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Not Just Another Digital Human
3/31/2016
In any career, not just as a mass communications-majoring professional, communication is a core aspect of whether or not someone is qualified for a position. In fact, communication is a value in relationships, sharing generated content, or doing anything well. If a person has the best idea in the world, how effective would that idea be without the proper means of communicating it? That brings us to the question of: what are the best ways to communicate in any setting? There are a world of means to communicating available for any curious consumer, however, in a digital world, communicating content is a core skill that most anyone should be familiar with. Here are a few, quick tips to get started:
1. KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE.
In any atmosphere, in the physical world or the digital, who you communicate means the difference between successfully relaying information from one source to the next. Especially in an online environment, having concise, intriguing content can be advantageous, but applying it to the wrong audience can do more harm than good. Not only will your content lose attention or sink into the masses of the interwebs, but also may receive uncalled criticism in the wrong hands. Overall, being knowledgeable about what you share, but ignorant of any current trends or events, can seem inappropriate in various settings. The most effective communication arises from authors who have a plan and target in mind.
2. FAMILIARIZE YOURSELF WITH DIGITAL OUTLETS.
In a world full of online platforms, countless services, and changing modes of social medias, a blogger, author, or a digital human in this sea of online content has to know where to channel their information. Otherwise, your valuable work can be lost and unseen by anyone. Being familiar with a various amount of technical know-how and digital platforms can be useful, but along with being ignorant of the audience, if you don’t know where to best share that content, you could potentially waste your time. Trends fade and social platforms rise and fall in popularity, but overall, staying in touch with these outlets will prove to be useful in the long run.
3. PREPARATION IS KEY.
No matter how much you know about your dream or goals, if opportunity calls for that moment and you’re unprepared, it will pass. It’s crucial to always keep a plan in mind, and even if there are transition periods in-between these times, stay on top of your content. Checking out from your profiles or having an absence in your digital presence can be a huge sign of inconsistency to your followers. Not only will you lose hits on your content, but your audience may lost respect for your hard-worked image entirely. Also, if you’re ready to take on the next challenge for your future content, something will always turn up. Keep the conversation going, there’s always something happening.
4. DON’T BE AFRAID TO REACH OUT TO OTHERS.
Lastly, maintaining an online presence is one thing, but if you don’t interact with those on the receiving end, it is difficult to be on the same page with your followers. You can also come off as uncaring or ignorant. Not only could you lose opportunities, you could also find yourself less effective in your content sharing. In any social exchange, the person you speaking to is ultimately the other half of the interaction.
A Pro Live-Stream Begins at the Basics
3/10/2016
As a digital human in a digital age, there are a strict set of skills that any competent communicator in our generation must be able to convey in producing an online presence. In my recent work as a live streamer for various broadcasts, there are a few, core details that would be handy to keep in mind. People are busy; so, on top of that, you must be able to efficiently present your content in the most time-efficient manner. Preparation is always key, so make sure to take the most time in this step of producing a live-stream, or any other kind of mass-media production.
Knowing your gear is the very first step in being able to produce an effective stream. Fumbling around with the technology isn’t professional, first of all; and, in most cases, people are most likely not going to be willing to wait up for you to get everything figured out and together. If the stream hiccups because of a lag or a server delay midway through the shot, your reliability with your audience members will likely plummet, too. Having the physical software, recording devices, and back-up gear ready is a good way to prepare for any bumps when the stream begins. Just keep it rolling, that’s what really matters. After all, there’s always something to be communicated or shared.
If you’re working with a stream, oftentimes, there’s going to be a set schedule available for whatever you’re coverage is on. Make sure to work any transitions, advertisements, or audience interactions in during these ideal windows. Clumsily cutting in and out of moments can seem amateur-esque, while not taking advantage of these “dead” times will result in a mundane, average feed. A key aspect in creating a brand for yourself is adding your individuality to your streams. Anyone from a sports announcer to a novice gamer, all work with this same concept. Contributing something insightful, something beneficial to audience members, or just providing extra, backstage information will attract viewers.
