Mark Blevis

We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
–Albert Einstein

Over the last few years of growth in social media, I’ve observed an increasing divide between the hobbyist and business communities. In one corner the hobbyists are concerned about the tainting of social media by business interests and can’t see any value in understanding legitimate opportunities to use business strategies to improve and promote their social media projects. In the other corner, the business folks aren’t interested in mingling with the hobbyists and can’t see the value in learning from the the independent content producing pioneers; in many cases dismissing them out of habit for the big media companies.

Both are missing the point. Both are losing.

I believe there is little value in attending events exclusively in your own domain of expertise and interest. In order to push the boundaries you must explore other possibilities, examine how other hobbyists and businesses engage their communities, communicate with others and design their workflows.

Let’s examine my situation. My medium of choice is typically audio. Limiting myself to understanding content development for audio only will limit my creativity and opportunities. Understanding how text and video producers use their tools to tell stories and engage their audiences may help me identify innovative ways to produce audio programs. Consider that Cirque du Soleil isn’t exclusively a circus, theatre production or opera company. It’s a unique combination of elements from each — and other artistic and performance domains — which couldn’t have been achieved if the creators confined themselves to understanding a single art form.

Hobbyists would be wise to attend some business, marketing and media conferences and/or classes to learn how things have been done in a traditional sense and which innovative ideas are being considered now. There is likely to be a thing or two that will inspire them and may re-energize their projects (at the very least, their interest in their projects). Hobbyists might also consider listening to podcasts from a number of categories. They can learn a lot about engaging a community from Six Pixels of Separation, educating and entertaining from the NACOcast, connecting multiple ideas together in each show from Spark and providing significant value from David Maister.

Business folks would be wise to attend social media conferences and listen to hobby podcasts of all categories to gain insight into what’s engaging and successful on a limited budget and how a single individual can create, record, edit, produce, publish and promote multimedia content. There’s a lot to learn from the storytelling style that makes up The Hollywood Podcast, the passion of a male knitter in It’s a Purl Man, the exploratory discussions and topical rants in On the Log and the conversational style to promoting literacy, an industry and its players in Just One More Book!!

In social media, you don’t just miss the phone call when you’re out, you miss the entire opportunity to grow.