MediaJoltz

So before a seminar or presentation you normally find me scouring the Internet for information about podcasting, blogging or new media in general, so I can tout what is going on and why people need to be a part of something big.

Recent discussions though, have led me to look at those statistics more carefully. In my research I have found that while it seems to be growing, we who are of the “new media” space are a very, very small number.

According to Internet World Stats Website there are 6,574,666,417 people in the world today and 1,244,449,601 people have internet access. Normally I say take a look at this stat and tell me if your company is doing something to reach that amount of people who have internet access. But today I ask you, did you realize that only about 19% of the world has internet access?

Here are some stats and the websites I found the stats on the popular applications people are using:

There are 506,331 users of twitter as of Oct 11th 2007, according to http://www.twitdir.com/. Out of those how many are actually active is still unknown. And only 506K when there are more than a billion people who have access to the internet is not that many.
34 million active members worldwide are using Facebook according to the Wikipedia article on Facebook. Once again I would normally say something like “34 million people, how would you like even a piece of those people to become your friends and get on your mailing list,” or something like that. And yet 34 million is still comparatively small.

Now for something thats still very new, we turn to Second Life. According to the description on their webpage only 9,980,489 people logged into Second Life within the last 60 days.

Noticed how I said only. Believe me, when talking to those outside the fishbowl, I normally talk in an excited voice and act like this is huge! But to those of us in it, how many new people do you continue to talk to on a regular basis, compared to the “handful” of regulars?

If you go to the Pew internet Research Company and type blogging in the search function you get a list of different reports. Report number one and six specifically drew my interest:

From these reports you will find these stats:

Eight percent of internet users, or about 12 million American adults, keep a blog. Thirty-nine percent of internet users, or about 57 million American adults, read blogs – a significant increase since the fall of 2005.

Only 8% keep and 39% read a blog. So if you are reading or writing or doing both, boy are you leaps and bounds above more than half of the population of the U.S. Makes you feel special and lonely all at the same time, huh?

44% of adult American Internet users – more than 53 million people – have contributed material to the online world. Content creation in our definition includes creating a Web site, posting material to another Web site for work, family or another organization, posting materials to a personal or another person’s Weblog or online diary. It also includes posting photos, artwork, writing, or audio and video files to the World Wide Web, to a chat room or discussion or newsgroup. The average number of content creating activities for a content creator is relatively small – 1.7 activities – and that suggests the most Internet users are content for now to find a small number of ways to make their contribution.

This stat is the one that got me. “Content Creation” meaning doing pretty much anything to add to the internet, including creating a website-and only 44% of American Internet Users have done this? Way to go those of you who have bravely gone this far!

Some 13% of Internet users have their own Web site. Most do not refresh the material on their site very often: 10% of Web site owners post to their sites daily or more often, but the plurality (42%) update their site once a month or less often.

Okay, for those 13% of you who have a website, lesson to learn-the people who are online are dynamic. Unless you provide fresh material, they have no reason to come back.
I know that stats are not the end all, and there are so many reports that contradict each other, but come on, we have to understand that no matter what the stats say, 9 million or 20 million, the fishbowl is still very small.

I really like what Tom Webster Vice President of Edison Media Research has to say in his analysis: New Podcasting Statistic-Is the Glass Half-Full, or Half Empty? and encourage you to read the whole thing. One comment he makes I have heard myself in my podcasting seminars:

“Though long-time podcasters are tired of hearing this, and probably rejected it two years ago, there is no question that a good chunk of people who might otherwise be interested in podcasts believe that an MP3 player (and, specifically, an iPod) is required to listen.”

I don’t know how many times people have said in seminars, “but I don’t have an iPod.”   It really is amazing.

So what we need to do to help is make new media easy for the non-tech person to access it. Don’t start talking about how they can subscribe to your podcast through an RSS that automatically downloads the episode to their computer through an aggregator… you’ve lost them already! Tell them to go to the website and hit play to listen to your new show, or to read an article you wrote.

Stop talking about podcasting, blogging and new media like it is some foreign thing that only you understand and start talking about your show, or journal-use words people understand, make it simple.

Sometimes we aren’t sure what to write or podcast about.  That isn’t a problem for Chris Brogan who gives us a list of things he hopes you talk about in your next post or episode.

