Shira Lazar on social media and build­ing rela­tion­ships from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

If I could point all the 18– to 29-year-olds in the land to one video about how the social media rev­o­lu­tion has fun­da­men­tally reshaped power rela­tion­ships and entre­pre­neur­ial oppor­tu­ni­ties, it would be to this 13-minute video riff with Shira Lazar.

I’ve been fol­low­ing Shira’s online pur­suits for a cou­ple of years — she posts videos from her Nokia phone at shiralazar.com — but I didn’t meet her until last month’s South By South­west Inter­ac­tive con­fer­ence in Austin, Texas, and came away enor­mously impressed.

Shira, who’s based in Los Ange­les but can often be seen at tech events every­where, describes her­self as “a crossover personality/hyperjournalist” who devel­ops con­tent for the Web and TV. (Hyper in the sense of mod­ern, mul­ti­fac­eted and mul­ti­me­dia, rather than over­caf­feinated.) [OK, Shira claims she said “hybrid jour­nal­ist.” Maybe so. But hyper seems more apro­pos some­how. Besides, what’s a hybrid jour­nal­ist? Half reporter, half tomato?]

She offers advice to those just start­ing out in the work­force or with a Web enter­prise who don’t nec­es­sar­ily want to work for a big com­pany: “Find your voice. That’s the most impor­tant thing: What makes you stand out?” Start blog­ging and twit­ter­ing to develop your per­sonal brand.

She also talks about how tra­di­tional news and enter­tain­ment media are now embrac­ing this strange new world of social media. “They want to be in our club now. It’s pretty cool.”

Shira has been involved in “two streams” — TV and online — for years. She appears as a guest on Fox News, and she has a travel show that will air this sum­mer while she blogs and vlogs in Chile for a Con­deNet site. The online and offline worlds are con­verg­ing now, and as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of tra­di­tional media look toward their dig­i­tal future, they’re dis­cov­er­ing trail­blaz­ers like Shira, whose nat­ural habi­tat includes Twit­ter, Face­book and online communities.

Some nuggets from our talk:

• Shira: “I don’t just report on tech­nol­ogy, I use tech­nol­ogy to advance conversation.”

• More and more mil­len­ni­als are dis­cov­er­ing that you don’t need to be part of a huge com­pany or broad­cast net­work to make a name for your­self. The work­place has become fluid, with young peo­ple in par­tic­u­lar attach­ing them­selves to one-off projects or events.

• “A lot of us use Twit­ter pro­fes­sion­ally to com­mu­ni­cate our brand. … We’re trans­par­ent and don’t feel the need to hide.” And indeed, young inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists like Shira are shar­ing their per­sonal lives in ways unimag­in­able to ear­lier gen­er­a­tions of journalists.

• While man­ag­ing your per­sonal brand and form­ing busi­ness rela­tion­ships are impor­tant, it’s also valu­able to become involved in the com­mu­nity and with cer­tain causes, if the moti­va­tion is gen­uine. She men­tioned Nike Foundation’s Girl Effect and Twes­t­i­val’s charity:water fund-raiser as stel­lar exam­ples of com­mu­nity activism.

I’m embar­rassed that my LP Micro Litepanel fill light was flash­ing for the first minute or so of the inter­view (it was so bright out­side that I didn’t notice the flash­ing, due to low batteries).

• Watch, embed or down­load the video (H.264 Quick­Time) on Vimeo
• Watch or down­load the video on Ourmedia.org
• Watch or embed the video on Magnify.net

JD Lasica works with major com­pa­nies and non­prof­its on social media strate­gies. See his busi­ness pro­file, con­tact JD or leave a comment.