Thoughts On New Media
I was recently interviewed about my thoughts on new media…a topic of interest, one could say. Here are my musings:
“How does social media influence your international education job?”
As the New Media & Research Assoc. at API, social media plays an active role in my position. As many of us use social media as a main source of communication, research, etc., a significant portion of my time is dedicated to creating, managing and monitoring our online presences.
“How did you get into social media?”
In 1992, I created my first e-mail address, began blogging in 2001, created a Facebook profile in 2005 and signed up for Twitter in 2007. I studied advertising with a focus in new media, creative research and strategy. During this time, I spent a year researching social media infrastructures and developed a new social media model to support our converging online/offline communication behaviors. I’ve held various internships and jobs in the field and was one of the contributing authors to The Project 100 (a collaborative book on marketing in the era of social media). I suppose you classify me as a digital native, but the truth is, I’ve always been interested in the relationship between and convergence of humans and technology!
“What is one social media tool you cannot live without now?”
As there are so many social media tools with such different purposes, it really just depends on the end result I’m looking to achieve. With that said, one tool I’ve really found useful is Google Analytics. I’ve learned quite a bit about online behavior via analytics tools.
“What is one thing you wish you knew about social media that would have made getting involved with it easier?”
There are a handful of insights I’ve picked up over the years.
Authenticity: Be yourself, be genuine, be transparent, be interesting, be entertaining and if you do make a mistake, acknowledge it…we’re all human!
Collaborate/Connect: How can you collaborate with people in a meaningful way? How can you make it easier for people to communicate with one another?
Details: Don’t be hasty! Though the message may be brief, take time to think through what you are saying. Before publishing, take a breather. Read. Re-read. Then click send.
Measure: There is so much to learn by monitoring analytics. Quantitative results are important but don’t forget about qualitative results!
Research: Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo, YouTube, Digg, Skype, Blogspot, MySpace, WordPress, Flickr, Slideshare, Ning, Flickr, Delicious. Whew! Just because it’s available doesn’t mean it should be used! Make sure to research before diving in – watching, reading, listening, collecting, and conversing. What are people saying? What are people looking for?
Strategy: Of course it’s necessary to understand the functions of new media, but it’s just as important to understand people’s motives for using these platforms. New media will come and go, but human behaviors and patterns will always be around.
What do you think is social media’s biggest impact has been on international education?
The web was originally created to display static documents – more of a monologue model. However, the web has evolved into a dialog model, where social elements have been incorporated. Now, people are not just looking to “experts” for answers, but crowd sourcing their respective social networks for information.
It’s important to remember that social networks are not new. We’ve formed social circles for thousands of years. Social media merely adds an online element to our offline worlds.
With this said, I believe incorporating sociability into communication strategies has been the biggest impact social media has had on international education.
Why do you continue to use social media?
As long as the relationship between technology and people continues to evolve and my curiosity remains, I’ll continue to use social media. (:
Kim Karalekas is the New Media & Research Coordinator at Academic Programs International (API), specializing in online user experience, research, brand strategy, new media & web development. Away from work, she enjoys salsa dancing, playing the violin/piano, and geocaching. To connect with Kim: @API_KimK I http://www.linkedin.com/in/kimkaralekas Ikim.karalekas@apistudyabroad.com
cre8con 2008
Great start to cre8con with On Your Feet!
Improvised creativity activities.
Damali Ayo – Crow Clothing – great speaker. Felt like I was watching our Sameunderneath presentation, but either way, she was a fabulous speaker, extremely captivating (hmm, Ryan anyone?!)
Please take not of the copy under Walmart, upper left corner
And then there was Jelly Helm. I’m pretty sure within 30 seconds, the entire audience fell in love with him. He was such a great speaker, down to earth and had extremely relevant points.
- How to give a speech: say what you know to be true
- Advice: Don’t read Chomsky.
