Media Outreach

I may totally skew the true meanings of these two words with this article, but bear with me. In days gone by, we consumed information in a linear way. For instance, TV shows often went one show to the next and you needed to know what happened previously to know why it was relevent to the next episode. VCR’s kept information in a straight line. You could fast forward, but generally, you watched it from the beginning to the end. When you read a book, you started at the beginning and worked to the end. While some of this still holds true today, we have to evaluate how we communicate a bit differently.

For instance, with Twitter, you probably don’t read someones posts end on end, one at a time. You check in at certain points of the day and get what happens to be moving across the time line. TV shows now do a more interesting job of having episodes stand on their own, without too much need to look back in time for reference. That, in a sense, is non-linear. It used to be that if you wanted to edit film, you had to take a long linear piece of footage and just cut it together without much else to work with. Now you can hack up the footage, hack up the audio, and mash it in whatever way you want, in order, out of order, in sync, out of sync. Non linear.

So what does that mean? Essentially, communicating to a non-linear culture in a linear way is probably not going to cut it any more. If you think that simply putting a blurb on Twitter and updating Facebook once and sending out an email blast is going to suffice, you are mostly wrong. Because people don’t slow down much to catch up on the linear time line, your best shot at communicating with them effectively will occur at the point where you send information out at the same time they are looking for it. With that in mind, I think it’s important to realize that multiple bursts on multiple outlets, multiple times, will give you the best shot at having your information embraced.

Case in point, advertising. A company can run the same commercial a bajillion times and we may tire of it. But we get the message. Why? Multiple bursts, multiple outlets, multiple times. The bottom line is, you need to send your announcement out several times on Twitter. You need to pitch it on Facebook several times. Send it out in emails a few times before the event or call to action. Use mail. Multiple bursts, multiple outlets, multiple times. You are trying to reach people who drop in and drop out of their information sources and are not reading back linearly to see what they missed. Your message is important. Get it out there often so you increase the chance of having your information consumed!!! Multiple bursts, multiple…

Photo By: kevindooley