My home sits about a quarter of a mile from the Minnesota Vikings Summer Training Camp. Every year at this time, a caravan of big media trucks equipped with satellite video equipment rolls into town. Camera crews rove around for a couple days picking up footage of the fanfare and getting interviews. In the end, only a few short moments of video ever make it onto the evening news. And in those few short moments, I am given a limited perspective of what has been going on all week just a couple blocks over.

This reminds me how dependent traditional media is on the perspective of a handful of people. Those few people shape the perspective of millions of viewers. They determine who should be heard and who should be presented as the voice of reason in an argument. They decide that a certain rock star with expensive sun glasses has something valuable to say about politics.

Social media is different. Social media let’s everybody get involved in making the news. Here at The Garland Group, we love social media and social networking a lot. That’s why we stay up late at night working on Banktastic.com. From our perspective, you are the rock star. You are an amazing person with skills and talents. Your opinion matters.