How New Media is Changing Old Media

Billboard Proclaims The Death Of Old Media Through Old Media

In 2007, when I first started using social media as a marketing tool, it was just called “new media.” In the years since, digital marketers have made large strides, like dropping the vague term “new” and replacing it with phrases like “social network marketing” and, most significantly, adjusting the way that brands and businesses interact with their customers. We have learned a lot from our early experiences with social media. Here are some of the lessons social media taught us that are being applied across all forms of media, new and old.

Targeting the individual. One-to-one marketing is not just for social media anymore. With the recognition of the long tail has come permission to “waste” impressions. I am seeing more instances of marketers using traditionally mass media vehicles to microtarget niche audience.

Previously, to hit a highly specific audience like “Investment Bankers for Web-based IPOs” meant taking out a full page in a highly specific targeted medium like The Kiplinger Letter. This is changing.

Recently, Tim Ferriss wrote about an unusual billboard purchased by Zynga in Silicon Valley. He says, “There was no tagline, and I joked to my passenger, who was in the financing and IPO business, ‘I’m not sure who that’s intended to sell.’

The Tag-less Zynga Billboard

[His passenger] laughed and responded with ‘Dude, that’s not for end users. That’s to get the attention of the bankers driving from SFO to downtown.’

Leveraging Pass-Along and Word-of-Mouth. In that same article, Ferriss cites an example of not targeting your audience at all, but targeting the people whoinfluence that audience. “At American Apparel, many of its best-known ads ran in obscure publications or in short bursts on niche websites. Millions of people know about them, however, because blogs thought they were so interesting that they wrote articles about them.”

The brilliance there is that the brand actually got moremileage out of their ad purchases by getting the pass-along value of what is essentially “free” advertising by highly influential bloggers. However, this type of editorial coverage and the buzz it creates is the type of advertising that big businesses have learned they cannot buy through a media broker.

Everything is Clickable. If someone is on a company’s Facebook page, the marketer knows that posting a clickable link will send many customers to get more information. With the increase of tablet PCs and mobile devices, marketers can now make this assumption with every medium. The QR code is an early integration of print with web. At the Smithsonian museums, visitors will see codes on the displays that are scannable with their web-enabled devices that will bring up apps, information and interactive learning.

Visual recognition programs for mobile devices, like Google Goggles, are being used by companies to deliver more information to their potential customers who take a picture of their products or even their logos.

As brands continue to understand the value of engaging with fans and seek metrics beyond impressions, we will see more integration of social, interactive, and location-based media with traditional media. Already, we see more restaurants posting the “Check In to Foursquare” window clings and counter cards to remind visitors to pair their physical visit with an internet visit.

A few years from now, when social media is no longer a “hot trend” but an additional, accepted marketing tool, I would like us to all look back and see that 2011 was the year that all media became “social.”

Social Networking Existed Before LinkedIn and Facebook

This Blog is a Repost from My New Blog Here. Go Here for the Original.

I love social media sites. I spend entirely too much time on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter... especially Twitter, but I want to establish a clear distinction between social media sites and social networking.

“Social Media” is the term that generally groups together websites where the majority of content is created by the users. Typically they use log-ins, account names and personal profiles to connect people and focus on the “interactive” elements that have been key to the web 2.0 progression. We think of sites like Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Flickr. But "Social Networking" existed long before Web 2.0.

Mankind is a social animal with a long tradition of societal interdependence. Ashton Kutcher, the self-appointed champion of the Social Web, recently said:

“[H]uman beings are born not able to even sustain themselves, so at the end of the day, if you ultimately did something in your life that was great, you at least owe your mom.” –Ashton Kutcher from AK FTW, SKY Magazine, Feb. 2010.

Social Networking is the normal and timeless practice of making connections and helping people out. Using technology to facilitate these contacts makes it easier and more efficient, but just as in the past, "It’s not about the number of contacts you have; it’s how you use them."

