Social Media vs. Traditional Media
This is a topic that could probably be battled out by PHD candidates for a few semesters over cases of redbull and passionate dialogue. We will not try to tackle each angle of this giant debate, but will simply give a few points of view that might help someone get off the social media fence and jump into the game.
A few aspects we would like to highlight are as follows:
Cost of distribution
Traditional media sources such as Newspapers, Radio, Television, Billboards and Yellow Pages have always had a hard physical cost of distribution due to the cost associated with producing their media. To print all those papers, print the books, and produce the shows all cost quite a bit of money which translates into the high cost to business owners to engage in advertising on these traditional media sources.
Social media has rewritten the archaic rulebook as it relates to getting the word out about your business, product or service. Now a business can build and communicate with a loyal group of customers utilizing mainstream social media platforms at no cost. Once connections have been established between a business and its customers online, infinite doors of possibilities open up to communicate promotions, news, and other valuable details for free. No postage, no ad programs, no contracts!
Dynamic Content Display
Traditional media usually gives you some dimensional or duration based constraints in which you must fit your entire advertisement within, otherwise you can pay more.
Social media and web based marketing allows for businesses to create ads that can have embedded video, rotating imagery, animations and dynamic content creation based on the viewers location. This dynamic capability of content evolution for a single ad is a tremendous advantage when you consider the full extent of what can be done via the web today. Why settle for one ad when your ad space can be numerous ads in the same sized spot.
Lead Generation
Traditional media has attempted to cast a wide net in order to catch a few customers. This net is cast far and wide and unfortunately many ads get lost in the shuffle because everyone engaged with the form of media is completing for the same space in the same place
Social media allows businesses to not only communicate efficiently will current customers (fans), but also find new prospective customers based on their social interest and other likes via various social media programs. Instead of casting wide nets, businesses can communicate with their customers and new fans with laser point accuracy. It is seriously the difference of bringing a knife to a gun fight and with today’s tools that we at On Deck Systems are utilizing for social media management, we are armed with sniper rifles.
Everyone agrees that a word of mouth referral is the strongest introduction any business can get. In social media today there are ways that we are helping our clients get these daily from their customers by encouraging check-in, reviews, and taking the conversation online. When someone shares a check-in or a positive statement about a business on one of several social media platforms popular today, their message gets shared with their entire friend list which in many cases tops over 200 unique individuals. How’s that for word of mouth referral? How many times has one of your clients had 200 of their friends around at one time in a physical setting where they could tell them all about the wonderful customer service they received at your business? The answer is never, but now with the rise and acceptance of social media, that happens every day. The question is more; are they talking about your business or not? If not, why?
Conclusion
This entry could literally go on for days, but we hope that you picked up a few points of why social media marketing is important. Many times in the past when speaking to businesses or friends about social media they can understand the concept but they usually say that they simply do not have the time or the energy to keep up to speed on the latest social media programs that continuously hit the market. We understand completely. Taking time our your busy day to “hang out on facebook” or any other program to respond to messages and comments is usually the last thing business owners want to engage in. Fortunately for you, our team at On Deck Systems has an entire team dedicated to Social Media Management and leveraging social media for your business objectives. We schedule tweets, facebook posts, manage location based services, create promotions, do spam monitoring and provide regular reporting that actually illustrate how effective the campaign is going. No more guess work on how many people saw your newspaper or yellow pages ad and if it was worth it.
If you would like more information regarding our Social Media Management services, please contact us at www.ondecksystems.com or 724.990.0637
Get On Deck!
-Brooks Canavesi
