New Media and YOU

J0422554TIME Magazine has come out with it’s Person of the Year.  It is You.  Not just You, but the use of the Internet.  The magazine, a print magazine, is signaling that there has been a shift in the way we communicate.  That is represented not only by the Internet itself, but the actual immersion of society into this new medium and the way that information is being shared, and subsequently also signals a whole new genre of influencers and communication.

The reason for this extraordinary choice?  Numbers.  According to the YouTube site, statistics are astounding –

YouTube is currently serving 100 million videos per day, with more than 65,000 videos being uploaded daily. According to Hitwise, YouTube videos account for 60 percent of all videos watched online and people are spending an average of 17 minutes per session on the site. According to Nielsen NetRatings, YouTube has nearly 20M unique users per month.

According to Steve Rubel, well known and accomplished blogger, in a recent survey, 30% of all Americans read blogs.  There are about 2 million active blogs.   And, as I’ve noted before, if you go to Google Finance, you will find that blogs mentions, like media mentions, are a featured part of every company profile.  Go ahead, hit the link and go to Google Finance.  Enter your company’s name.  See the blog mentions.  Is your PR firm offering you Blog Monitoring in addition to Media Monitoring?  Technorati is following 63 million blogs now. 

VCasts, Podcasts, Blogs, YouTube…. get the program.  There is a whole conversation taking place out there.  We know that people go to the Internet for healthcare information almost more than anything, except of course, porn.  According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 41% of Americans go to the Internet to determine whether or not they should seek medical help. 

With the tremendous erosion in institutional credibility – in government, church, and business, it is small wonder that there has been fertile ground in one on one communication.  Hearing from people in whom you build a trust. 

For this blog, I can attest to the fact that subscribers and visitors include journalists representing large publications – both dailies and trades, large and small pharmaceutical companies, and a significant number of investors and even a fair amount of competitors.  With investors, they will begin soon asking questions about new media strategies I should think – if you have one, what is it, if you don’t why not?  Subscriptions for this blog have grown at a flattering rate, as have links to it. 

I have written before in this space about the need for the pharmaceutical industry to consider new media and its uses – in clinical trial recruitment, in risk management programs and in reaching audiences they might otherwise miss.  Yes, there are specific challenges related to highly regulated industries and what they can and cannot do in this space, but that doesn’t mean it should be ignored. 

What do you want for Christmas?  A new media strategy.  Without one, as they say in New York, if you’re not first, you’re last.

To that end, if you need help, email me – I’m too happy to help. 

And congratulations on being Person of the Year!

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