Strategic Communication and Emerging Media

Many moons ago, I worked in the wine business.  A sweet little boutique wine shop in Birmingham, AL nestled just off the busy and bustling Hwy 280.  It was a classy and upscale shop, serving majority high-end clientele and the random wineo who happened across the shop by accident.  It was a pleasure to work for such a wonderful person and it was a breeze to sell product as delightful as the wines sold in this shop.  As the shop manager, my job was to know how all the wines tasted and what they would pair well with so that I could effectively sell them to consumers.  The shop owner would send me home with hundreds of dollars of free wine each month. I have to say it was definitely a perk. A large part of my job was to taste the different wines, share the wines with friends and return to the shop to sell the wines.  It was all face to face word of mouth. All employees would stay for the after hours wine tastings as well so that they were able to ...

Hey there everyone, this week we’re looking into the Diffusion of Innovation theory.  Basically, this theory claims that when something new (product or idea) comes about there is a certain sequence of events that happen.  It describes or explains the hows and whys of what makes this product or idea spread. Rogers (the main man who got this thing started back in 1962) tells us that we each factor into one of five different groups.   We begin with the innovators, these are the folks who are steady ready to find and try out all the new things.  They do not need to see from someone else if this idea or product works well, they are the ones who first test it.  This group only makes up about 2-3%. Let’s look at online banking. This actually began in the 1980’s. A very small percentage of people (the innovators) took to this idea and even paid a monthly fee to have the service (while most of the population believed this idea would fail)....

For as long as I can remember I have wanted to help others.  As a child, I imagined I would grow up and know exactly how to do that.  What I learned is that it is surprisingly more difficult than I could have imagined.  There is no room for your comfort zone if you want to make a change in the world. At least not for me, what about you?   Have you wanted to make a difference and don’t know where to start?  This may surprise you, but I have found that it all begins with the right communication.  In order to make any change, any difference in the world, you have to be able to communicate your thoughts and ideas with those around you. Once you learn the different approaches to communication, how to implement those styles with different people at the right times and how to spread that information to reach the largest number of people, you can do anything.  (Even change the world). This task was much more difficult 30 years ago.  W...