Augie Ray, this week's Blogger of the Week, started working in "social media" before the Internet first went public. As an early member of Prodigy, the once big pre-web online service, Ray was drawn into the Disney Fans Bulletin Board (DFBB) and was such a frequent poster that he was offered a role
as a community moderator--in 1994.
"I've always been a right brain/left brain fan of Disneyâ€"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)."