Posts from — June 2008

Traditional media has been taking it on the chin recently, with newspapers fading into irrelevance and TV effectiveness plummeting.

As this clip from Microsoft shows (hat tip to Joe Pulizzi), traditional media just doesn’t seem to get it:

Which is why reading “Traditional Media Not Dead Yet For Marketing” in the New York Times was all the more interesting to me.

According to a study of 16 types of media conducted by Yankelovich, in association with Sequent Partners, when consumers were asked what kind of an impression a particular type of ad made, 56 percent of survey respondents said traditional media ads made a positive impression, in contrast to 31 percent who said that about digital media ads.

Additionally, thirteen percent of viewers reported a negative impression of traditional media ads versus 21 percent for digital media ads

The main explanation is that in mediums such as print or TV, people are experiencing advertising when they are relaxing, versus most of the digital advertising they see that occurs when they are actively trying to do something else (searching for something, communicating, etc.).

As J. Walker Smith, president at the Yankelovich Monitor division of Yankelovich in Atlanta, explains:

“When I’m tracking down information or looking for an answer or trying to compare things or searching for a link, ads are irritating to a degree not true when I’m relaxed and unwinding with TV or a magazine and thus more open to diversion.”

However, this generalization makes universal sense only if you assume that the future of digital advertising is pop-up ads.

In reality, the more effective forms of digital advertising are based on engagement and providing something worthwhile for consumers, all in the context of a branded environment.

Whether it is Alternate Reality Games, what You Tube is doing with buzz marketing, or how Nike is building active communities of users, the sophistication and effectiveness of digital marketing is increasing daily.

Traditional media is certainly not dead. It’s still very effective today in exposing a wide range of consumers to a simple, common message.

However, believing that the future of marketing is still the 30 second spot or the full page print ad is a bit like believing vinyl records are the next big thing for the sagging music industry.

Is Social Networking an age thing?

While all ages tend to use the Internet to search, shop, and even post photos, as this table from eMarketer shows, Social Networking tends to be mainly something for people under 40.

The question is why?

Respondents to the JWT Boom/ThirdAge study cited by eMarketer said the main concerns were privacy, time and just not seeing the point of Social Networking.

Although each of these barriers may eventually be overcome, it will probably be a tough road, since things like lack of time or perceived irrelevance are not simply matters to be solved by broader awareness or easier user interfaces.

What I believe may actually have a significant impact on the broader adoption of Social Networking is if it moves out from the home and becomes fully integrated into people’s work lives.

Chris Heuer at Insytes has written a very thought provoking post that touches on how Social Media can foster stronger internal communication and collaboration within companies. Companies can then think about Social Media in new ways, even in areas such as organizational development.

“Social Media is not just about how an enterprise does its marketing, but how all the people in the enterprise talks with its market.

Internal Social Networking is already being experimented with in companies such as the Beehive project at IBM and N-Square at Nissan. As McKinsey & Co. consultant Leigh Weiss says about the benefits of the Nissan initiative:

“What we know from research is that one of the primary reasons people stay at the same company is that they’re well tied into the social fabric of the place…Companies will often lose top performers because they aren’t sufficiently mentored or connected.”

With Social Networking established in companies as a tool for internal discussion and work groups, I think the perceived value of the medium will increase for everyone, even for those people who are currently watching from the sidelines.

At that point the relevancy of Social Media in general will also increase, which will then likely lead to broader adoption and usage across all ages, potentially closing the Social Networking age gap as it exists today.

A tremendous amount of content is being generated nowadays that refers to Social Media as if it were some large and homogeneous form of communication and interaction.

The problem with this type of thinking is that when content providers or marketers start to develop Social Media strategies, they quickly realize that generalized “Social Media” thinking leads to one size fits all ideas and a lack of focus.

In actuality, Social Media comes in many distinct forms, which I think of as different faces of the same general concept. Understanding the nuance behind each of these faces is critical to understanding Social Media as a whole.

Social Knowledge networks such as Yahoo! Answers allows users to ask questions about a wide range of topics and then allow other users to answer them. As I have written about before, they are also one of the fastest growing forms of Social Media.

Social Bookmarking sites, such as De.licio.us are mostly about saving and tagging web pages for future reference. They become social by allowing others to read your profile and access other pages that you have tagged and saved.

Social Content, as seen in sites such as YouTube, Flickr, and most forms of blogging, is the most pure form of Social Media. In fact if we didn’t use Social Media as a catch all term for all the above types, it would be a good way to describe this group, which focuses on the submission and discussion of user generated content such as videos, music, photos, and the written word.

Social Networking is a form of Social Media that enables people to connect with other people. While there is a user generated content aspect to social networking, it is less about the content and more about collections and connections of friends, and keeping up with what they are thinking and doing. This is where sites such as Facebook and MySpace reside.

Social News sites such as Mixx, Stumbleupon, and Digg facilitate the sharing of news and different forms of social content by allowing members to share, comment and vote on what they like or don’t like. These sites are heavily involved in the viral aspect of Social Media.

Social Gaming is a form of online gaming that moves beyond the personal experience and adds a layer of social interaction. Two of the most well known examples are World of Warcraft and Second Life. While WoW has built upon a PC game by taking it online and adding a huge world centered on collaboration and social interaction, Second Life makes a game of social interactions by the simple fact of allowing people to fully act out self-created avatars and allowing them to interact with other avatars in a virtual world.

Social Collaboration has many different aspects, but I see it primarily being less a form of media and more a form of crowdsourcing. It can range anywhere from wikis to prediction markets to something like Wikipedia.

I’m sure there are some distinct faces of Social Media I may have missed, or that I’ve grouped together into one of the above. Are there any others out there that people could suggest?