October 14th: Fans, Friends and Folowers

I didn't have a chance to hear the Planet Monkey interview and Coulton's response, but I will delve into Kirsner's paper. He does say a lot about how to engage with the audience, some examples include:

· Create opportunities for participation: audiences want to do more than just consume, they want to actively collaborate, craving “recognition and connection". When he mentioned that as a creator, you may not want fans to critique your creative style, but this will help in the process of making your work even better. It is a little bit scary to open up your work for many to ponder, like, dislike, and repost in various forms. However, the advantages of it can be grande. For example, one of my iReportMemphis YouTube videos about the Freedom Awards by the National Civil Rights Museum has been selected to be archived as part of their history. I could have chosen not to make that segment open for public debate and scrutiny, but my objective as a reporter is always to inform the public. Therefore, I was given the chance to let them critique on an open media such as YouTube...and they liked it :).

· The power of the link and how it can track how people are getting to your site is explored on page 6. Suggestion to offer exclusives to the media sites that generate the most traffic so that they will link back to your website is a hot topic here. I often look at analytics to see how people came to my site and i find that most people view it via Mobile Media. Now this is new to me, but nonetheless something to think about. The way a website looks via mobile media is completely different than what it looks like via the original website. You don't have the fancy borders or great layout that you spent months creating; you just have posts about your topics. Therefore, you have to learn how to know your audience and make choices to fit their needs. I need to focus more on the blog posts than the overall look of the blog itself, because many of my readers will not see the entire site...just the post. More links, videos and pics tend to engage readers more.

· Ask for reviews and ratings, send advance copies and access to mentors and influencers of your new project to gain their support (p.7). I simply LOVE this idea. I think asking for reviews opens up a plethora of ways for people to see your work. Having them rate it, such as on YouTube, opens the doors for positives and negatives...but overall it gives you feedback. I tend to use the ratings to see how people are interacting with my posts, if they learn anything from it and if it was helpful to them. Creating a site that warrants people to want to make reviews gets me excited about how their feedback and links to my posts can generate more traffic.

Everyone who chooses to become a fan, friend, or follower is ultimately a contributor to the ideas you place on a particular medium. I just discovered that you can request to be someone's friend on Youtube, though I am unsure about what you do after that. I love Kirsner's paper though, and I will surely use it on my upcoming graduate school project.