The title was my personal attempt at rap within my blog post, I apologize, and I digress.
Today in our Social Media class, we had the news-anchor-turned-internet-sensation Adam Lefkoe as a guest speaker. As many of you probably know, he is the sports anchor for the WHAS 11 news, and has recently risen to fame thanks to his quirky, funny news casts, with the help from Twitter. He takes topics suggested from his Twitter followers, and creates a news cast that integrates the theme throughout. This sensation has taken off, and our class was lucky enough to have him give us a few tips of his trade, but unfortunately no rapping (womp).
One of his first points that he emphasized was to respond to the negative comments. All comments are important, and to ignore the negative ones, or to completely erase meaningful content because of a negative comment is not constructive. Ignoring these comments will have consumers wondering why you haven’t responded, most likely ending in disapproval or concluding that you just don’t care. He also made a really good point that when you go online and explain why you did something, most consumers will change their mind, or at least understand where you were coming from. Traditional media isn’t transparent, which makes getting these negative concerns or reactions harder to deal with, but ignoring or taking down content is not the answer.
Creating content, as we all know, is king. Not just creating valuable information, but creating original information, is of high importance. As Adam pointed out, the internet is full of thieves! Not really, but he did say that original information does get circuited around with a “hat tip”, and that the internet is becoming less and less original. Creating your own ideas allows you the rights to this said idea, and can allow you to share it on your own accord; if you have an idea, don’t go looking for an existing article on it, create your own.
A point that I found extremely refreshing, especially coming from a news anchor, is to know your voice and remember your purpose. One reason I don’t engage much with traditional news media is because I find it mundane, tiring, and more than a little drab. Adam having the confidence and courage to jump out of that box and to not conform is inspiring. He created these themed-casts to draw people in and entertain them in a new way, and he completely succeeded. He was real. He wasn’t doing it so it would go viral, because it would have failed if he was trying that hard; he did it to build an audience and have people start caring about what happens at 6:20pm on WHAS11. When they wanted him to stop he refused; he knew his voice, what he wanted to get out to the public, and he acted out of instinct. He understands how to spread a message in s second-screen world, and I’m really excited to see what he will put out next! (hopefully another rap!) Thanks so much for reading, and thank you so much Adam Lefkoe, it was an honor!
-sf
Here’s the Classic Rap sports cast video! SO AWESOME!
sieannafuller 