The problem with that is it risks making us dangerously narrow.

I had a stark personal example of this this weekend when I called my parents in Kingston, Jamaica to say hello. When my father answered he asked if I was finally calling to check on them in light of what was going on…

“What’s going on?”, I asked.

“There’s a state of emergency in Kingston.”

I had no idea.

I had no idea because, almost exclusively, I consume media focused on topics of my choice: marketing and communications, parenting, running. I listen to radio from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) – but only for a few minutes commuting to and from work. So I missed the stories about a state of emergency in the city where my parents live.

More than ever,  in this connected world, a key part of being a good communicator is having a broad understanding of the public environment. Adding some mass media to your daily consumption is a good start.

Do you add a sprinkle of mainstream to your daily media diet? If so, let us know by leaving a comment.

Last Friday, the Toronto Star online ran a story about a new Angus Reid survey titled, “Newspapers among most trusted media, survey finds.” This headline did what it was supposed to do: got my attention. It did so because it suggested a result contrary to the conventional wisdom that newspapers are dying a fast and richly deserved death. However, upon closer inspection, that contrary result is not so clear. Here’s what the Star quoted from the survey:

Among consumers of all ages surveyed, family and friends were the most trusted source of information, at 78 per cent and 68 per cent respectively, followed by radio at 45 per cent, print newspapers at 41 per cent, online news sites at 39 per cent, television at 31 per cent, print magazines at 28 per cent and finally online social networks and blogs, at 13 per cent and 8 per cent respectively, Reid said.

The problem is that the results confuse “sources” like family and friends with “channels” like blogs and social networks. So the survey tells us lots of people trust their family and friends as sources but ignores the fact they use multiple channels – blogs, social networks, face-to-face -  to communicate with them. If the surveyors are confusing channels and sources then chances are good respondents are too and that makes the results questionable. The other thing that makes them questionable is the respondents are paid. The article says, “Vision Critical [who Angus Reid works with] has developed hundreds of “panels” of people willing to participate in multiple surveys, for which they are paid $1 to $4 per survey”. Last time I checked “random” samples weren’t drawn exclusively from people paid to answer questions.

Look closely before you quote surveys or, more importantly, base marketing and communications decisions on them.

ps. There was no link to the actual survey in the article.

In March, the Government of British Columbia launched the Apps for Climate Action contest challenging developers to use government data to create applications (or apps) that “raise awareness of climate change and inspire action to reduce carbon pollution”. It’s the “Inspire action” part I love because governments spend way too much time and money trying to “raise people’s awareness” of what they’re doing and/or trying to get people to take some action the government wants them to take. Through open data initiatives governments give people the information they need to take action they choose.

The BC contest is the first government open data initiative I’ve heard of focused on a particular topic instead of focusing on simply releasing as much data as possible. I like this because it will lead to the creation of lots of apps focused on the very important climate change issue and still make more data freely available to be used however people want to. You don’t have to be in the contest to use the data and you don’t have to make a climate change app – unless you want a shot at the prizes.

The BC contest is modeled on Washington, DC’s Apps for Democracy contest that “yielded 47 web, iPhone and Facebook apps in 30 days – a $2,300,000 value to the city at a cost of $50,000” according to the website. See all the apps created here.

I’ll be watching to see what creative climate action apps folks dream up.

Loyalty, built brick by brick by providing value to communities and their members for free, is your money in the bank.

When it’s time for your non-profit to ask for donations people will give if you’ve been giving to them by adding value to conversations they’re having online and off. When people need a product or service that you and others provide, they will choose you over your competitor if you’ve been providing more great, free content.

Is providing great content hard? No. It’s not because, with so much great stuff out there, you don’t have to create anything new, you just have to sift through the piles to find the gems your audience cares about. The value is in the sifting. And if you want to really take it to the next level throw in some analysis of what you sift and people will love and share your content.

• A win from independent financial advisor Randy Little, who went out on his own with a commitment to doing things differently. Building from the ground up, Randy has built his business by reaching out to the people of Ottawa almost entirely through his Twitter account.

Hear Randy Little talk about building his business with Twitter.

• A fail from Chelsea Edgell about being hired to find an environmentally-friendly way to publish a massive, annual employee job manual and being shown the door when she suggested a wiki might be a better solution than burning 50 CDs.

Hear Chelsea Edgell talk about failing to convince her organisation to embrace collaborative tools.

Randy said that one of the reasons he was on Twitter was because the kind of people he wants to reach are on Twitter. I asked him how he knew who was on and he told me:

• he knows they’re in Ottawa because he searches for people using TweetDeck’s “Tweets Nearby” feature (Randy uses TweetDeck on his iPhone)
• he reads people’s bios and looks for clues in their tweets (i.e. do they talk about owning a house?)

Randy says he follows 2000 people so cut him some slack if you follow him – but he doesn’t follow you back.

Thanks to the Case Study Jam organisers for another good one.

The latest email I received from the very informative Social Media Examiner has an article titled ”21 Creative Ways To Increase Your Facebook Fanbase“.  I haven’t got through the whole thing yet (I think webland has made me incapable of absorbing 21 things at a time) however, I did get far enough to find one tip that inspired this new blog segment.  Here it is:

Tip #7: Get Fans to Tag Photos

If you host live events, be sure to take plenty of photos (or even hire a professional photographer), load the photos to your fan page and encourage fans to tag themselves.

