Public Speaking for your Internet Soul
“Yes, the Web has changed the economics of the newspaper business, but it doesn’t have to mean the end of newspapers — just the end of the business as it is currently conducted. Wireless can do for newspapers what it is in the process of doing for books.”
- Tom Wheeler, Managing Director – Core Capital Partners
Read the full post at 4G Wireless Evolution – Memo to the Press.
Fans, fan pages, followers, friends, readers, viewers, audience.
What is a “fan”?
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Fans are mysterious objects
pushing unseen forces:
a turbulent presence
that can support and cool
and can move others toward us
or destroy us.
Fans are mysterious objects
we must feed and embrace.
How to feed a fan
What content do you posit online, thru RSS and email to feed their imagination of your brand?
Fans need a tangible connection to the object of their fascination or attraction. Over time, that attraction may become imaginary or even mythic.
I’m famous for being nicer to my fans than anyone on the face of the Earth… -Actor, James Woods
Though fans need to be fed to sustain their attraction. They want to be tantalized, not force fed. They don’t want spin nor spam. They want authenticity. Fans want you to leave it up to them to follow the conversion links of their curiosity.
So why do we need fans?
Fans Promote Us
They pass on our content and our stories to others promoting our brand and products as their idea of our image.
Fans Support Us
They feed us emotionally with enthusiasm and loyalty in continuing to consume our content, products and services.
+ LeBron James give his fans props in receiving his MVP award.
+ Britney Spears thanks her fans.
Fans Represent Our Net Worth
How do you measure your brand effectiveness? You turn around and look at the data to see how many followers, subscribers, fans, comments, #hashmark mentions and positive trending you have.
+ Raidohead fans download 1.2MM mp3s in 30 days to out produce bands’ previous corporate album sales.
Fans Are Our Collective Memory
They collect our content, our products, our stories and can continue to share our brand as myth- even long after we are gone.
+ Think of Elvis, Michael Jordan, Muhammed Ali. or Ashton Kutcher
+ See a video remix of Disney’s Alice in Wonderland. See original video here.
Fans Believe in Ownership
They feel a sincere connection to your brand or products, and may organize chaordicaly to reclaim or revive it.
+ Read how Fans of Stirling Albion seek to purchase their beloved football brand.
+ Columbus, Ohio patrons of Nancy’s Home Cooking restaurant organize to save it from closing. See their Facebook Group.
Fans Love Us
And, respectfully, we should love our fans as they want to be loved in return. Especially if we want their continued support.
+ Rock band Coldplay supports fans during global recession giving away free album.
Fans are the lifeblood…
They are our psyche; that breath of life that sustains and fuels and inspires us.
And in turn, we and our brands are the image that our fans aspire to- even if only in imagination.
Our fans needs us, and we need them.
Fans are mysterious objects.
I was once told that “progress” is the combination of elements or events in to one, to where the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.
There is an evolution of information happening by way of the Internet. Whole new effects, ideas and solutions are being produced. New ways of looking at old problems, new collaborative opportunities to co-develop, borrow and share enable the production of effects, ideas and solutions that used to take enormous amounts of resources to produce before.
A “mashup” is the manifestation of progress in the Information Age.
By combining information that is bought, found, shared, borrowed or collaboratively developed, we can now produce ideas, solutions and products at an alarming rate. Think Google Maps overlaid with houses for sale, or a video of Dora the Explorer mashed with the music of Soulja Boy.
Progress. We can create more and faster than ever before.
The below video is a brilliant example of a video mashup.
Employing “user-submitted” YouTube content as his sole building blocks, Israeli musician and producer Kutiman’s ThruYOU — a mini-album’s worth of A/V material with revelatory results.
It’s a tribute to bedroom musicians. Kutiman carefully credits all of the musicians he samples, giving many unknowns a good 15 minutes of fame.
-from Kelly McKnight’s FaceBook review of Kutiman’s “ThruYou.”
See: Kutiman-Thru-you – 01 – Mother of All Funk Chords on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tprMEs-zfQA
The “sensational” appeal of the internet and now international phenom, Susan Boyle, 
is as authentic as the her divine voice or masterful singing ability.
That her voice is of the calibre of Barbara Streisand is shown a recently surfaced “vintage” video of the chanteuse from 1984. The video was posted on Youtube, as reported in the New York Daily News.
So what’s the appeal? As in her own words from her TimesOnline interview, “I know what they were thinking, but why should it matter as long as I can sing? It’s not a beauty contest.”
What is Boyle’s internet appeal? Why do we flock to watch, replay and share such content?
We love to root for the underling in a movie or story or tale. And this story is none different.
We were wowed, knocked off our own comfortable seats of our realities of “what should be” when a not-in-today’s-image of a singing sensation lept across our monitors and into our hearts with a song that projects and reflects our deepest aspirations: to deam a dream.
As an artist, Boyle’s transforms our ideas of beauty with a heart stopping voice to fully engage us and virally resonate through the mass world audience with infectious authenticity.
Much like the early viral YouTube video Numa Numa Guy, Boyle transcends our mass media derived norms with an authenticity that connects and is shared as beauty itself.
While reading a random blog article my mouse floated across a link ad for Sprint. The ensuing video grabbed me from the first sound to finish.
I clicked the embedded link to discover the below widget promoting Sprint’s NOW Network.
I was “wowed.”
I can honestly say that I am not sponsored by, nor receive any compensation from Sprint nor from any of its affiliates.
This is simply one cool and informative widget. Check it out here.
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