erniesblog

A Tweet, two longer reads, and a quick video

Twitter, for some time now, has been my major blogging tool.  While you don't get expansive articles, you do get thoughts and links, etc., on relevant stuff in something closer to real time.  I wouldn't call myself a really active Twitterer - some days I'm lucky if I tweet once.  Other days, though, when there's a lot of interest to share, I share it.  You know this already, though, by the Twitter feed on this page -- and I'm fairly convinced that most people who read this blog regularly probably already follow me.  But since the mainstream world has finally discovered Twitter (good golly, Oprah's tweeting now), I figured I'd encourage anyone who isn't following to follow -- well, whomever you want.  Don't feel you have to be witty or profound, or even prolific.  Twitter makes a really good RSS feed, simply by following the people and organizations you feel will give you updated information you want to receive.

You can follow me at twitter.com/erniemosteller

If you haven't been following, here are a couple of longer things I've posted in other spaces.  Of course, I Tweeted links to them, but since we've established that you might be new to all this, etc....I'll link to them here.

Here's a piece I wrote for adotas.com, about how history repeats itself, in terms of content development for any given medium.  Yes, I compare the web to TV -- but in a good way. 

If you'll remember back a bit, I blogged about writing for the Age of Conversation 2 - a book that contains a collection of essays from various marketing bloggers.  It's now available on Amazon.

And finally, here's a quick video I did for smarterfaster.com, Brunner's space for conversations about creativity in the digital age.  While this piece is on Ppt presentations, and a ton of creative folks never touch ppt, there's still no reason why a little sensible creativity can't be applied in the space.  In fact, there's every reason to apply it, because 90% of all ppt presentations I've ever seen, well, suck.  Hopefully, this video will help you make yours suck less.

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Move Quickly

So, a couple of weeks go by without a blog post, and there's this nagging thing in the back of your mind that, geez, you really need to put something up.  Thing is, the stuff you want to write about you've already written about for the three other blogs you write for, and if you haven't done that, you Tweeted your thoughts when the subject was fresh, and someone Tweeted back, and the discussion was had, and now it just seems silly to explore it even further.

There was a session at this year's SXSW entitled, "Your Personal Blog is Dead."  I didn't go to the session, believing that mine is not, in fact, dead -- and also believing that my personal blog isn't really a personal blog, after all.  I don't write about my cat, possibly because I don't have a cat, but mainly because I've tried to stick, mostly, to advertising with a digital slant here on this, my, er...personal/not personal blog.

Time moves fast now.  That's what I say a lot in a lot of the talks I give about social media.  Social media has done that -- the web has done that -- and short snippets of information, available on any subject from just about everyone, via Twitter, have done that to the point that time isn't just short anymore, time is instant.  If your reaction to a subject isn't in the realm of minutes, your opportunity to present a relevant opinion is altered, and for the moment, diminished.  It's not eliminated altogether, though, but your entry into the discussion now becomes harder.  Follow me here:

Something happens, and people Tweet.  You know a lot about the subject, but you fail to Tweet, because you're in, say, an all-day meeting.  The Twittersphere bursts with opinions in all directions for a couple of hours (or a couple of minutes, which might as well be hours), and by the time TweetDeck shows you what you've missed you realize that the subject has changed.  While that's usually perfectly fine, there are times when a perspective from someone who truly knows a lot about the subject (remember, that was one of the givens at the beginning of this scenario) would be really, really valuable.  Except now, nobody wants to talk about the subject anymore, because it's been Tweeted to death already, just now, just in the last few minutes.  The bar has been raised, if your goal is to insert your (educated) opinion into the discussion at all. It's like having Wikipedia get the story completely wrong -- and you know exactly why it's wrong.  Except the case has been closed in an instant, and you weren't there.

This, I think is the thing that scares people to death about social media.

Until you realize that the speed at which discussions can go in one direction is also the speed at which they can change course.  And you do have an opportunity to influence discussion, even if you come to it late -- provided what you have to say is relevant, and persuasive.  Yes, it takes a good bit more effort to insert your opinion into a discussion that's deemed "old," but if the discussion is that important to you, then the extra effort will be worth it.

Keeping up is hard, and getting harder all the time.  Actually, it's beyond hard.  It's literally impossible now.  But that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to keep up.  And it certainly doesn't mean you should cede every argument to the first responders.  It does mean, however, that if you're not willing to move quickly, your effort to move at all -- on any given subject -- will have to be greater, if you want it to have impact.

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Advertising  Marketing   Creative   Interactive   Online Marketing Design  Digital Design Blattner Brunner  Ernie Mosteller  BB Digital 

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