Pretty Good Practices in Social Media Part 1

Tired of everybody claiming to have the hot hand on Social Media "Best" Practices? Me too. Too many talkers and too few doers with bankable, measurable success on behalf of a real company or client.

At the risk of sounding unprofessional, I'm going to start a thread on Pretty Good Practices in Social Media because in all honesty, that's pretty much where we are in today's nascent and wacky world of Social Media. I'm jazzed about the implications of Social Media/New Media, but it's my opinion that most people claiming to be experts are just blowing smoke.

For example, it's utter folly to assume that you should abandon the classic components of your traditional marketing mix and throw all your resources into Social Media. With Social Media, you need to be asking very rigorous questions as to your purpose and goals. There are so many new web-based marketing methods that I've seen companies get unnecessarily sidetracked by the new toys, losing sight of what they should always be about: increasing customer reach, revenue, and ROI.

It’s also the case that with some segments of your customer base, you shouldn’t even bother with Social Media. Many people consider Social Media an inordinate waste of their time, a frivolous time sink with little payoff. They’ll laugh your cute little Youtube video right off the screen.

As in writing and public speaking, the first rule of Social Media is “Consider Your Audience.”

Winamp Remote Rocks!

I can't stop telling my friends about Winamp Remote, which enables you to stream your personal audio and video to any Web browser. Winamp Remote, though still just in Beta test, works flawlessly. Since I've been using Winamp almost exclusively to manage and play my MP3 and Video files saved to disk, I had a ready-made 1300-song catalog to run my tests. There is some setup required, but this mostly just involves setting up remote login and password credentials.

The first thing I did after configuring Winamp Remote was to log into the Winamp server from my smartphone. When I logged on to Winamp Remote with the credentials I established during setup, I was stunned to see a perfect mirror of the Music and Video directories on my desktop hard drive. Since this week I've been listening to the John Mayer Trio, I opened the John Mayer folder, clicked on the trio's screaming version of Jimi Hendrix's Wait Until Tomorrow, and proceeded to bask in sonic bliss.

Note: If you're going to stream audio and video over your mobile device, you must have an unlimited data plan or you'll get a nasty surprise on your next cell phone bill.

Later that day, I visited my good friend Tim, President of Broadcast Supply Warehouse. BSW is a fantastic source of gear for the home audio enthusiast--digital recording hardware/software, mics, mixers, monitors, and the like.

We were sitting at BSW's state-of-the-art ProTools console, a Mac-driven system. I asked Tim to launch Safari, and then proceeded to play my music remotely through a pair of $6000 studio monitors. This was just too much fun for a couple of music geeks.

Now before you think this is just another Napster, that concept is completely wrong. You can only share your music selectively with friends whom you've selected. Also, this is audio and video streaming only; you can't save the files down to your computer. So it's really just a cool way to host a listening session with friends.

Check it out on www.winamp.com. When you arrive at the Winamp Home Page, type Winamp Remote In the Search box. Have fun!