Seven Days of Media Deprivation by Emma Laird Craig - Can you do it over the Christmas period?

In “The Artist’s Way at Work” Julia Cameron suggests ‘few techniques function as a stronger jump start to original thinking than a week of media deprivation...our cultural addiction to the media has become deeply embedded, pervasive, and very hard to escape.’

Recently this young woman about town (as apple addicted as the next) said yes to the calling to go on a self-imposed media detox for one week.  The terms and blurting protestations were as follows:

1. NO READING. Yes, that includes worthy endeavours such as novels, autobiographies, & self-development.  (Damn! I just had a new-book-buying-binge.)
2. No newspapers or magazines, trashy or highbrow; even dart your eyes from commercials on the tube escalator; no peering over someone’s shoulder to read their Metro. (I can handle that though I shall miss the horoscopes in the supplements, ahem.)
3. No social media. (Risk being out of the ‘loop’.  Ah heck, my relationship with it is conflicted anyway.)
4. No movies. (But movies are pleasurable and harmless, right?)
5. No TV. (But you’re an actor, that’s blasphemous and absurd.)
6. No email. (Say what?  But I couldn’t possibly…insert extremely valid reason here.)
7. No surfing the web. (But I HAVE to book my holiday flights and I don’t have a P.A. to pass the buck to.)
8. No talk radio, no music with lyrics!  (Now we’re just getting puritan.)

Day One:

I am feeling liberated and empowered as if I am on holiday and I wonder is this the real reason I love going on holiday?  When I was in Mallorca earlier this year the info overload in my inbox and career concerns were blissfully irrelevant when breaking a croissant in the village. 

It was quite satisfying to announce to my Facebook community and regular email chains that I am “out of the office”.  Relieved, I am not available for any agendas and demands other than my own.  A downside seems I have to be present on the bus.  

First hurdle: I meet my friend for coffee to chat dreams of Bali and she has written a wonderful two-week itinerary for me.  Ah.  How do I engage gratefully with her and avert my eyes for fear of the Word Devil?  OK, OK, I looked at it.  I could have confessed to my current challenge but chose to smile sweetly.

Day Two:

I’ve spotted The 50 Shades of Grey Classical Soundtrack on Spotify.  Strictly instrumental and in foreign languages that for once I am glad I don’t understand, it is connecting me to a touch of the epic whilst I work.  I am overcome with the drive to write and organise and I like it. 

Sometimes writing feels flowing or like I am jamming with a jazz band and sometimes it feels excruciatingly muscular like how I imagine childbirth to be.  Whatever the nature of this particular surge it just must be done.  I am starting to see how much material I consume produced by other interesting people and the balance needs to be redressed.  It’s time for me to produce into this vacuum.  Out of the numerous procrastination shaving strategies, I might have just struck gold.

Day Three:

What’s going on?  I haven’t woken up on the wrong side of the bed or given up caffeine so why do I feel like a raging bull?  This is so unfair I was enjoying the pink cloud but now I just want to go on iPlayer!  Just 3 minutes of instant gratification please Mr. Commitment Policeman…

I invoke Goethe (whether he did in fact write this or not according to the academics): "Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back-- Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now." 


Day Four:

News of a death of a loved one in the evening sends me thinking I deserve a little late night internet-love.  It’s not as creepy as it sounds.  This unpredictable turn of events shows me just how zoning out through media is an established coping mechanism.  Timely.  I crumble in bed about 11pm and watch an “it’s so bad it’s so good” reality TV show set in a certain South West London borough.  As if that’s going to assuage the sadness or bring the person back?  Hey, we all have our vices, right?  Anyway, when did this become a moral issue as well as a health and creativity issue?  I’m cutting myself some slack.   

Day Five:

Day five already?  I still haven’t touched movies, books, newspapers, and social media but now I’ve broken the camel’s back once…you know how it is; I start to negotiate terms.  Apparently this could be a reflection on my relationship with authority. 

The Oprah Winfrey Network TV hosting leading spiritual thought conversations and documenting healing breakthroughs in Chicago now doesn’t count.  Or even if it’s a lapse in the mission, it’s my dirty secret.  Eckhart Tolle proceeded to expound the merits of being “in the moment”.  It was an ironic waste of my time since I was putting down media infiltration precisely to be more available to creative inspiration “in the moment”.  I must voice my moments not consume someone else’s or I will never be on Oprah!

Day Six:

My nervous system is recalibrating and thanking me for the breathing space.  I am convinced that this is an excellent cost effective form of “stress-management”; one of the key mindset skills of a top stock-market trader according to Alistair Crooks, author of ‘The Madness of Money’.  I may not be a top trader but I want to be a ‘top performer’ in my life not burying myself in books about other people’s lives.

