"I’ve always been a right brain/left brain fan of Disney—my right brain loves the movies and the experience of the theme parks, and my left brain respects the management, quality, training, human resources, and brand management that have made Disney a success," he says.  "Then in 1994 Prodigy opened up access to the Internet, and I was immediately taken with the opportunity to share my enthusiasm for Disney with others.  For me, HTML was a simple way to communicate information.  I began to construct different sites dedicated to different aspects of Disney, including a site on Disney news that was updated almost every day."  Nowadays, of course, we call that "blogging."   
 
As a result of his efforts, Disney invited Ray and his wife to Walt Disney World’s 25th anniversary kickoff celebration and media event in 1996.  Naturally, he wanted to report from the event, so he rented a very expensive digital camera, borrowed a slow laptop (486, he believes) and reported every day from the 25th Anniversary event.  These days, we call that "live blogging."

 
"When social media began getting attention, my first thought was that it was nothing new; using the Web to create and share info and network with others?  Been there, done that," he says.  "For me, the Internet was never a place where static info was provided by big content providers; the Net has been social from day one, as far as I’m concerned."

 
Of course, Rays admits, the tools are now in place to do things easier and to reach more people than ever before, so his initial skepticism at recognizing social media as a new and exciting change eventually faded.  Still, when he launched his blog, ExperienceTheBlog.com, he didn't intend to focus merely on social media but to promote and discuss the wide range of online experiences that brands can use to build awareness, consideration, and loyalty. 

 

"The more I dug into social media at Fullhouse (a Milwaukee interactive agency at FullhouseInteractive.com), the more my enthusiasm grew for social media, and so did my fear that marketers would only see this as another channel for advertising rather than as a new strategy for creating value for both consumers and the brand," he says.

 
Ray not only applies social media in his day job (at Fullhouse) but also to his side enterprise as co-owner (with his wife) of  Metropawlis, a Milwaukee pet boutique, and JustPetStrollers.com, the first ecommerce site dedicated to the relatively new and "rather unique" pet stroller product category. 

 

"Social media was a part of our strategy for the online retail operation: I first started (but later abandoned) a blog focused on Hollywood stars and their pets as a means for sponsorship and promotion," he says.  "I later launched a much more practical blog dedicated to pet strollers at PetStroller.BlogSpot.com, and we use this site to broadcast coupon codes, answer questions about pet stroller usage and brands, and improve our search engine relevance."
 
As for where social media is going, Ray's says that’s a big question. 

 

"I believe social media will become as ubiquitous to enterprises as is the phone and email," he says.  "We’ll see rapid adoption of social media for wide-ranging purposes, from customer service, to recruitment, to marketing, to (of course) public relations.  I anticipate that some of the tools that are being launched to allow consumers to create a single profile that can be used on diverse networks will be successful.  Also, as with the early days of the Internet when too many sites offered too many duplicative services and products, I suspect we’ll see a shake out of social media sites and tools.  I believe we’ll see companies and tools combine as social media becomes more competitive and as players find a way to make a profit (or disappear)."