Another great quote about the effectiveness of this new tool today and its potential in the future comes from one of the all time greats in peer-to-peer marketing, Seth Godin:

“Social media is either a time-wasting, wool-gathering, yak-shaving waste of effort or, perhaps, just maybe, it’s a crack in the wall between you and the rest of the world. It’s a choice” –Seth Godin

Make your choice. Use your tools wisely.

5 Signs You're Using Social Media Wrong

This is a reposting of my original guest blog written for GreenBuzzAgency.com.

Have you ever walked into the middle of a conversation and suddenly had the awkward feeling that everyone was talking about you?

Motrin has. About a year ago, they became a trending topic on Twitter when Moms, one of their key customer groups, were talking about the insensitivity the company displayed in arecent ad campaign. The consumers summed up Motrin and its use of social media this way: “They don’t get it.”

One year later, we see Motrin exerting an active presence on Twitter and other social media sites and doggedly determined to become “Part of the Conversation” rather than the “Topic of It.”

But just “Being” on social media does not necessarily mean you are “Doing it Right.”

As someone who helps companies wade into the social media waters, but do it in a way that is authentic and in alignment with their brand, I have picked up on a few red flags that I would like to pass along. I call it:

The 5 Ways to Know if You’re Using Social Media Wrong

1) Your Twitter page reads like the CNN ticker. Social media is NOT the place to post your newsfeed! That has become a staple of many homepages, where it is ideal for SEO bots that are scouring the web for updates and new content. But social media is about interaction and one-to-one contact. Nothing says “impersonal faceless corporate entity” like following your favorite brand on Twitter and receiving the Tweet “Thanks for following us. For more information, visit our website.”

2) Your company Facebook friends are also your kids’ Facebook friends. Like any marketing initiative, social media campaigns should be targeting Quality over Quantity. With more than 370 million users, chances are that you have actual customers on Facebook. A simple step many companies overlook is the proactive promotion of their social media sites to gain targeted customers and build relationships with them. Do not let it become a web-based popularity contest where every fan, follower and contact is weighted equally.

3) Your Social Media Marketing is something you’ve assigned to the Interns.Successful marketing campaigns always stem from being integrated across the company. That requires buy-in from the top down! I get very nervous when an executive tells me the company is already on “MyFace” or “SpaceBook.” Too many execs think that new technology is beneath them and refuse to take the initiative in learning what it can do for their business.

4) It Doesn’t Seem Like Your Social Media Profile is “Doing Anything.” Although social media functions in areas like SEO and PR, it is, at heart, a marketing device. And somewhere along the lines, people have forgotten that marketing’s job is to create sales. Which means that social media should be attached to business objectives! That actually generate revenue! A strong advantage of social media over traditional marketing vehicles is its built-in trackability. There are great tools out there to set goals and determine ROI on any social media marketing efforts.

5) You tried social media and it didn’t work for you. I have heard more than my share of marketers explaining, “It detracted from our messaging” or “It’s not a good fit for us.” 9 out of 9 times, what they’re really saying is they didn’t like it or understand it, they didn’t integrate it into an overall marketing campaign and they got tired or bored of it after a few half-hearted attempts. My favorite is when I later find out that the boss’ 16-year-old niece put them on Facebook. I’ll be the first to admit that for many companies, a Facebook Fanpage makes zero sense–so don’t waste your time. But you are missing valuable customer insight if you are not monitoring these powerful online conversations. Effective use of social media, like traditional media campaigns, requires an intelligent strategy tied to real world objectives, executed consistently over a long period of time.

If these all made perfect sense to you, congratulations, you are among those who “Get it” in the new media environment. If any of these sound like you or your company, I would encourage you to re-evaluate what you are doing or who you’ve put in charge of it. Like so much in life, there is more to success than just “being there.”

Shawn Butler is a campaign strategist at Relevant Social Media based in Atlanta. You can contact him at Shawn@RelevantSocialMedia.com.

Also: Interesting related reading from Jeremiah Owyang, Altimeter Group
“A Chronology of Brands that Got Punk’d by Social Media”