This tip combines two powerful ways to get people to love your content:

1) Hold, or help your clients hold, face-to-face meetings

2) Encourage them to record and upload what happens in those meetings (and give them the tools if needed)

Because they’re at the meetings they’re in the content and there’s nothing people love more than reading about, hearing or seeing themselves in content they helped create themselves. Well, maybe the one thing they love more is sharing that content with others.

Got a good co-creation idea? Feel free to co-create by leaving a comment!

Jesse Brown, host of TVO’s internet-focused podcast Search Engine, always teaches me things I’d never learn from mainstream media and his latest episode, Deep Packet Inspection, is no exception.

The episode focusses on the new website www.deeppacketinspection.ca that, among other things, tells Canadians whether their internet service provider (ISP) uses Deep Packet Inspection technology or DPI. ISPs use DPI to look at what applications people are using to decide which ones they might need to “manage” or “throttle”.  The ISPs say they have to do this to, for example, stop people who download things using BitTorrent applications from slowing things down for everyone else.  Sounds noble but the problem is that the ISPs won’t provide proof to back up their “need-to-throttle” claims saying all that info are trade secrets. This tends to supports critics’ assertions, so far unsupported by concrete proof, that the real reason ISPs throttle is to slow down applications that compete with their services (i.e. throttle people downloading movies with BitTorrent so they opt for the easier option of the ISP’s own video on demand service).

In the DPI Search Engine episode one of the researchers behind the DPI website, University of Victoria Political Science PhD candidate Christopher Parsons, reveals that Videotron, the huge Quebec-based ISP, doesn’t use DPI. They manage their network using other methods. So if Videotron can do it why can’t Rogers and Bell? Maybe someone from Rogers and Bell will go on Search Engine and tell us – but somehow I doubt it.

Check out if your ISP is throttling and let us all know by leaving a comment.

Note: Jesse and Parsons talk openly about the the website being a partnership with the Privacy Commissioner of Canada but I couldn’t find anything about it on the commission’s website.

In March 2010, the Canadian federal government informally launched an open data initiative similar to the US Data.gov (the announcement was so informal it was only on Twitter as far as I can tell). The goal of open data initiatives is to release government data to the public in ways people can use it to do useful things online. And that’s exactly what they do.

I learned of a great example of the kind of thing that makes me an open data advocate at a recent government open data presentation. It came in a video the presenter played of a talk by internet founder, Tim Berners-Lee at the 2010 TED Conference. TED is an annual week-long meeting of people with big brains sharing amazing ideas that, until recently, was private but is now made available online. Berners-Lee’s talk was a follow up this his 2009 talk where he encouraged the crowd to go do great things with open data. Clearly he inspired more than just the people in the room.

He gave an example of a lawyer in Zanesville, Ohio who made a map combining data about which houses had city-supplied water with data about which house residents were black or white. Here’s what he got:

A judge saw this and awarded the black residents $10.9 million in damages. Open data: 1; Zanesville town council: minus 10.9 million.

Now, you can see why examples like this might make governments reluctant to fully embrace open data. But there are other examples that should do otherwise such as these out of Vancouver:

• Vantrash which sends emails or tweets to Vancouverites reminding them of their upcoming garbage day
• Amazon Vancouver Public Library Linky that tells Amazon users if the book they searched for on Amazon is available at the Vancouver public library.

(The City of Ottawa is also embracing open data.)

The federal government has lots and lots of data and the possibilities of what people can do with it are endless. So this post is a call to action for one and all to go boldly where more and more people have gone before and tell your governments: Let my data go!

If you have a good open data story or a suggestion for an open data app please leave a comment!

There’s more and more money to be made these days being a “social media expert” so, not surprisingly,  lots of people are jumping on the bandwagon. So how do you know if the social media expert pitching you (or already working for you) is for real and can deliver?

Here are two quick ways to check  if the people offering their services are any good:

1) Beware of self-proclaimed “experts”.  If they call themselves social media experts show them the door.  As I’ve said before, this stuff is too new and fluid for anyone to be an expert – and only the people who don’t know this call themselves that.

2) Check what they do online – and off.  Social media is way more about “social” than “media” so anyone who really knows what they’re doing will be active with social media communities online and off. Google their name and see what comes up. Do they comment on blogs and/or have their own? Are they active on Twitter (not just on Twitter, active on Twitter)? Do they organise social media events, free or otherwise? Do they give webinars?

To understand social media you have to do it. 

Thoughts? Leave  a comment.

I see more and more organisations hiring managers for “social media” or “digital media” or “community management”.  This is a good thing if one of the key responsibilities of these people is to help all members of the organisation learn social media through doing it.

This is a smart strategy for a few key reasons:

* There is no such thing as a social media “expert” because it’s all too new and it changes too fast. The more people you have learning and sharing the better.

* Doing social media doesn’t take lots of money but it often takes lots of time in both the short and long term. One person can’t do it all.

* When (not if) your social media  person leaves, you’ll have other people trained and motivated to take over.

* People will be able to see the value of social media a lot easier if they see the value of it in their own lives.

So how do you get newbies in your organisation using social media? Start with their egos.

Here are two simple steps to take that are guaranteed (or your money back) to get people interested:

1) Get everyone to set up a Google Alert on their name. Many people have never done a Google search on their name (which is what Google Alerts are) and the results often surprise.

2) Have them set up personal Twitter accounts two week later. – After they’ve had the Google Alert for a couple of weeks have them all set up personal Twitter accounts and start sending a tweet a day. Google search results now include Twitter so they’ll start getting their tweets, and any tweets that mention them, back as Google Alerts.

Let the fun begin.

Does your organisation have a social media learning culture or social media experts, or both? Please share by leaving a comment.