Day Seven:

It’s funny how depriving myself of media input has made me streamline my time into really useful and fun avenues like a trip to the osteopath or seeing Franko B’s Performance Art festival ‘Untouchable’ in deepest darkest Camberwell; or ‘hanging out’ with treasured friends as in ye olden days at university when social experience was valued higher than reading or getting ahead.

Today:

I have been instant-chat-happy on F-book complete with flirty emoticons and I am wondering if it’s affecting my ability to write complete sentences.  Much is the woe of the current English language evolution. 

What was the cost of this deprivation?  I nearly missed out on a surprise birthday party via F-book but was alerted just in time.  The only ‘loss’ has been beneficial: I have unsubscribed from multiple cheap flight mailing lists and other such colourful and unnecessary sells on how to live and consequently re-claimed the valuable headspace and confidence that I can do just fine without them.  

When I suggested the 7 Day Media Detox to a friend she responded with ‘I would love to but I just can't do it unfortunately! As I just have to be online.’ 

Consider yourself well and truly dared.

STOP READING NOW!

Emma Laird Craig is a British actress, freelance writer, and Co-Founder of The LabRats Theatre, a New York City based company of multi-dispilinary artists developing new work for theatre and film.  Their third theatrical season is fast approaching in February 2013 with "The Rise and Fall of a Teenaged CyberQueen" by Lindsay Joy; the story of a flawed American family uprooted and unhinged by the rapid pace of online chat rooms and video feeds.

Emma trained at Central School of Speech & Drama and the Moscow Arts Theatre after reading English Literature at the University of Edinburgh.  In London she is developing "The Venus Show" for TV drawing on the trials and tribulations of professional young women brought up on Jane Austen, brit-pop, and dreams.  You can follow her on Twitter @MissLeFlay.

www.thelabratsnyc.com

www.theprivatetheatre.org

What do the recent Facebook changes mean to your blog? by Liz Pulo of Lizosaurus.com...

As soon as the Facebook Pages feature was released a few years ago, hundreds of bloggers signed up and encouraged their readership to engage with them on a new platform. For many, this brought a whole new dimension to their blogging.

A new community formed – a combined group of those who were already engaged on your blog, and those who had found commenting too daunting in the past. It looked as though Facebook Pages were the magical solution to blog engagement.

That was until early this year when Facebook decided to shake up some behind the scenes algorithms. Have you noticed a drop in engagement? Not as many people seeing your posts as they used to? You're not the only one.

What is Reach?

To put it simply, reach is the number of people that have seen any one of your Facebook posts. It's that little “seen by x” figure below each post. A very simple concept – but also a very important one.

What has changed?

Prior to July 2012, reach was calculated based on the number of views your post had received by people logging in through a normal web browser (i.e. on a desktop or laptop).

Now your post counts as having reached someone when it is shown in the person’s news feed and loaded – on any platform. This include mobiles and tablets.

On a quick read through of the changes, it just sounds like they've tweaked the tracking so that your reach is more accurate. Fantastic, right? But that's not all that's going on.

What also changed was a little thing called the EdgeRank Algorithm. This algorithm determines what posts are relevant to you as a Facebook user, based on your past activity. This means that while previously you could be assured that the majority of your followers on Facebook would see your status updates, now Facebook decides who gets to see them and when.

In conjunction with this change, Facebook have also rolled out a function called Promoted Posts. Want to reach all of your followers again? You're going to have to pay for it.

This is an incredibly smart business move from Facebook, but that doesn't mean it's a positive one for it's users!

What can I do?

This is a tough one. If you were a business I would recommend allocating a budget for Facebook marketing and exploring whether paying for promoted posts is worth it for you. However, most bloggers run with little to no budget. So now what?

1. Keep engaging with your audience.

You might be seeing less of them, but it's important not to abandon them because you don't feel that you're getting the same results! Remember, Facebook decides what's relevant to each user: so the more you engage and the more relevant you are to your audience, the more your posts will pop up in their News Feeds!

2. Promote your Facebook link.

Sure, you don't have control over the News Feed, but you know what you do have control of? Your blog! Encourage people to engage with you over on Facebook. Include links at the end of your posts inviting readers to chat with you further about the topic over there (but don't neglect your comments section either!). Provide your audience with the reminders that Facebook used to provide for you.

3. Post at an optimal time for your audience.

Find out what time best suits your audience. Are they mothers, who are online early in the morning? Perhaps they're professionals, jumping online after work in an evening. Know what time suits your audience and use it. (Hint: do some posts over the next week at different times and see when your best reach is.)

4. Post interesting content.

Okay, this one is a little obvious, but sometimes we all need a reminder. Don't just post boring old text updates. Use images, videos and sound to draw the reader in. Look at your own News Feed – where do your eyes focus? I'm willing to bet you skip over the text and land on the images.

