Social Media Montana

Wikipedia defines “social media” as “content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. At its most basic sense, social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content”.

For someone who works at a newspaper, that second sentence should scare me. But curiously it doesn’t.  Instead of a threat to newspapers (and my job), I view social media as a challenge and an opportunity. How do we (and I mean the traditional news delivery industry) survive in this new world where consumers don’t see a real difference between traditional news sources – with all of the fact finding and vetting they employ – and someone’s opinion on a blog?

Finding the answer to this question and others is what motivated me to start my own journey of discovery into social media. This blog, my first baby step,  will chronicle that journey.

My goal for “Social Media Montana” is to create an organization that promotes, within the context of the business community, the understanding and usage of these exciting new technologies and new ways of thinking about information. How can businesses use the technology for their advantage?

How we get from here to there is not cast in stone.  I certainly don’t have all the answers. Although I’m not new to the internet (I built my first website in 1990) I am relatively new to social media.  But I’m betting that there are others out there like myself who see the opportunity embodied in social media.  If you are one of them, I’d like to hear from you.

Contact me at socialmediamt@gmail.com

Mike Tyler