We recently had a significant storm come through our area (Omaha), and I found myself watching the local news during the storm to get an update. The local weatherman on WOWT-TV (our NBC affiliate), in his desire to show how aggressive they were in tracking the storm, said they had a person in their studio monitoring what was happening on ham radios. Excuse me, but why? I laughed so hard, I couldn’t stop? Aren’t ham radios a lost relic from years gone by? Hasn’t Twitter become a better avenue?
The recent storm coverage on the news only proved in my mind how traditional media and digital immigrants still have a ways to go in not only understanding new (more prevalent) ways of disseminating news, but also how digital natives choose to receive their news. I was able to get better updates on the storm by following Twitter…hmmm.
I share this to demonstrate why it’s so important for digital immigrants to understand how out of touch they are with regards to knowing how to communicate. If you’re in sales, pay close attention to any tools you are using to communicate that could become antiquated very soon (if they haven’t already). Two years from now, will you be communicating the same way? Six months from now will you? They are good questions to ponder.
Now, back to the local NBC affiliate here in Omaha — their weather department does have a Twitter account with a only 517 followers. Their news department has a Twitter feed with just over 2,000 followers — still not very many, considering they claim to be the number one local news source. What is even more interesting is their news Twitter account does not even follow their weather Twitter feed.
Again, I can’t emphasize enough how important it is for digital immigrants to be aggressive in becoming adept at communicating as if they were a digital native.
One Response