Social media, is it everywhere? Everybody has a Facebook page, a Twitter feed or a blog (ha, ha, you’re reading mine), or at least it seems that way. And where’s it all headed? It seems like the buzz around social media grows exponentially by the week. Is it justified? I believe it is. But I will say this, anytime something gets as much attention as social media is getting right now, everybody wants to be part of it…That will tend to bring out the good and the really dumb.

I believe its just 1 big inter-connected web. Somebody noticed you on LinkedIn updates on Friday morning and followed it. Your LinkedIn Profile takes that somebody to your web page, your web page contains your blog, which might have something of interest to the reader. Since that reader found something in common or of interest, they decide to follow you on twitter and so on. It might not work just like this, but you know the theory. So is this just mindless wasted time or are we really developing relationships and communities that will help each other, support each other and in the long run, alter our life patterns? That’s a big question right now.

There’s a million answers to that question, and they are all different. A good example is Facebook Communities. I watch my son’s generation who are all either at college or in post high school jobs. He knows where anybody he ever knew and cared about is, where they are going to school or work, probably their status and much more. He doesn’t make a concerted effort to do this, they are all just part of an social community that uses Facebook as its central information hub (it’s life to them). It’s amazing to watch these communities and many like them grow. It tells me that our methods of communication are changing big time, like it or not.

This brings me to the next point, we’ve got to help each other. The whole social media and Internet communications movement can be very complicated. In some respects we have given up the very organized 3 network and 2 newspaper model of information and entrainment for a wild west type, unorganized mass of media and information we’re all trying to wrap our arms around. The trade off is that under the old system, we had to listen to what “they” were saying, telling us, selling us and we did not have much of a choice. Now, even though its wild and unorganized, we can tune into, listen to and read what we want to. We are in more control of what reaches us than ever before, but we need to help each other understand where we are going.

There are more and more “Social Media” experts out there every day. Listen to them (I don’t know if you need to pay them), and listen to what your sons and daughters and neighbore are doing. You don’t need to go overboard and be super connected, just take small steps if you feel confused. It will all make sense slowly but surley.

Our strategy is to try to use some of these tools to communicate with our customers and friends. Help them solve a printing or communications problem, maybe share  an aspect of our lives with them and hope they do the same with us. I’ll tell you this, canoeing and photography are as important to me as printing, and printing and graphics are very important in my life.

I think it’s pretty exciting to be living in a time when we are experiancing the type of change that the digital revolution is bringing to us, but a lot of people are still uneasy with it. Be patient, help them out, and remember we don’t have any choice. The times are changing fast and we are all going down this road together. So as time goes on, we’ll try to write more about Social Media and Internet Communications, because its very tightly tied to our business also (like it or not).

I read an article the other day entitled “Are you ready for the Post-Recession printing industry?” and it made me think about what’s down the road. Actually, if you own a printing company you probably think a lot about what’s down the road. And while I don’t have an answer, I know things are changing quickly. Here are a few thoughts and ideas  about our changing industry.

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There seem to be people that still believe that things will return to “Normal”…in the printing industry. I think we are in the “New Normal” right now for printers (that doesn’t mean we’re not in an economic downturn, because we are; the printing industry just is’nt going back to where it was). The digital revolution has had and continues to have a huge effect on our industry, and if you embrace it (and have some guts), there’s some oppurtunities out there. I was reading a First Research industry profile on The Commercial Printing industry and this fact really stood out. “Historically, 40% of books and almost 60% of magazines were printed but not purchased. Excess copies are collected, shredded and land-filled”.   In the printing industry, it has always been true that if you order a higher quantity, your per unit cost will go down. That makes Print on Demand make more sense than ever; with digital printing platforms today, you can print just what you need (even add customization), and come back for another small quantity when you need more. This is having a huge effect on printers that have always survived on those long runs.

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Printing is transitioning to a service business. Commercial Printing has traditionally been a manufacturing industry, and while it maintains its manufacturing focus, it seems to be evolving into a service business. We are subject to shorter print runs, and customers are asking for more changes and edits later in the process and then faster turnarounds. All the growth in our industry is coming from the digital sector, and that growth seems to come from responding to customer’s changing needs. We all need to recognize this fact and act accordingly, its about listening to our customers needs and changing our business model to fit.

And what’s up with the Newspapers who seem to be pretty much in trouble all over the country. I was reading a piece in Dr. Joe Webb’s Blog (WhatTheyThink) and he pointed out that one of the papers (The Globe) had snubbed an offer to team up with Monster.com in 1995, and others missed the opportunities of starting communities like Craigslist, The Huffington Post and other success stories that have happened over the internet. It seems like there were a lot of opportunities to transition from print media to the internet, but they did not want to look outside of their comfort zone. They sure are trying to make that transition in a hurry now.

How about Social Media..I read a lot on how Social media can help our business. I’ve seen so many stories on Social Media marketing stratigies that it’s almost getting funny. Social Media is what it is, its another form of communication built around virtual communities. So I was reading an article about how printers can harness social media and make it work for them in their marketing efforts. And on this blog there were some pretty average responses about Twittering, blogging and using Facebook, and then Dr. Joe (Above) chimed in and said “it’s not that we should be using Social Media to market ourselves, but we should be teaching our customers how social media could work for them”. Now that’s thinking out of the box; it’s offering our customers a service, which is right in line with the transforming from a manufacturing industry to a service industry. With the changes taking place in this business, we should be doing anything we can to help our customers, its about them, not about us.

Thats todays thoughts. The printing industry is going through a lot of changes and we have to keep looking down the road, think pragmatically and listen to our customers. Because if we don’t follow the lead our customers are asking us to, we might just end up like the newspapers in a few years.