Still in doubt about how much and how quickly online media will change things? Listen up.
By Ryan Skinner (email)
Just completed an interview with gCaptain's John Konrad (already mentioned in this blog's list of social media entrepreneurs in shipping) and two things he said jumped out at me. No, actually, they grabbed me, shook me, turned me upside down and slapped me around a bit.
Expect to find a fuller recounting of the interview with Konrad in this blog early next week, but I just needed to share one comment and one anecdote.
First, the comment: "We manage to get as much or more web traffic to gcaptain.com as Lloyd's List, but we have only two full-time employees and half-a-dozen freelance writers. They have a whole building."
This isn't so much a knock at Lloyd's List (the New York Times of shipping, per se), as a recognition of a new ecology of news, attention and dialogue on the Internet. As I've mentioned before, Jeff Jarvis does a great job of describing how news is morphing from a practice for high-priest media types to anyone with a community interest.
Second, the story: Konrad didn't want to give details, but described how pictures of a failed product test on gcaptain generated a tremendous amount of attention and discussion. Pretty soon, anyone searching on Google for the company making that product found, first, the company web-site, and then, full-color pictures of the products failing spectacularly.
The lesson here is no one can neglect these platforms. To maritime marketers and business leaders, discussion forums, blogs, review sites, aggregators and particularly Google now need to be at the middle of your PR and marketing plans. News on these platforms - good or bad - sticks around long after stories in many magazines and newspapers are archived.
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