A last point in the broad spectrum of producing a live feed is prepping your cast. If you have an interviewee in mind for a stream, make sure to let them know the kinds of content you want covered or at least establish a comfortable degree of being on the same page. Keeping the conversation moving is one thing, but if you have a unique guest on the stream, showcase it! Whether it’s an athlete competing in the tournament, a seasoned actor, or a fan at the convention, there has to be a deciding factor that distinguishes you from other broadcasts. Otherwise, you will be lost in the sea of the same feeds that every other streamer is trying to accomplish, just like you. Make sure that the interviewee feels prepared and lets you know what they plan to contribute, ahead of time.
These are only a few tips, but in the end, experience is your best friend. Trial and error is what works best in each individual situation, so there is no right or wrong in producing content for a stream. However, preparation is a core ingredient in any kind of media feed, so taking the most care in that won’t leave you unproductive, in the meantime. Good luck with everyone’s future streaming endeavors!
A Blog on Blogging
2/25/2016
Over the years, I have been building experiences for my resume and future career through social entertainment, without even realizing it. I focused on various kinds of media, as I’m sure most people do, but overall, I’ve become more technologically-savvy because of the exposure to the differing gaming consoles, mobile applications, and PC platforms so readily accessible to most anyone. As I began my journalism career and schooling, I realized that my production experiences from years of post-editing, photo-shopping, and camera shoots were vital to such a social profession. In order to succeed in this field, I had to become proficient in more ways than the traditional hard news I’d always associated journalism with. I find that any individual making their way in life uses the skills that they are familiar with to create and provide a new kind of service for others. However, as a Mass Communications student, this reality became much more real to me as I began sharing my content online. In one instance, I found myself spending an entire semester on a blog, amassing all kinds of followers, and formulating methods in order to market myself, my content, and the presentation of all these elements to appeal to the global audience. Overall, it was a confusing, but strangely well-fitted timing in my career. Using a gaming-based foundation to create a broad array of content in regards to social entertainment, I was able to learn about media-sites like Twitter, the consistency of blogging, and the timing in succeeding in it all.
When starting out in my blog, finding content tailored to my hypothetical audience was a difficult task. There are people in all walks of life coming across my blog. In this respect, I had a bit of leeway in the face of a more casual, blog subject. However, I learned that phrasing and presenting information that can be relatable and intriguing for amateurs, gaming experts, and non-gamers alike was key to amassing a larger following. Starting out with nothing, I had to find a niche in which I could present material to a broad audience, versus a specific sub-culture within that audience. Afterwards, I started branching out from my usual gaming reviews and interviews with production companies, in order to provide more well-rounded content. In an efforts to discover a segway to transition my one-track blog into a more diverse web of gaming knowledge, I also learned that preparation was another core element in presenting information. Through these experiences, I learned to edit quickly and multi-task, as I lined up blogs to be released on a consistent basis ahead of time, while working on new projects. In juggling all this content, I learned the speed at which the internet and the modern world revolves around media. If I missed an opportunity, that was it. I had to wait for the next one. This taught me to improvise when things didn’t go according to plan.
Although these were only a few examples of what managing a blog looks like, depending on the bloggers’ topic, experiences will vary. Gaming is a large medium and is very fast-paced, so naturally, I had to adapt to this environment, in order to add to the relative, global conversations. But in this experience, what I learned most was that a blogger creates the atmosphere in the content. The voice behind it, the style, the graphic elements, and the technical jargon actually contribute greatly in communicating the sincerity behind the material. A reader may only give a blog or an interview five seconds of their time, but I was able to receive those hits, nonetheless. The next step in growing my blog would be to focus on interaction with my audience and keeping readers interested in my material, not just having them click through the headlines. It’s a work in progress, but an online presence is still a presence. So, adding individuality to any work, with your relative, unique career experiences, tools, and creativity in mind, is a value that can absolutely add to the quality of your own brand.
