Ways Traditional Media Can Collaborate With New Media

The following are my speaker notes from the Media Leaders presentation on Wednesday, Sept. 16. (The outlines has links throughout, but they didn't translate here. Please see the original link on everzalez.com for more resources)

I. Intro
a. We moved to Austin in search of people to collaborate with.
b. A little about what I do at News 8 Austin
c. What we’re going to talk about today:
i. What we had to overcome to get started
ii. Best practices we learned along the way
iii. What the future holds here in Austin

II. Things we had to overcome – similar to corporations
a. You have to have three entities on board
i. Someone who understands “social media currency”
ii. Someone to technically put it together (incorporate FB on pages, for example)
iii. Support from management
b. Fear
i. Transcends age
ii. Lack of control of the message
iii. Scared of how they represent the company
c. Solution
i. Education – Train people on Twitter, how to use it and what the online community is like
ii. Communication about how to deal with feedback and questions

III. You have things up and running – how do you incorporate user generated content?
a. Just b/c you build it, doesn’t mean they will come
i. Sweet Leaf success
ii. Our first call out had no returns (we had no social media currency)
iii. Doesn’t mean you should stop
b. Examples of it working
i. Severe weather (it takes collaboration)
ii. ATXPlaneCrash – Have someone monitoring feeds
1. Why Flickr? – It increases your SEO when you put a link to the article in the captions
2. The power of Twitter search
3. Facebook search now allows you to mine updates for links and media, just like Twitter

IV. Where do we build from here?
a. Keep the site open – the key is having an editor
i. iReport on CNN
ii. CurrentTV

V. Bloggers have put themselves in positions as editors
a. While we have the responsibility to reach people where they are, bloggers need to connect with media people
b. The press release is not dead
c. SOCIAL MEDIA ENCHASES YOUR ABILITY TO CONNECT WITH TRADITIONAL MEDIA
d. Best way to connect is still through the 5 Ws (who, what, where, when, why) – edit yourself
e. These collaborations are already taking shape
i. Example: ATX Fashion Week
ii. Now Austin = DO 512 + NBC

VI. In conclusion:
a. The new world is all about collaboration: Traditional media will survive by not only adopting, but collaboration with new media
b. Social media currency is about creating and sharing usable content (provide value)
c. And remember – we’re all having fun and figuring it out as we grow… and we’re tweeting the whole way through