Reading about Gutenberg, movable type, and printing in general always makes me think about just how far we’ve come in the realm of communications and the ability to disseminate information. As many of you know, I’m a letterpress printer, using machines that aren’t much different from the ones Gutenberg himself worked with five hundred, yep, that’s 500! years ago!!!

On the other end of spectrum, though, is the work that I’m lucky enough to do every day in the realm of electronic communications. Read the Wired, This Day In Tech, article, and allow your mind to wander, thinking about, imagining, the world of lead type, and heavy cast iron that was needed to get a message out there. Then think back a bit further to a time of hand scribes, and no dissemination at all except what could be passed word-of-mouth.

It’s kind of hard to imagine especially in a world rapid-fire tweets, Facebook status updates, RSS feeds, and blog posts just like this one, that not too long ago there was no Web, or iPhone, or Blackberry or anything else that permitted such awesome real-time, in the moment, communication. Just sayin’… pretty awesome.

Our struggle now isn’t the media, but finding the attention to dedicate to it all… Exciting stuff.

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For this week’s Social Media Take Away I’m featuring a post that I read last week in The Future Buzz blog, 50 Blogging Lessons To Know If You’re Starting Today. Adam Singer has a great blog going over there, one that I’ve been reading for nearly a year.

I’ve been doing this blog on here for less than a year, and to read some of the points on here that Adam makes is great for not just myself, but for anyone looking to start a blog, or looking to integrate blogs into their work or communications plans.

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Jason Kottke’s post Write Different reminds me of just how much Charles Bukowski has influenced me, and no doubt influenced a generation of writers on the Web directly, or indirectly. Thanks Jason!

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I found the PR News Digital PR Next Practices Summit to be highly informative. It was a good chance to brush up on theories of social media in application, but it was also good to see some different things that people were doing. For me, though, there were a couple really great stand out presentations. The first one that really stuck out for me was:

Social Media Relations: Getting Positive Coverage in the Conversational Age, which featured the folks below, with their names being links to their respective presentations. This one was great:

Johna Burke (@gojohnab)
Vice President
BurrellesLuce

Julie Crabill (@julzie)
VP, Consumer Lifestyle Practices
Shift Communications

Monte Lutz (montelutz)
SVP of Digital Public Affiars
Edelman

The next one that I thought was really great, and I would say, possibly the best one, because the presenter, Paula Berg, was a great presenter, with a lot of enthusiasm and a real sense of humor about what she’s doing, was YouTube and Other Video Tactics to Advance Your PR:

Paula Berg (@PaulaBerg)
Manager of Emerging Media
Southwest Airlines

Here are some highlights from PR News Digital PR Next Practices Summit as posted on Twitter by attendees:

@montelutz #prnsummit – reporters are setting up spam filters for phrases like “great story idea” to weed out bad pitches –> @gojohnab

@gojohnab #prnsummit @julzie SM release preso old releases no longer applicable too much marketing speak not enough community and conversation

@cericwright @julzie says your brand belongs to the community at large #prnsummit

@montelutz “your brand’s already been hijacked. it doesn’t belong to you. it belongs to the community” #prnsummit ht @julzie

@nduhoski Check out Microsoft, Cisco, Ford for good social media newsroom site examples. #prnsummit

@nduhoski Google is as much a reputation engine as it is a search engine. #prnsummit

@nduhoski RT @DenverPRguy Your brand has been hijacked already. Its not owned by you but by the community. Be part of the community’s convo #prnsummit

@nduhoski When it comes to SM Best Practices: Beg, Borrow & Steal, then give back, credit. #prnsummit

@FlightpathNY Coke did not start their facebook page, even now they co-manage it with fans of the brand #prnsummit

@Rat_Race Lots of talk about engaging employees as brand advocates. Wonder how a work life balance fits in… Is there a balance? #prnsummit

@julzie @paullyoung “hits: how idiots track success” #prnsummit

@DenverPRguy Social Media users are 83% more likely to be brand loyal than non-users (from Paull Young, Converseon at #prnsummit)

@FlightpathNY Relationships with community members is the most critcal element & the most difficult to measure. Transparency remains paramount #prnsummit

@kdpaine RT @DenverPRguy: Relationships are what makes SM successful. UR measurement plan should track what those relationships look like. #prnsummit

