When I moved to Des Moines from San Francisco three years ago, the first thing I happily noticed was the lack of traffic during rush hour. My five-mile, public transit commute within San Francisco took 45 minutes. I had plenty of time to listen to an NPR podcast on my iPod prior to leaving for the office. Today, my seven-mile commute from downtown consists of 11 minutes tuned to Iowa Public Radio. I often pull up to the office—or back into my garage—mid-story and reluctant to exit my car.
During their recent fall membership drive, IPR tried tempting listeners into pledging $150 for a Radio Bookmark—a USB keychain with two buttons. The programmable buttons connect with two different participating public radio stations. When you press a button, the device records the current date and time. Plug the Radio Bookmark into your computer, and a customized webpage appears with a list of stories you want to hear.
With this device, people no longer have to be late to work because they are in the middle of an engrossing story when they pull up to their office. So why did I just spend a good dozen sentences explaining the purpose behind another company’s product? The Radio Bookmark is a great example of renewing old technologies with the new. Terrestrial radio, as Howard Stern likes to call standard AM/FM radio, has been given new life with the help of a simple time-tracking USB device.
Social media renews old technology—business marketing and communications—by means of new technology. Whereas the recent past saw the skylines plastered with billboards and heard the airwaves defiled by commercials, businesses are now able to find and communicate directly with their customers in venues like Facebook and Twitter without wasting resources on people that just don’t care.
While the broadly-targeted advertising campaigns of the past are not going anywhere anytime soon, their effectiveness per dollar spent relative to other available options is diminishing rapidly. Social media is helping businesses reach their defined audiences more effectively than ever using new tools to listen, interact, and analyze the results.
How can utilizing social media make your company’s communication tools new again?
[Photo from mynameispaul on Flickr / CC BY 2.0]
