Have a reason for using social media techs

Robert Picard, a fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, writes in the latest issue of Nieman Reports that news organizations should have a clear-cut and financially based reason for adopting new technologies for disseminating content.

The most important consideration, Picard says, is whether adopting a new technology will ultimately benefit the organization, whether that benefit comes in the form of money, increased brand recognition or some other form.

And if its uses don’t generate money—or, at the very least, pay for their full costs—one needs to have an exceptionally clear answer as to why it is being used at all. Reasons can be found to use some without full cost recovery, but those should be based on strategic thinking and informed choice, not on technological hype and exuberance.

Business models don't exist yet to take advantage of many of these new technologies. As a result, Picard says, news organizations have come up with another reason for adopting social media technologies: building a way to interact with its audience.

But apparently he looks at this goal as simply an interim reason for using social media — the egalitarian-like reason we'll list until we figure out a way to make money off it all. Not surprisingly, Picard thinks of community-building as a half-baked idea, saying that "news organizations must become much more sophisticated in their thinking about them and how to achieve those benefits" of a user community.

He goes on:

If interactions are the goal, the reason for each interaction needs to be clearly delineated. And what should it accomplish? What messages and images should it project of the news organization? How are the benefits of those interactions to be measured?

Rational questions, yes. But his conclusion is the same as every other critic writing about new media — basically, these technologies are too new, so we can't predict how things will shake out without first developing some system to quantify it all.

New systems to quantify community-building probably need to be created. After all, newspapering is a business and businesses need charts and graphs and quantified data to base their decisions on.

And yes, all of Picard's advice is sound. He's like your accountant advising you not to take money out of your retirement fund to invest in some hot new startup. It's good advice, and it's safer to just do what he says and forget about all that newfangled tomfoolery until wiser heads than ours have figured it all out and packaged it for easy consumption.

But then again, some of us like to experiment. Maybe it's not sound business; maybe I won't retire as a millionaire as a result. But nobody's going to get any of that data the experts need to evaluate social media unless people out there starts taking risks.

I guess we need to keep Picard's voice in the back of our heads when we do it, just to make sure the risks we take are calculated and not foolish.

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2. Social media as journalism in a small city
3. The Power of Social Media Comes Full Circle in Montana
4. Social media snake oil
5. Will new media help Iraq rebuild?