Feb
08
Another Example of Communication Barriers
Posted (admin) in Uncategorized on February-8-2007

I am speaking to a Rotary club in Roanoke about differences between generations and the communication barriers multiple media channels are causing.

An example I will be using to illustrate this disconnect can be found at Obie’s My Space page.

Obie sent RoanokeWantsU a friends request recently and I caught his blog post about Happy 125th Birthday Roanoke. Obie went to Virginia Tech, is 28 years old and lives in FREDERICKSBURG, VA.

His blog post about Roanoke turning 125 yielded three responses.

1. Daniel said, "…this blog is the ONLY commemoration of this day I saw – and I was sitting in the very middle of Roanoke all day!!!"

2. Gregory said, "I had no idea especially since my folks live in the city now instead of the county. This is pretty nice."

3. another user said, "Who knew. Good find."

I think it is fascinating that someone from Fredericksburg on a personal social networking blog is telling three Roanokers that their community is turning 125 years old.

The City of Roanoke is planning a series of events celebrating the 125 anniversary in 2007 and have done a wonderful job publicizing this in traditional media. Again, they have done a wonderful job. It is not their fault these three did not know about the 125th. It is a result of the complexity multiple channels are having on communicating with people form different generations.

Here is the dilemma. How can this message of Roanoke turning 125 be sent to the masses? Can a mass message be received? These are challenging questions we must overcome.   
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Viewing 6 Comments

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    Sean, all of these are good ideas... very few people understand the importance of these networks... I have been building these and have been communicating to those about specific topics... your thinking is right on the mark...
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    I forgot to mention the importance of contacting the social connectors. They have a natural ability to spread the word. They might tell 10 people something cool they read in the e-newsletter, but because of their influence, those 10 people consider this social currency to be worth more because of the source, and each of those 10 mention it in conversation to more people than they otherwise would. It's a proven social paradigm. If you could magically find the 500 most influential social connectors in the Valley, you could give them a message to deliver and 80% of the valley would have likely heard the message within a month's time. Something to think about.
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    I'd recommend that you read a book called Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. I got turned onto his books after a keynote he made at a webmaster conference in Boston last year. It has significant relevance to your challenge. Since I've read it, I'll make some suggestions :) First and foremost is that before we go spending 50 million dollars on an Amber Alert style method of distributing information to the citizens of Roanoke Valley (smile), consider a more viral method. Deliver time-sensitive civic news to the social connectors in the Valley. Presuming you have the contact information of each business operating within the city, you could deliver a periodic e-newsletter in printable pdf form to each business owner, asking them to forward it to the marketing person who can in turn forward it to everyone else. Other methods of gathering subscribers to the e-newsletter would be to offer a $5 fee refund per employee that each company has subscribed to the e-newsletter through their work email. This wouldn't be a huge cash incentive; it might save a 50 employee law firm $50/year but the $250/year savings would be a feel-good incentive that would help boost your reach. The money would be more useful for PR value in that it would generate news. The actual incentive would be helping the community stay better informed about positive change in the valley. That's good for business. You could also add an email field to all city forms and in turn a checkbox to opt-out of the newsletter, and then develop a system whereby the email address is delivered to the dept in charge of the newsletter. Of course a web site where anyone can subscribe is helpful too, but it won't have nearly the viral effect of the other things I've mentioned.
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    I am not being critical... It is no one's fault... It is a prodcut of the communication environment we are living in now.... It is extremely difficult to send out a mass message and it be received...
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    found another example of a communication breakdown on the new MyRetailRoanoke.com page.

    If you pull up the "all" list, you'll find many retail shops that are already here in Roanoke.

    Zaxby's, Krystal, Harris-Teeter (now Kroger), and many more.

    Not to mention the Atlanta Bread Company, which is already coming to the area - soon to open on Electric Rd.

    Just an example - not drawing any conclusions from it.
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    I have a feeling the real question is "do people care?"

    I hate to put it that way, but civic pride is not one of the strong selling points of Roanoke.

    That dis-investment in community makes the communication issue much harder.
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