The Tin Shingle Blog

It's no surprise that the lay-offs are rampant nationwide, and one place that has been hit especially hard is the media.  If you've been reading the papers - especially in a media capital like New York City, you've heard that everywhere from Time Inc to Hearst to the celebrity weeklies are being hit with heavy lay-offs.  Last week the Wall Street Journal announced it too would be cutting back on staff.

The Baltimore Examiner?  Closing.  Both Page Six Magazine and T the New York Times publication have cut back on issues, and both ABC and ESPN have witnessed hundreds of lay-offs.  These are only a few of the examples of one of the sad effects of the recession.  

So what does this mean to you, you many wonder?  I don't work in media, why should I be following this trend?

If you are working with the press -and all of you should be if you intend to raise awareness for your brand - you need to be doing two things.  First, be sensitive to the situation at the media outlets you frequently reach out to.  Understand that the staff who were retained are often stressed, overworked, and wokring in an environment where they've just lost friends & coworkers.  This is not the time to be demanding and unpleasant (not that you would ever do so, but give them extra time to respond to you and so forth).  

Second, remember to constantly be updating and checking your media lists, where you are recording your pitches and media contact information.  We here at Collective E have to check our contact lists monthly to ensure we're updating them regularly for our members.  Even if you subscribe to a service like Cision or Vocus (which shares media contact information) you still need to do your homework, these programs are often slow to update information.  I know for a fact they have yet to update Good Housekeeping Magazine after their latest round of lay-offs.  That means you need to be on top of your media contact game!  Check mast heads on magazines you frequently pitch, follow websites like Media Bistro in order to keep in touch with what is going on in the media world, and make sure you're regularly reaching out ot and maintaining relationships with your contacts so that if they do leave, you'll not only notice, but hopefully be notified of their upcoming plans.  Remember:  fewer employed journalists mean more freelance journalists, often the source of amazing stories in great outlets.  Again, I can never stress enough how much the relationships are what matters here.  Get to know people who should and and do care about your story, and keep in touch with them.  This ensures no matter where they go if a need comes for you or your company, you won't be far from their mind.

Remember that the more you keep up on your media lists, the less this task will turn into a mountain of work.  The job market is turbulent in all sectors and the media is no exception, so pay attention, stay on top of things, and adjust your media plans accordingly.

Best of luck!

My hubby and I live in New York City. While we don't live in the swankiest part of town, we do have a handful of menus we can order from any night of the week. When I first moved to Manhattan from Ohio, I lived with a couple who ordered out every single night while I cooked myself dinner - like a normal person. The guy worked in Finance, so I guess had unlimited funds - at the time.

These days, especially as an entrepreneur, I very easily justify ordering out for dinner by saying that it takes more of my time to make and clean up after the dinner, so we had better just order out. This is a very bad habit, and only some of the time truly saves me time which in some cases is money.

In trying to break this habit (while still keeping our local Indian place in business), Hubby and I have decided to deposit the money we would have spent on dinner into our joint savings account. Sunday night, I almost ordered Pizza Hut because of all of the commercials I saw while doing bills. That's an easy $10 to put into the savings account. This night, I was feeling pretty weak, and craved the Chicken Dildar, Pouri, and mango glace from said Indian restaurant, Kurry Cabob. However, we have plans to order from there on Friday for a backgammon tournament with my dear friend who is leaving NYC for greener pastures. Instead of double-indulging, I forced myself to buy vegitables at my local market, and turn a whole chicken I had cooked earlier into soup.

And boy am I glad I did because it's my first chicken soup, and it's really good. Plus, I get to put $20 into the savings account! I think that Tin Shingle member, Galia Gichon of Down to Earth Finance would be proud. Just one more little game to trick myself into putting money into the savings account for a future house.

What to do when you've got too many Facebook friends and Twitter followers. Sigh...too many people are following me! Chances are, you are thinking this because you have followed or friended most of those people back, and you don't really know who most of them are.

Let's back up for a minute and explain what this means, for those of you resisting the social networking swell. On Facebook, you can have "friends". It is up to you, sort of, who those friends are. You gain friends by requesting to be someone's friend, or by accepting someone's request to be your friend. In the most pure sense, you are most likely requesting and accepting friendships of your friends and family. If you are a teen or in college, you are most likely not accepting your mother's request to be your friend, because if you did, she could see everything that you do (post on walls, post photos, comment on photos, post links, talk smack, etc.).

On Twitter, people can 'follow' you. Unlike Facebook, you don't have to accept their request to follow you. You can 'block' them if you are suspicious for any reason, and then they cannot see your updates anymore.

Here's where things get tricky. Regular people, aka non-celebrities, are developing a certain celebrity status in social networks. Either they are funny, go to hip places, share the coolest links, write a book, write a column, you name it. Journalists, designers, shop owners, career coaches, news anchors (CNN's Rick Sanchez is married to his Twitter feed and is good to his followers, meaning, he actually "tweets" to them and puts them on the air) are beginning to use their Facebook and Twitter profiles as a place to promote what they do for a living, and many times it works. Tickets are bought, books are sold, attendance to an event increases.

The Personal Price of Online Fame
All of this can come with a price: you friend/follow me, I'll friend/follow you. Some people even promise it in a sentence describing who they are. Some people are obsessed with hitting mile markers, and this tweet is common: "I'm 3 shy of 1,000 followers! Help me get more followers!" As with anything social, an etiquette has developed, where it's common courtesy to follow someone back. In Twitter, this is easier to do, because they are not called "friends", and there is no limit. Facebook currently has a limit of 5,000 friends. They know that you cannot possibly be entertaining 5,000 of your closest friends, and they suspect that you are using your account for business reasons (which you most likely are), and they may shut your personal profile down, thus erasing all of your personal notes to people, birthday reminders, emails, hugs, snowballs thrown, etc.

But do you care? While you had 5,000 friends, you forgot that you actually did follow your best friend in Chicago, but suddenly, you thought she dropped off the planet because you weren't noticing her "status updates" in your "friend feed." Flippantly, you assume she has crawled under a rock. But when you go to her profile page, you see that she just had her second baby and her new profile picture is of the entire family in the hospital room. Oops.

You lost her within your 5,000 other professional friends who you have friended back because they friended you. You did common courtesy, because you wanted to keep those new fans of your work happy, and that etiquite has actually made your pure list of friends and family less potent. Who are these people? And what are you going to do about it?

Marci Alboher, writer, journalist, author and speaker, posed this question to me after reading about what a Facebook page is here on the Collectve-E blog. She and others like her are getting closer to hitting the 5,000 cap on Facebook, and they are considering what to do about it. I've answered her question, so get started with our conversation.

PS: If you're in New York on March 24, 2009 and want to learn more about social networking, check out our Tweetworking class for really good strategies on how to use Twitter...

Hurray for Tin Shingle member Jessica Porter, founder of Raandesk Gallery, a virtual resource of contemporary artwork by emerging artists through http://www.raandeskgallery.com/ . Jessica was a lawyer by day, and started the online art gallery to reach more art collectors - both established and emerging collectors. She has started an Art2Gift program where some pieces start at $35 so that people can continue collecting in this economic climate.

Jessica celebrates the 3 year anniversary in our Forum, where she invites you to an event!

And just for fun, take Jessica's Tin Shingle Trend Poll that asks "What puts you over the edge to buy a piece of art?"