- Successful brands in the 21st century: aren’t created by agencies! Created by direct experience because experience doesn’t lie.
Jelly Helm
Megan and I agreed that that basically everything Jelly said in his presentation was everything we have been wanting to say about branding/advertising but haven’t been able to put it into words. And now Jelly is leaving Wieden. And now I’m reevaluating my entire life plan.
All in all, great conference – major kudos to Steve Gehlen for making this happen!
Sidenote:
During lunch, Megan and I found the largest sasquatch behemoth dog I’ve seen:
Inverge 2008
Before anything else, I have to say a giant thank you to UO J. school for sending Megan and I to Inverge! It was a great opportunity and we’ll be able to implement quite a bit of what we learned into making AHA/NVC 2009 amazing…
With that said…Inverge 2008! Inverge is a 2 day interactive convergence conference where thought leaders from a wide variety of industries speak about their specialization under the umbrella topic: the influence of technology and it’s effects on society, specifically how it has affected the advertising/branding/marketing world.
Inverge
I could go on for days about all I learned; however, here are a handful of my favorite thoughts/ideas from Inverge:
Renny Gleeson, Global Digital Strategies Director, Wieden + Kennedy
• Are we using technology to create bubbles (past) or to create communities (now/future)
• Technology has caused major miscommunications (we rely heavily on visual/audio cues – email for example eliminates this)
• Flickr has some freaking awesome groups. Ex – Dinosaurs in Inappropriate Places (and yes, I’ve already joined and added a photo in case you were curious!)
• Brands are no longer 9 – 5, they are 24/7
• How can technology make us more human than less?
• We now spend hours maintaining our online identities – has this affected our real life identities?
Renny Gleeson
Raven Zachary – iPhone Intelligence
• 75% of mobile web traffic is from iPhone and iPod touch (iPhone was released just over a year ago!)
• iPhone apps.
o Win at wasting time
o Identify a song
o Drink a virtual beer
o Audience feedback (speakers iPhone turns red if audience doesn’t like topic)
o I am rich (cost a million dollars just to show you can afford it)
o Phone saber (think light saber…iPhone style)
Raven Zachary
Scott Kveton, Chairman, Openid Foundation, VP of Open Platforms, Vidoop
• Predicting the Future
o Olympics – multiple announcers – we choose who to listen to
o Phone will vibrate when Obama supporter walks by
o Media that targets you but doesn’t include you isn’t worth it!!
Scott Kveton
Paul Matthaeus, Founder, CCO, Chairman – Digital Kitchen
Thesis -> antithesis -> synthesis
Paul Matthaeus
Ed Lantz , President & CTO Vortex Immersion Media
• Will immersive media provide enhanced experiences or cause cognitive overload?
• Digital flirting
Ed Lantz
Richard Rosen, President + CEO + author: Convergence Marketin
Interactive ≠ Interaction
Richard Rosen
Amber Case, Cyborg Anthropologist
She live-tweeted the entire event – how freaking awesome is that???
Here I am, watching both Amber’s live speech and live tweet:
watching Amber
• Too many feature reduce value (hello Facebook and MySpace!!!!)
• W/out humans, theree would be no technology, w/out technology…there would be no humans…?
• Twitter = transcending silos of mental isolation
All in all, Inverge was fabulous – cre8con tomorrow to complete the weekend of business+culture experience madness
Anvil Media and Social Media
Throughout my time with COLAB, I have been able to sample a wide variety of subcategories within the advertising world.
I still haven’t decided which path to pursue post-school;however, within the account management path, I’ve been especially fascinated with brand strategy, social media and creative research.
Let’s talk social media marketing for a moment, shall we?
social media
During my time at Anvil, I was assigned to develop a social media plan – as I spent more time with social media, I began to realize what a monumental and drastic change this is from traditional advertising….
Hazelnut Tech Talk Episode 4 | The CoLab Experience
After cre8camp, Amber and Bram interviewed Christine I for their podcast: