Snarky Behavior

One of the major parts of my current job is tracking media impressions and reactions to data releases in the realm of education. In fact, I’ve unofficially become the office trainer of how to best use online technology to track media for our clients. The below includes some snippets of slides I use in the training:

There was a time when we (and by “we” I mean the industry standard) used to have newspaper articles physically “clipped” and mailed to us, (provided by a service called Burrelles). Then came Google News, which allowed you to get a daily recap via e-mail to the search term or query of your design. And today, we have Really Simple Syndication feeds that provide search-term news on demand. It’s incredibly efficient.

Using a “reader” to track my news and interests has drastically improved my life so much, that I can’t remember what life was like before. No joke. It’s the difference between dial-up and broad-band.

Which is why I’m always shocked to learn how few people have actually adopted this method. The expectations of the internet as a tool are: e-mail (g-mail), maybe some social-networking (facebook), and search (google). These are the lowest common denominators.

I would add to that, as the “must-knows” of the internet: real-time syndication (RSS feeds or Live Bookmarks), collaborative desktops (the Google Docs and Spreadsheets) and user-powered content (i.e. Digg, Youtube, Reddit, etc.). These are tools that, if you haven’t already adopted, you should.

Anyone who’s made the switch over from yahoo or hotmail to G-mail knows what I’m talking about. The Google suite of online tools is amazing. If you’re not already using their reader, I suggest you do so, and subscribe to my feed.

And for those who already do, keep on truckin’.