@paullyoung says that the most powerful analytics tool is the human brain, use common sense #prnsummit

@mtkiefer @leeodden “if content can be searched on, it can be optimized” #prnsummit

@MerrittPR Incorperate links within online content and don’t have link read: click here but rather imbed within content of release or copy #prnsummit

@DenverPRguy Amen. “One of the biggest dangers of social media is not getting involved.” #prnsummit

@gojohnab Good #CEO ’s recognize smart people no matter what level in the organization and will engage when appropriate #prnsummit

@gojohnab: #prnsummit Matthias Preschern: Content is king. Participate by linking in vs. Trying to build communities on your own

@MerrittPR Why does the blogosphere matter? B/c 71% of all journos read blogs for content #prnsummit

@MerrittPR Engage the blogosphere BEFORE, during and after a crisis! #prnsummit

@DallasLawrence Great comment by Southwest at #prnsummit – no link between quality of video and views. In other words, content and authenticity rules

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Some of my regular readers may have noticed that the site has been changing over the last month or so. This really started with the merging of the Digital Imperative blog and my music/design site. I wanted to bring my career workinline with my creative and artistic work here at mattborghi .com. Since then I’ve been reading some of your comments, emails and past posts (of which this is post #90) and thinking about the editorial direction and content overall of The Digital Imperative. This week it became clear to me that while I might talk about Google, Twitter or Yahoo, or Web and Digital Strategy or communications, as well as posting videos or Mp3s of recent work at the core of my message is that of entrepreneurship. Whether you’re a corporate entrepreneur working inside the walls of a Fortune 500 company, the small business owner who’s reach is much more local than global or a Do-It-Yourself artist trying to gain a broader audience for your work — Entrepreneurship is an attitude.

It took me talking to a trusted colleague this week for that to become clear to me. We spent a good amount of time talking about what it means to be a small business and a small business owner. Entrepreneurship encompasses a series of soft skills, including ambition, persistence, organization, attitude and most importantly a belief in one’s self, but there are many other words that describe what an entrepreneur or entrepreneurship is.

I plan to spend more time talking about entrepreneurship and what it means to be an entrepreneur. Keeping in mind that my definition of an entrepreneur is looser than most. I define an entrepreneur as someone who works to put something together and is willing to take the risk for it.  This goes together with the newly-crafted editorial statement that I crafted for this site: The best investment you can make is in yourself.

So that’s the plan, and the direction I plan on taking with things. I’ll still be talking about social media, Web strategy, communications and the like because of course it’s absolutely the entrepreneurial spirit that drives one to undertake these things, especially as best practices are being written as we go. As always, I welcome your feedback, and look forward to the continued conversation.

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This post was one that was originally posted here, but kind of got lost in the mix, and I wanted to repost it for two reasons. First, this is a great example of using the Web to create and be creative. I was surfing Flickr, a free picture sharing site, and I found this great series by Indy Kethdy, he had them marked with a Creative Commons license, so I downloaded them, created a video, and then composed a soundtrack to the photostream. Then I posted the video on YouTube to share. This sort of the full-circle of open sharing, social media and creativity on the Web. My second reason is less profound, I know the site has some new readers, and I thought that they might enjoy checking out this video montage. Enjoy.

Indy Kethdy Video Montage with Matt Borghi Soundtrack

Surfing Flickr, as I so often do, I find images that inspire me. Last Friday night, though, I found the fantastic work of Indy Kethdy. I spent hours, and hours pouring over his pictures of Lake Michigan from around Wisconsin. I started to hear music in my ears, and imagined putting these images to sound. I was in luck, because Indy had set his pictures with a Creative Commons license that allowed me to make a video of his photos, put them to music, and then post it here for you to view. I highly recommend visiting Indy’s Flickr page – http://www.flickr.com/people/indykethdy/ and getting a taste of his excellent artistry first-hand. First, though, check out the video homage and the music that I created from the inspiration of his gorgeous still images:

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After doing the blog for several months I started to see patterns emerging between my mattborghi.com site, which focused mostly on my art, music, video, etc… and my professional blog, The Digital Imperative, which dealt more with Web work, strategy and the like. I decided to merge them, and that process was completed tonight, though there still may be some bugs and dead links… definitely let me know about those if you find any. I’ve moved away from Joomla to Wordpress, and I’m very excited about the ease of updating, and the social media integration that’s plug and play in Wordpress. Now, I don’t have anything against Joomla and I still maintain at least a dozen Joomla sites, but for the purpose of this site, Joomla was just more power than I needed, so the change is very welcome. I’ve got a lot of great posts brewing for this combined site and I’ll be rolling out my editorial calendar in the days to come.