Thoughts Post-College on Experience Building
1/28/2016
So, it’s finally my senior semester. After over three years of communications studies, a high school career filled with multi-media experience, and even attaining a paid job in production, what have I learned about digital media? Looking at prospective careers for the near-future, have I been able to narrow down my focus to even a little bit of a reasonable degree? How does my education and experiences tie in with my passion? What is my passion? These are the kinds of questions I find myself faced with on a normal basis. In today’s tech-savvy generation, I like to think that attending a state university to study media arts and communications certainly gives me a level of credibility in the mass crowds of digital humans surrounding us, at least I would hope. While I may not know exactly where my life will be five years, even two years, from now, I know that I have lived up to this point so far somewhat in those areas that I can hope to work with in the future.
Now that I’ve covered these bases, where do I begin? It’s been interesting to find myself in various situations where I would never have imagined to be. There’s a lot I could share about how I reacted to some experiences and whether or not I enjoyed some over others, but I would say a few of the most interesting highlights in my trial journeys for different careers was always involved in social media. While I’ve had my fair share of journalistic writing, magazine editing, and graphic designing, social media was a work-sphere that I had previously thought I had already had the reigns to. Having my smartphone with me constantly and growing up on an array of applications available on my desktop or tablet, I had always found that communicating through video-streaming sites, mobile platforms, and multi-media microblogs seemed to be a form of second-nature to me. I’ve always had such an ease-of-access to various platforms to share ideas, inspire communities, and just have a laugh whenever I felt like. I would never have imagined that this experience and having these resources would relate so closely to a journalist’s perspective. Rather than the traditional stigma for hard news, I learned that there was a whole different realm of communications I had not previously been aware of. For me, that experience came through blogging and live-tweeting streams, which I was both prepared and unprepared for.
Over the summer, I was able to cover one of the world’s largest conventions in Cologne, Germany at the gamescom Exhibition Center. An annual event that invites over 350,000 individuals to attend, not including the booth merchants, public relations executives, or the sponsors also present, gamescom is the largest gaming trade fair around the globe. Featuring new platforms, brand releases, and online marketing for the biggest, most-anticipated games for the upcoming year, the convention boasts a variety of companies’ works, ranging from small companies with their first version releases to big franchises, such as Nintendo and PlayStation.
While I wasn’t able to cover all 5-days of the convention’s new releases, I did cover EA’s, an iconic brand also known as Electronic Arts, portion and provided a recap on last year’s premiere show, featuring a long-awaited round-up of their top 8 title debuts, gameplay reveals, sequel trailers, and behind-the-scenes content. Using Twitter and Twitch, a social, multi-media platform gamers use in streaming their gameplay, to share and receive the live feed for my coverage, I was able to go back and forth conveniently to live-tweet the opening presentation of the expo to introduce the events for viewers. My Twitter feed was full of real-time photos, news on just released content, and even a few links for other audience members not in Germany at the time to take advantage of giveaways. Within the hour, I learned that practical experience was the best teacher for thinking on your feet.
Overall, the experience left me wanting to do it all over again. I had never found traditional reporting very appealing as a personal career, but tied in with such a fast-paced, constantly-moving environment, I found live-streaming on social media to be similar in a slightly different way. Whether it was getting used to the physical platform I was using, getting in on the viewer interaction, or catching up on my shorthand, the experience wasn’t overwhelming in the least. I was initially shocked at the speed I had to work at in order to keep up with the constant content-releases. Even though it was four in the morning where I was and through all the technical bugs, it was incredibly exhilarating at the same time. I found the experience to be strangely reminiscent to that of sports reporting through online media, as the convention style and schedule was almost identical. However, with the rise of e-sports and the growing popularity of gaming tournaments, this may not be such a strange phenomenon after all. At the end of it all, I’m still not sure how to focus my passion and career choices to a narrower concentration, but the experience taught me what I did and didn’t like. Being surrounded by people in an exciting place and sharing what I was in awe of to people who couldn’t attend this convention around the world felt really accomplishing. If anything, it’s exciting to see how what I’ve prepared for over the years can be used in a split second, which is an alarming and intriguing concept. I’m grateful to where I’ve come so far and perhaps in the two to five years from now, I’ll be deeper in this field: thanks to this experience.