So I’m restarting my blog again to coincide with my new class, Leadership and Media Strategies at Troy University as part of my graduate degree program. I began my blog nine weeks ago for a previous class and posted on topics relating to strategic communication. It was fun sharing relevant content with the world, or at least whoever found my blog, and enjoyed reading others on the same subject. I look forward to you reading my weekly blog postings, The Digital Expanse, and joining me as re-engage readers about strategic communication topics that are relevant in today’s world.
For the new readers, let me re-introduce myself. I have been blessed to have worked in the marketing communication industry for the last six years. I’ve worked in a small boutique event marketing agency, a regional marketing firm, in-house at an engineering firm and now in the nonprofit sector. From writing news releases, to media relations, event planning and marketing, marketing communications, ad buying and strategic planning, I’ve had experience at all levels. It’s been a fun ride, and working at a marketing/public relations (PR) agencies, helped me to get a lot of experience in a short period of time. Part of the benefits of agency work is that you get to work on a variety of clients, which challenges you to become an expert quickly.
I have worked on local, regional and international communication initiatives. Some of my most rewarding experiences included working with a medical nonprofit group helping to figure out the most newsworthy research topics to create news releases. The challenging part was finding a balance between making the news easily digestible for mainstream news outlets and trade publications. I also ran local and regional communications for several of the U.S. Army All-American Bowls, a high school all-star football game. I’ll tell you that of everything I have done within this industry, one of the most difficult was successfully media training 90+ 17 and 18 year old student-athletes.
As of late, my interest has been finding ways strategic communication can create change. Maybe it’s because I fall under the millennial generation, and generally, my generation is more about being satisfied with the work we do versus monetary satisfaction. I think that communication and the technology available to us allows for a more rapid adoption of change across the board. The public almost demands swift action when a perceived injustice occurs. Twitter and other social media channels seem to be the methods of choice for the general public to seek for change. Another method that has gained traction is the online petition. Anyone can create a petition for anything and ask for “signatures.” I think professional communicators have the power to shape and change, not only our industry, but how others see the world.
Rogers’ (1995) Diffusion of Innovation theory suggests there multiple levels of adoption of a new innovation. Often referred during the adoption of new technology, there are innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and the laggards. Robinson (2009) says that opinion leaders are the way to reach audiences to help trigger the adoption of an innovation, say for example wearable technology like smartwatches.
Diffusion of innovation is important to strategic communicators as it reminds us that every audience and/or age group requires a different message before full adoption. The idea of opinion leaders plays more true in today’s Web 2.0 world where individuals seek peer-to-peer approval before purchasing a product or service. I am a walking example of this idea. Currently, I am considering purchasing a smartwatch, specifically one made by a company called Pebble. For the last two weeks I have been scouring YouTube (the world’s second largest search engine) and tech review websites trying to soak in as much impartial information I can about the product, so I can make an informed decision on my own. I have combed through the reviews on Amazon and BestBuy.com to get real-world review information about the product. I’m still not convinced about the product, but I think the bigger internal questions I’m facing right now is if wearable technology has a long future. After large companies like Apple and Google have jumped into the smartwatch fray there is s general lack of direction about what the device should/could be. If you’re looking at Roger’s adoption curve I would say we are in early to mid stages of the early majority right now. The late majority is still seeing the risk of the smartwatch technology as a fad and not a technology that will remain 10 or 20 years from now.
Let’s learn from Rogers’ model and become better communicators. The first step is becoming better listeners.
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