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A lot is being said about “free” these days, especially with the release of Chris Anderson’s book on the subject, but ever since I came online I’ve been interested in the economics of free, whether it was freeware, free music, or free information.

Story: I ran a series of free Mp3 downloads back in 2003 at mattborghi.com, and those downloads brought in more hits to my Web site than being featured on the nationally-syndicated space music program, Hearts of Space. To be fair, the program didn’t feature my music, exclusively, and no link was included to my site, but I thought that it would at least have generated some inquiries, and it did. However, I didn’t see nearly the response that I thought I would from that exposure compared to the interest generated by the free monthly download series.

It’s with that experience in mind that I released a variety of my long-form ambient music tracks to be freely available (some of which are from that monthly download series). Here’s the official announcement from my homepage at mattborghi.com:

Freely available Mp3s of long-form ambient works

I have freely released several hours worth of my long form works in mp3 form here, approximately a dozen tracks. Most of these tracks haven’t been available in quite a long time. Some go back as far as ten years and my early Mp3.com page, some were out-takes from records, and the 2003 series was a monthly download series that I did throughout 2003 during a particularly prolific period. I hope to add other long form works over started adding these tracks.

My reasons for doing this are two-fold. First, these tracks haven’t been available in a long time, and to me it makes more sense to put them out into the universe, where people can enjoy them, than let them take up space on my hard drive .

The second reason has to do with my how I measure the success of social media. Social media metrics and measurements are something that many folks talk about, and ponder but I think that good social media metrics aren’t in hit rankings or page views, but rather in how many people you are getting your ideas out to. The more people that download you free ambient music tracks, watch your videos, read your blog, etc… and comment on, think about, bring up in discussion, include in status updates or generally take an interest in your ideas is the best way to measure the success of social media.

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Change is hard, there’s no question about it. Sometimes, even a change for the better is tough for a team or an organization to make peace with; and things are even worse if the change isn’t for the better. I’m not talking about the slow gradual change of degradation, as much as I’m talking about quick changes, and their short, sharp shock effect. These changes, while quick in execution, to some appear to be better and more effective (I blame this one to many Dog Whisperer episodes where the watcher begins these techniques on humans) have far-reaching effects that definitely effect morale and an organization’s culture.

In our particular epoch, this post-9/11, quasi-depression era that we’re living in, people are often running scared, and any change, one way or another, fuels core fears – loss of job, loss of home, loss of health care. There’s not a lot that we can do about this except to be mindful and sympathetic.

It’s easy to lose sight of the human element when you’re working on the digital strategy side of things. However, this sympathy and mindfulness of where your users live will help a great deal in developing a strategy that’s both successful for the organization and for the human beings that you’re hoping to connect with.

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Social media is a new term for a concept as old as the Web itself. As long as the Web, as a network of connected users has existed, it’s been a social medium. So when you have folks sharing things in a variety of formats (i.e. still images, audio, video, etc.) somehow it becomes social media. That’s it. It’s really that simple. There’s no mystery or secret to what marketers and communicators are calling social media; it’s what the Web has always been from YouTube and Facebook, today, to pimply-faced teens swigging soda on Dungeons and Dragons BBS’ (Bulletin Board Systems) all through the late 70’s, 80’s and early 90’s.

Social media has evolved, the technologies have changed, and the user-interfaces have gotten better, but the core of what the Web is, has changed very little. In recent years, particularly since the Web 2.0 hype began, marketers have tried to frame social media as something else, some kind of communications or awareness panacea whereby you herd your fans/customers into some kind of digital stable, and get a direct, captive audience. This has worked to a very limited extent because as soon as there’s somebody building a fence or stable, there are ten other people building wide open pastures where users can roam free. I’m not sure a model that promotes captivity over freedom will ever exist, online or elsewhere.

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