While You Were Out

In case you haven’t noticed we’re living in a time where things are changing so fast that keeping up can be pretty exhausting. I needed to slow it down the other day and instead of completely shutting it all off,  I did something old fashioned and decided to read my print version of the New York Times instead of the one on my iPad.

I caught a little blurb in the sidebar,  that four new print magazines are launching next week that will advise business owners how to use social media tools. I know it sounds funny, doesn’t it?  Starting new print outlets in this age where supposedly that is dying as fast and furious as the trees used to make the paper.  And all with the purpose of teaching ( translate: making money off of)  those companies that haven’t been paying attention the last three years how to use use platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Google and LinkedIn to their benefit.  But apparently, it’s true.

The owners, GSG World Media have a website with a big headline “social media’s about to get down to business” that I am sure will be chock full of all those things that new media marketers have been talking about on their blogs and in teleseminars for free the last few years while those companies were out doing something else, diverting their attention to things like downsizing their organizations and I am sure hoping this social media thing was just a passing fad.

That’s  what happens when real change abounds. The majority of us tune it out, hope it goes away and long for the good ol’days when you didn’t worry so much when you left your office about all the “stuff” you would come back to. A time when things like phone messages were written on a pink slip of paper by a human being and email was barely a glimmer in someone’s eye.

But sometimes the noise gets too loud and we are forced to pay attention. Sometimes that leaves us behind the eight ball or in this case with the option of paying $7.95 a publication at your local Office Depot.

I am the first to tell you social media will not replace and make extinct all other forms of media, just like FM radio in the eighties did not make AM stations go away nor did cable make people stop watching broadcast. The pie just became more fragmented. Instead of indulging on one big wedge of apple crumb, you can have a sliver and still have room to try the blueberry and the pecan if that is your taste, never changing your caloric intake. Or like me, you can embrace the change, mix up scrolling on your iPad with some good old fashioned newsprint on your fingers  while you search the sidebars for interesting tidbits with which to write a blog.

How do you react to change?
Do you wait until you have to adapt or are you an early embracer?

BTW…Have I mentioned my debut novel, The Secrets They Kept is now available on Amazon AND Barnes and Noble in print and e-book! And please, feel free to use your social media of choice to help spread the word and the book sales!