Thanksgiving is coming and, as I spend more and more time in front of my computer or with my cell phone — hopping between Twitter, Facebook and what feels like millions of blogs and RSS feeds — I’m careful to be thankful and not to lose track of what’s really important (too easy to do in the race to keep up with the “media” world).

A quickie compare-and-contrast….

The real purpose of social media:

Connecting - I’ve made many friends, virtual and otherwise in the past year, either on Social Media sites, or around the topic of Social Media — at meetings, events, Tweetups. I’m humbled and grateful.

Providing value – It’s a constant mantra — to be sure that what messages I’m sending, tweeting or posting have something to offer to someone. Intelligence on the media industry, news items, items I find quirky and worth sharing, a link to a great song or recipe (what’s life, especially online, if you don’t have a sense of humor?).

Creating community - Groups, tribes, clusters, pods of like-minded people who can share.  Find them, join them, create them, link to them.

And then translate the above values into what my husband calls “wetware” — real live human interaction….

Connecting: Pick up the phone instead of sending an email, go OUT to lunch instead of eating it at your desk, wander down the hall and talk to a compadre if you are destined to be in the office. Flesh — press it.

Providing value: Donate time to a local charity, or give a few cans to the Boy Scouts food drive this year, read to your local kindergarten class — and even if just once, explain once again to your dad what it is that you do for a living. Talk to people, talk talk talk.

Creating community: Invite two new people to dinner or for a glass of wine at your house who didn’t know each other before (takeout food is OK; Martha Stewart is not taking notes). Extra points if they bring their kids (then pizza is really OK!).

Happy Thanksgiving, both online and off. May the latter continue to prevail.

We are still almost TV-less.  Having discontinued our cable contract, and getting only a few broadcast stations (none of which the kids watch), we as a family have entered a new era.  Not to say that we aren’t still media-centric.  I can’t count the number of screens, laptops, shuffles, iPods, gameboys, Wiis in our house.  But our loyalties have shifted.  I can only assume we are part of a trend.

Both kids are living on YouTube and Hulu for different reasons.  My son is constantly searching for Wii game cheats and tips.  I hope he goes into game programming so he can make some money with this obsession.  Both son and daughter are looking for movie clips, comic stuff and all-around entertainment — both have come running to us to drag us over to see something they find awesome.  Same daughter (teenager extraordinaire) is also glued to Facebook.  See — typical family.  And we DO still talk to each other (she said optimistically)

I’m still the podcast junkie.  My eyes get tired, and I get weary of screens in general.  I’ve subscribed to innumerable podcast shows – trade/media related, news/business, and more personal interests, and I could spend all of my free time happily sporting earbuds (mine are PINK!).

I do worry.  With so much stimulation in the house, why go out?  Why see people?  What happens to social interaction (non electronic)?  Are the kids losing their ability to be social?  I would love to get feedback from you all on how your family has integrated media into the family.

One shameless plug.  Roxanne Darling will be presenting to the SVAMA Wed, Jan 28th on topic of Online video.  Rox is a wonderful presenter, and this will be interactive and fun.  Come join us!

No surprise, but the economy is taking its toll on media of all kinds.  The NY Times Media has announced 51% decline in profits and is teetering at the precipice.  That venerable institution has started my Sunday mornings ever since I can remember.  It would be a tragedy to see it go, or even cower in a corner.  Techcruch is keeping tabs on the layoffs (which seems a bit goulish, but oh well) as VC’s encourage getting lean and mean early.  Below are a few tips for all marketing and media professionals to help get through this:

1.  Stay positive.  I know, sounds like PollyAnna but you can’t make good decisions, either professionally or personally from a position of negativity or fear. 

2.  Double down where you are. And prepare in advance.  Bill Sanders of RealBranding did a fabulous 2 part post on this.  Read it.  All of it.

3.  From a media buying perspective, think globally.  Within the enterprise can you counter the tendency to silo and cluster as many departments together as feasible?  Walking across the aisle or cubie, you may find opportunities to consolidate objectives or at least spends and get much better pricing for any media.

4. Also from a media buying perspective, think long term.  If you can possibly forecast 2 – 4 quarters out and make even minimal commitments, you can command much better pricing.  The market is soft and softening.  Take every advantage of it.  We are pounding on pricing and not-so-subtly-nudging our clients to make even the most conservative of commitments past a single quarter and have been able to negotiate some great deals with this strategy.

5.  Work your customer base, current assets, and tried and true marketing activities.  Are you sure you know where past successes have been?  I’m amazed at how many companies minimize the analysis of all aspects of past campaigns for the sake of trying something new.  Can you put a new headline on previously used email copy, rework the abstract to a white paper so it appears fresh, and save money on creative?  Are you contacting your current customers often enough and with cross-buying opps?  Are you sure you have captured all of your customer base?  Does the training dept, or HR, or tech support have pockets of folks that aren’t consolidated on the main marketing database.  Revisit your in-house email strategies, Newsletter schedules – CRM is the cheapest and most responsive marketing method their is.