Here is a short version of the list:

1 How I Use Facebook
2 Ways I Embrace My Audience
3 Should My Town Use Social Media?
4 A Community I Love
5 Technology That Empowers Me
6 How Flickr Did it Right
7 How Best to Comment on a Corporate Blog
8 Ways to Save a Bad Time at a Conference
9 How I Find Blogging Ideas
10 Somebody Has to Say It
11 My Children Will Do it Differently
12 How Schools Could Use Social Media
13 The Best Parts of Marketing
14 Presentation Skills for a New Conversation
15 How I Find Time to Make Media
16 Empower Your Best Customers
17 After the Event- Carrying the Conversation Forward
18 Just Jump Into Podcasting- Heres How
19 My Community and How You Can Engage It
20 Twitter Jaiku Pownce Facebook- And Then What
21 Making a Miniseries
22 If I Were an Advertiser Today
23 My Mother is On Facebook
24 Does a Big Brand Need You
25 Books I Want to Write

check out Brogan’s site for the rest of the topics!

Here is a video on how to add elements like video and pictures to your post on your Blogger account. This will help to make your posts a little more exciting and break up the monotony of plain text.

Okay guys, here is the post you’ve all been waiting for. You’ve got your team of friends, you know what formating you like and you know what you’re going to write about.

So?

Lets do it! This week I want you to start blogging. I want you to be passionate in your writing. I want you to tell your friends and supporters and co-workers and family about your blog. I want you to put your blog URL into your signature in all your emails…

But first, we have to set it up:

Let me know how it goes. Let me know the URL-I’d love to visit!!!

Sorry today’s post is late, I published it but I think it got lost in my feed.

Today’s post is about using technology in everyday life outside of work. Because yes; there is life outside of work.

A while back there were several times while hanging out with friends that my husband and I were completely lost when they started chatting about different television series.

We felt lost and very “uncool.”

But this is no longer the case. No, we haven’t decided to rearrange our schedules around the schedules of the latest sitcom. The stations themselves have saved our behinds through streaming the shows online.

If you go to ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX and TBS they now have most of their shows streaming online. Shows like Lost, Ugly Betty and Prison Break.

The catch is that you have to usually wait until the next day before they are online, but this is okay with us. It is actually pretty fun to be able to watch more than one episode at a time.

And unlike shows on the television, streaming shows online have half the commercials-and the commercials are sometimes shorter than 30 seconds.

Now you may be wondering why the heck we would want to watch shows on our computer, but we don’t. We hook our computer up to our television and while the quality isn’t as clear as our HD channels, we don’t mind sacrificing a little bit of quality for the ability to watch when we want.

Here is a helpful link for Hooking up your PC to your TV.

Here is a helpful link to a forum where they discuss how to Hook your Mac Computer to the television.

I’m not sure if this is available to all countries. For those outside the United States, I would love for you to let us know if you are able to watch LEGAL streaming video…

I know by now you’re probably saying, alright alright, lets get to blogging, I want to write my post!! Let me ask you this question first, why do YOU want to blog?

Is it because you’ve heard you should? Is it because you want to advertise your product and services? According to Technorati, there are over 72 million blogs-what are you going to do to help contribute? What do you have to say that’s different than what others have said?

Chris Brogan has some ideas for business owners in his post: Local Social Media-Applications for ways that you can use your social media-including blogging in your local community. Then you can read the 15 comments his readers give on ways they suggest using social media in their local communities.

Here are two ideas that I just discussed today with a group:

-I think Realtors can blog about the communities they are selling homes in. Or they can blog about tips and tricks for maintaining a home. When my husband and I were new homeowners, we knew we had to clean out the gutters and the basics of taking care of the home, but there were lots of things that we didn’t realize we ought to do. With a blog, a Realtor can brand themselves (apart from their company) and then by submitting that to all the directories, their name will be all over the place.

- The second one is actually something that a friend of mine is doing. We talked a little bit about the blog she had for her company For Every Body. She wanted to know how to get more awareness about her company. I told her that a blog needed to have passion in it and she went and did an amazing job with a new blog they started called Think Pink. Their company has a campaign going on for Breast Cancer Awareness Month where they are collecting stories and then choosing one woman to provide support to her.

What you are passionate about? Look at what people are already saying about it and think about your view, your twist to what is being said. People don’t want to read advertisement after advertisement, they want substance that they can learn from and enjoy. They can tell if you are fake and impersonal, so let your passion shine through.

Tomorrow is a post on using social media in your personal life, so take this weekend to figure out what you are passionate about. What do you want to blog about and WHY?

It is Wed. and to give you guys a break from tons of homework <wink>  I’m going to stick with this new tradition of promoting someone who has helped me in life.

Today is a promotion of Enoch Chapman.  This dude rocks.  I had him on a podcast and the man knows his stuff.  More importantly though, he has been a huge support for me.  I’ve only been in “technology” for the past few years and he has encouraged me greatly.

He has encouraged me on the consulting side, pushing me on, feeding my passion for new media and boosting my confidence when I felt unsure of myself.  When I talk about creating relationships with people who will be your support in the future, I’m talking about something like what I’ve got with Enoch.  Thanks a ton man!