Do you have any tips and tricks for dealing with the new Facebook changes? Let us know in the comments section below!

Bio

Liz Pulo has been a blogger for over 9 years in various forms. She loves social media, blogging and lolcats. She can be found in Hobart, Australia where she lives with her husband Jarod and cat Train. Liz blogs infrequently at lizosaurus.comhttp://www.lizosaurus.com.

Leanne MacDuff of 'Tailor Made Social' - How Social Media Changed My Life...

How social media changed my life... 

From the way I communicate my friends, family and the community around me, the format of which I write, and the level of communication I make on a daily basis has increased dramatically.

 My first social networking account was with Bebo, back in 2005, which was the year they launched. My first blog was with blogspot, or blogger as its known now, which I started in 2006; Sharing photographs, writing posts, and checking out friends profiles skins to make sure I stood up to the test of coolness that had become the norm for me.

 Social media wasn’t a phrase I was aware of back then. Bebo was very much in its boom time, and particularly popular within my Scottish Community.

  After spending a few years in the North of England, I finally succumbed to Facebook’s way as it became the growing trend with all my English friends, and very soon it would have all my Scottish friends too.

 Twitter came a few years later for me, although I had opened an account back then, it pretty much lay dormant for a year or so before I picked it up again. So you can see, it was natural and gradual movement, one that changed a lot of how I think and view the world. As each network updated and changed it opened up more untapped pockets of information and insight to people that you would have never before got access to, unless you were close friends with them.

  The most intriguing aspect of social media for me is the ability to reach a world beyond your community and build your own, with video, photographs, your own content and a layering of various network sites.

 My first blog reached over 10 countries, in a few short months with over 2000 views without any SEO or PR behind it at all. I had no clue what SEO was back then. My only interest was sharing relevant and helpful content that people could gain encouragement, or inspiration from should they find my blog.

 In 2011, I was given my first paid role as blogger, which quickly grew to sole social media strategist and copywriter for an international marketing company.

 For the first five months I pretty much studied every waking hour, finding an underlying passion for branding, business and marketing only stirring me on to commit and know more. I learnt a lot in that time, and over the next year began teaching some of those ideas both to clients, and in-house staff as we began to take more help on board. 

 One of the biggest challenges for people was understanding what social media meant for their business. Many understood they had to have a blog now, and some social presence, but time and losing the purse strings of speech within their organization has continued to be a sensitive subject.

 I believe social media marketing is so fundamental to any business that it should be taken care of by the business itself, and as my life was radically changed by it I knew there were ways I could help them do this too without robbing the bank, and essentially giving away the heart of their business to an outside source, with no contingency plan.

 A year later, I set up Tailor Made Social as a cost-efficient solution to social media marketing using my own online and offline programme. I believe I can teach businesses to focus on bridging the gap between their business, their consumer and their employees, which at the moment there is still a real disconnect between all three.

 The reality is, within the marketplace today, we are spoilt for choice. To survive in today’s market you must offer something completely unique, or much cheaper than anyone else and you must be able to build a relationship with your customer before they even hit your shop floor. In my own opinion, there is a real opportunity to connect with people in places we were never able to reach before on our own, or without a rather large bank account; in a nutshell that is how social media has changed my life.

Writer, blogger and passionate business woman, Leanne MacDuff is helping businesses in the UK bridge the gap between their consumers, and their employees online and offline via her social media training business, Tailor Made Social. 

When Leanne is not working on the business she can be found speaking, or writing on motivational topics that include, leadership, customer service, social media marketing, and woman in business. Recent speaking engagements include the Scottish Ruby Conference 2012, and other top agencies in UK where she works as a freelance social media trainer. 

You can connect with Leanne on Twitter @leemac85, or over at The Social Exchange. 

Our first blog for the Huffington Post

Our first blog for the Huffington Post UK, written by The Good Web Guide's editor, Emily Jenkinson, has just been published.

The blog, which looks at the rise of video broadcasting online and how this is threatening the written word, is the first in what will become a monthly blog spot on the Huffington Post UK in which Emily will look at online trends and news stories.

Do feel free to share the article on your social media pages, or use the comments section to give your own views on the subject.

The Good Web Cast Show Eight: I Never Promised You A Walled Garden

In 1990 the World Wide Web went live at the CERN particle physics laboratory in Geneva. Sir Tim-Berners-Lee’s hypertext application, which he made freely available, transformed the internet, helping to take it out of the universities and the laboratories, and into all our lives.

This week Berners-Lee warned of threats to the web’s principles of universality and neutrality, claiming that gated communities on Facebook and proprietary spaces such as iTunes undermine the free flow of information online.

This week’s Good Webcast examines Berners-Lee’s claims, and asks, in the battle to control the web, who will win?