It doesn’t matter if you work in television, radio, advertising, communications, marketing, digital or mobile; your top job is developing audience. You can use words like influence and connection, conversation and relationship but having more people consume your offering gives you a better chance on driving success through whatever metric you decide to employ. Return on your investment may be measured by revenue or awareness but unless you are independently wealthy, you need to eventually realize results of some kind. So in the quest for advancement, most are hesitant to take chances and things get stuck.
Creating Your Experience
As you know, the word media is plural for medium yet there is plenty of evidence that some feel it is a catch-all phrase. But for the most part we consume media alone through gadgets and channels. And with technological advancements, our experience is more in our individual control every day. Our user experience can be uniquely ours.
You don’t read your Facebook newsfeed with ten other people. You aren’t sending tweets from the control room of a studio. And you are probably not devising your next blog post while mapping out storylines and an editorial calendar with your team. Creating and consumer media is a personal process. There are exceptions but we mostly read, watch, listen, write and interact alone. Our quest to reach and share with others makes the experience social.
Imagine. Create. Share.
Think about your average week. Mine consists of time online, calls, email, writing, maybe a webinar, group calls, business development, client work, proposals, team discussions, driving to appointments and research. Your week may be different but you are conducting most of that work alone through various media.
So when companies talk about gaining more market share or building a brand - which can only be done between customers - they often use averages and demographics, charts and trends and that is valuable information but more times than not our clientele consume our offering alone.
How can you enhance customer need on a personal level?
Kneale Mann
image credit: thecoolgadgets
16 comments:
You make great points. We do consume most of our media on our own. Hmmm, interesting.
Your Personal Media Experience http://drewmclellan.me/mMXUbB from @knealemann
I'd challenge this by simply reminding you to look at a group of people who are all acting the same - business people looking at their smart phones or young kids texting instead of talking. As much as we may "consume" media alone, we seem to desperately need to share the experience with others and it's strange that those are not usually the ones in the same room as us. What's over there seems to be more important that what's right here.
RT @knealemann: New Post: Your Personal Media Experience. http://ht.ly/5rPj7
RT @knealemann: New Post: Your Personal Media Experience. http://ht.ly/5rPj7
RT @knealemann: New Post: Your Personal Media Experience. http://ht.ly/5rPj7
Beth Rosen likes this.
This is spot on. So much of our efforts in marketing focus on scaling and getting as many eyes as possible. It's easy to forget that more often than not, our content is consumed by individuals in such a personal and intimate way. What an opportunity!
I read this alone and I'm sure you wrote it alone and the magic is the technology for us to share ideas that we have created or consumed alone. Cool piece.
Further to Ian's point, that is why companies continue to grapple with trying to get a market or demo with a whitewash approach. This is not to say marketers have to devise campaigns that are far reaching and expensive to ensure each and every actual human is touched. But rather look at the approach from a more personal use standpoint. And the answers are probably not far away from their own behavior.
Damn straight! RT @knealemann: Media is? No, Media are. Media are personal. http://ht.ly/5rPmT
RT @knealemann: Are media a personal experience? http://t.co/EgQkxFR
Jackie - Thanks and it is impossible for companies to devise something that will attract every single actual human in their target but this points to paying closer attention to the user experience.
Cheryl - Great points. We are often far more interested in next or there than now and here. Or perhaps that behavior points to the fact that we are consuming more and more media alone and the interaction is beginning to feel more natural through a gadget than in person? That's a scary notion.
Drew - Thank-you, sir.
Ian - I think it is an opportunity and a challenge.
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