6.  That said, don’t stop marketing, and don’t stop testing – even modest testing.  You will still need to find new opportunites when the old successes tire.

Above all stay connected – to your family, your peers, to your boss, your agencies, to your professional network and keep talking.  Web 2.0 and social networks were never more important than they are now.  Collaboration will trump isolation any day.

As you may recall, we have yanked cable, and not even turned our TV on since the beginning of September, except to view the occasional movie.  We aren’t even missing it.  We are online for news and entertainment, and the kids have jumped into YouTube in a big way.  You knew?

Looks like we are not the only household.  MarketWatch did a story on just this phenom:

Sigh.  Why did I think that eliminating TV would make a difference?  The kids have now switched their attention to other sources of entertainment, interaction, and fun.  Actually not such a bad thing.  YouTube has entered both of thier lives in a major way.  Did you know that there is an enormous amount of content on StarWars video games – cheats, hints, spoofs etc? Just ask Sammy.  They haven’t yet figured out the interactive nature of all of this – commenting, trading info.  Maybe next week.

Social Networking and gaming are new to me.  As a result of my earlier blog post, Gamervision has come to my attention, and it’s quite awesome – even to the Mom of the afore mentioned 11 year old male.   Launched early 2007, it offers a unique blend of satire, news, reviews and fan sites for all aspects of gaming and comic book culture.  The site has enjoyed substantial growth within this extremely competitive media sector thanks to a rich user experience centered around networking and self-publishing features that avoids cluttered advertising. The site currently hosts about half a million unique members, all registered since its launch in January 2007.  The staff also creates a plethora of original content ranging from niche-interest blogs to several full-run video series slated for release in late 2008. I think if Sam does well on all of this homework this week, I’l turn him on to it.

As I watch my son explore YouTube and now gaming sites, I’m quite amazed at how strategy and problem solving comes into play, not to mention the level of sophistication some of these game sites have reached.  And what an incredible art form it is! 

I’m hoping to attend Comic-Con next year.  Having watched what an incredible franchise the Marvel comics have become in all forms of media, and growing up with Anime, I need to know more!

A diversion into the personal for this post.  With the start of the school year, my husband and I decided to get rid of cable, and all TV actually, just to see how our 2 middle-school kids adjusted to the new year.  Our 11 year old son is (was?) completely addicted to CartoonNetwork, Nickelodeon and Disney Channel.  So we went cold turkey.

We heard a lot of complaining and groaning for the first few days.  But they seem to have adjusted.  Both kids have discovered YouTube.  Granted my son is spending more time on his computer with some pretty sophisticated games.  But not to the degree that he was staring at the TV.   That zombie like glaze is gone.

But there are so many other astounding aspects.  The house is quieter – except for the chatter of the kids.  My son has turned into a chatterbox and is full, no overflowing with talk.  Its as if the flood gates have opened.  We are spending more time just talking as a family.  I thought we did a pretty good job on this front before, but there is much more interaction and just hanging out with each other. 

Here is an interesting take on killing the TV.  And another.

I miss PBS.  And the cooking shows.  And, dare I say it, What Not to Wear (OK we all need some piffle in our lives).  But not that much.  We get most of our news online and from the blogs.  It’s a tiny price to pay for a changed family dynamic.  Simply amazing.

We are a techno-geeky household, creating future online junkies and media consumers. We have one if not two screens in every room, videogame players, TV sets, multiple laptops, a computer per child, Gameboy. It seems to be endless. That picture at the top (infant w/ binky in front of a screen) mirrors one we have of each child at about six months old. I wonder where social networking and real networking (like conversation) collide. Probably at our dinner table…where we actually talk!While the debate rages on (how much is too much for young minds – that debate), I’m aware that we have become a media-centric and -aware family and proud of it. Both adults blog, the oldest child is already wrapped up in YouTube and Petopia and Twitter. Googling is part of the homework ritual. I would think that we are are not an unusual demo for families of Suburbia.I’ll be blogging about media, new media, emerging media, blogging, Web 2.0 and 3.0, communication, community and family. And random thoughts.[tags]Elymedia, media, direct marketing, success, interactive, marketing, media planning, media buying, lead generation, customer acquisition, email, e-mail, mailing list, list broker, ecommerce, e-commerce, clicks, strategy, measurement, Internet, productivity, results, advertising, cross-channel, multichannel, channel, launch, customer, service, CRM, segmentation, analysis, strategy, enterprise, development, brand[/tags]