In the previous post regarding Marshall Mcluhan, we talked a bit about interactivity as a means of evaluating media. As said, the internet is a tricky new world where interaction can be built in many new ways. Traditional media outlets, like television, radio, and print, are very much a one-way conversation, with them the outlets feeding content to us, the media consumers. the interesting thing to watch is when traditional media outlets begin exploring new media, and trying to figure out how to effectively choose and place content in new opportunitities.
I read one prime example of this on the Sublimal Pixels blog by Manny Marrero. In his “Open Letter to Channel 10“, he fumes about his passionate disgust for how the local television network has botched their campaign on Twitter. Not only does he admonish them for their flood of follow/unfollow moves in an attempt to bolster numbers, but he also calls them out on not utilizing the medium of Twitter. Rather than creating a space to interact with their audience, the station simply feeds their newslines into posts, without responding or interacting with their “followers.”
The Takeaway: Before you can effectively market on a specific platform, website, medium, etc., you must know what the experience is for their users. Only after understanding the platform which you are working with can you adjust the message to fit the medium. This includes making it cooler/hotter, or more less interactive.
