Share and Share Alike

If social media is a farm not a silo, then traditionally media is quickly becoming the cow out to pasture.

Why is traditional media so slow to catch on? TV, Radio and Print are all missing out on opportunities. I don’t get it. They complain about shrinking ad budgets, but just TRY to get a web-based clip of a radio show or interview. Or how about a podcast? Nope. No can do.

The craziest part is that its not only practical, but a potential revenue steam. For example, if you get buy a daily podcast of the morning DJ’s show, commercial free, would you? I would! And, often times the morning show includes an interview of or for wellah, an advertiser. SO now, the advertiser can promote the show. Win-win! Think about it – radio spends all this money producing the content, but only distributes it in a single way, once. We’re back to the “Everything I Needed to Know About Marketing, I learned in Kindergarden” mantra.

TV isn’t much better, their videos are so embedded and unsharable on their sites, its easier just to go to Hulu if your looking to share a show or a clip. The ads are quick enough and the sharing is easy. And then, there’s are the (mostly cable) TV channels who host a huge amount of content online, but try to find it! Even when they share in social media outlets, the links are often redirected or not consistent with the teaser they dropped. Forget it! I don’t have time to march through your poorly organized website. You get one chance.

Or how about the fact that a national BUSINESS newspaper wants to charge me to link to an article about my client. Yes, you heard me. For the honor of linking my client’s site to theirs, we pay. Are you kidding me right now? From an SEO perspective, they should be begging people to do that. OK – maybe not begging, but you get the idea.

While we’re at it, here’s another.  I think paid web content makes ALOT of sense. We should pay for quality non-advertiser beholden content. But, what if the issue or news that’s a day or so old is free, with advertising? That encourages sharing and allows people to get to know the site and its tone and allows people to get the content they want in the way they want it. As a social media professional, I would surely appreciate it if I could share your relevant content with others. Isn’t that the nature of the Web 2.0? Sharing?

For all the discussion in the social media sphere about transparency and openness, traditional media has yet to catch on. Its as if their biggest fear is that someone actually SEE or HEAR or READ their content. After all, ask any media company today, they will tell you they are in the ad business, not the news business.  There is a way to manage redistributed content and make money. Didn’t traditional media learn ANYTHING from the record companies?

Consider the many different ways to share content. Consider how many people are doing it. But the question is really, why produce content and then make it hard to share?!