    Twitter Project Lightning (Moments) – This app is a “qualitatively filtered way to participate” in breaking news events and event television.  A team of editors pull the most related and best quality tweets, photos, and videos and place them in the Project Lightning (Moments) app.




3)    Apple News – This app is supposed to come loaded on every iPhone and iPad.  Apple editors will choose news sources, as well as, stories.  Supposedly news organizations will be able to build story format for the app too.




4)    Linkedin’s Pulse – Unlike the Pulse of the past, this version is human curated.  Stories are both pulled from major publications by Linkedin’s editorial staff or are written staff members themselves.  “The real magic of Pulse is that it zeroes in on your business connections.  For example, if a colleage is mentioned in an article, or wrote one, Pulse will notify you so you can read it.  The app also uses your Linkedin contacts to know what industry you’re in, so it can deliver professionally relevant news.”



     As is evidenced in the above-mentioned news apps, “what’s clear is that combining global sourcing with human editing is the secret sauce that will transform the news consumption experience.”  Elgan concludes his forecast by adding, “until now, Silicon Valley has focused on using software to replace human editors.  Finally, the industry has realized that human editors are an irreplaceable aspect of news publishing.  By combining the old editorial process with the new world of global and eclectic news sourcing, news apps have cracked the code at last.”

     Of course, as it true with any prediction, only time will tell.  And that is exactly why I mentioned Dicken’s words, “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”.  Innovation and technological advances are stimulated by such revolutionary periods.  The news industries, traditional and digital, find themselves in such a period.


Strategically Yours,
Autumn



Works Cited

Dickens, C.  (1867) A Tale of Two Cities.  Ticknor and Fields.

Elgan, M.  “Four News Apps That Will Change Everything.” (22 June 2015) Retrieved on 11 Jan 2017 from http://www.computerworld.com/article/2938272/mobile-apps/4-news-apps-that-will-change-everything.html.

Genachowski, J. and Waldman, S.  “Newspapers Should Be More Like Amazon (What Jeff Bezos Can Teach The Washington Post.” (9 August 2013).   Retrieved on 11 Jan 2017 from https://newrepublic.com/article/114251/jeff-bezos-should-run-washington-post-amazon.

Hazard-Owen, L.  “What’s the Big Journalism Trend for 2017? Fear (Oh, and Voice News Bots).” (11 January 2017).  Retrieved on 11 Jan 2017 from http://www.niemanlab.org/2017/01/whats-the-big-journalism-trend-for-2017-fear-oh-and-voice-news-bots/.

Kiesow, D. “How Traditional Media Are Losing Ground to Mobile Apps.” (18 March 2010).  Retrieved on 11 Jan 2017 from http://www.poynter.org/2010/how-traditional-media-are-rapidly-losing-ground-to-mobile-apps-2/101487/.

Mitchell, A. et al. “News Attitudes and Practices in the Digital Era.” (7 July 2016).  Retrieved on 11 Jan. 2017 from http://www.journalism.org/2016/07/07/the-modern-news-consumer/.