It May Be Social But It's Still Media
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 We've been talking a lot about Social Media in recent issues. Excitement is well justified but may also lead to two myopic missteps:- Overuse and wearing out your cyber welcome; and
- A failure to avail other media that might be more rewarding.
Overuse is common. How many unwelcome emails, tweets and posts from the same individual does it take before we click "unsubscribe?"
"Spray and Pray" leads to Twitter Fatigue
It's not just their frequency, it's the "spray and pray" approach that, "if I just re-tweet, re-hash and re-trash enough, someone, somewhere will open it." And indiscriminate emails are an affront to anyone who values an orderly inbox. (I periodically prune mine, unsubscribing from all the lists I once thought would be interesting and now know better.)
The failure to consider traditional media may forfeit valuable business leads. Granted, what are "targeted and cost-effective" media for one business may not be so for another. An understanding of each medium's strengths and weaknesses helps size up one advertising alternative against another.
- For some local businesses, there is no better choice than the local weekly newspaper. As un-chic as that sounds, local weeklies are inexpensive, highly targeted, are generally read (or scanned), and remain in the home for days. We have had good success building local brands by incorporating select weeklies into their marketing mix.
- Newsletters are also a reasonable investment for groups that have a defined audience. While newsletters have many failings, we have been successful by keeping page count limited and content short, substantive and readable.
It ain't free, babe
Some businesses make the mistake of thinking of social media as "free." This masks the fact that planning and executing a sustained social media program requires planning, thought, evaluation of analytics, experimentation and integration with traditional communications. Making a program relevant and vibrant takes time. It represents a commitment and a cost.
Every business must evaluate its own needs against its budget, circumstances and constellation of media choices. Rarely will a single choice provide the sole solution. While we're on the Socical Media bandwagon, we're mindful of missteps and alert to traditional media solutions as well.
Bill Carlos President |
