Social Media Versus Traditional Media

What are the benefits of Social Media over Traditional Media? As both traditional and social media are emerging out for the leadership role in commanding and attracting consumer attention, but it’s worthwhile to limelight on some of the undeniable benefits of social media over traditional media1.

Cost:-Social media Field is open to all with almost no barriers to entry to new entrants to create or distribute Social media context. Only time and production costs are the sunk cost involved in social media. With this investment the context rebound with glance in web unlike TV, radio and newspapers.

Intimacy:-Social Media can broadcast information to thousands or millions of people at once with superior quality of dialogues and specificity which traditional media lags.

Proximity:-Most importantly to say time and distance has virtually disappeared which acted as barriers between customers and the globe. Social Media has brought the globe together by connecting community like never before.

Targeting:-Social media has specific advantage over isolating and focusing on brands or products depending on the customer’s interest by regularly monitoring and sourcing information.

Nimbleness: Social media has a unique advantage as it allows brands to adapt to consumers buying and sharing habits almost instantly as it keeps informed about the area of interest of the customers.

Measurement:-Social media can measure brand messaging almost instantly with the customer’s response to brands and each other across networks, platforms and apps.Whereas traditional media rely on long term measurement tools.

Exponential:-As difficult it is for a brand to create its base same is for Social media but after it strikes the exponential growth for social media is limitless and repeatable at lower cost.

Participatory:- As barriers to entry is almost equal to zero it encourages customers to participate in commercial dialogues.Dream of brands and consumers in dialogue has finally come true through Social media ,thanks to real-time communication tools.

Newness:-Social media is well aware of the new preoccupations of customers but still it has the ability to constantly evolve to meet the customers demand. Social media retains with new shines with reflecting light of “new” re-engaging consumer attention.

Future:-Social media has already focused on brand advertisements following on customers eye ball, it will shortly follow customers adoption of mobile community which will bring a new dynamic for social media. Future is bright and vast for Social Media.

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Is social media disruptive to traditional media?

Social Media applications are basically built on Web 2.0 technology. Social Media today has not emerged completely. Observation of the rise of social media reveals that the number of users of Social Media is increasing. The rate of increase of users is also on the rise. The users of social media now, belong to the early majority group.

Since the evolution of social Media began recently and the users belong to early majority group, Social Media has a long way to go. Within this short time and less number of users, Social Media has started taking the share away from Traditional Media. Many firms, today think Social Media as the best Marketing Platform considering the advantages of Social Media over traditional Media. Consider the example of Pepsi, which preferred traditional Media over Social Media. Pepsi thinks, it can attract more customers using Social media rather than traditional Media and started investing $20million in Social media campaigning.

Dell is the perfect example of success of return on Investment from Social Media. It has gained $6.5 million sales revenues only from twitter in a very short time. It is expecting its revenues to grow substantially from Social media in future. With the success of Dell many firms are embracing Social Media for Marketing. Coca Cola has started a new department for Social Media Marketing, formulated Social Media Strategy and Social Media Policy.

Since, Social Media is a networked industry, i.e., the value for a user increases with increase in number of users and as the value for a user is increasing more users are embracing the Social Media. The number of users is also increasing with the increase in complementary products. For example, in Facebook, number of complimentary products is increasing with increase in number of users and vice versa causing Snow ball effect

As the value of Social Media is increasing, users of traditional media are moving towards Social media. Even, the number of Social Media sites is increasing, however, different sites serving different users. The evolution of Social Media is not complete. Hence, once the Social Media is evolved completely, traditional media can become obsolete.

What is Social Media Marketing and how does it benefit the producers?

Social Media Marketing is the use of various social networking sites for the promotion of some product, service, company or organization. Commonly used social media marketing sites are YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Wikipedia etc. The marketing done using these resources is said to be Social Media Marketing and it is usually beneficial for the producers in following ways

Traditional and social media are struggling between each other to attract the consumer attention even though there are some advantages of social media. Bellow there are some points to strengthen our views2.

1. Cost: The cost factor is quite small for the social media. On the other way the cost entry barrier for creating and distributing the Social media is quite small. There are some short of initial investment in terms of developing the social media and time is also needed but if we discard this two small investment it is almost free. It doesn’t bear any additional expense like TV, print media and Radio and move into the wave indefinitely to serve the targeted customers.

2. Intimacy: If we look at the potential pitfall of the traditional media we will see that traditional media normally need to broadcast to its large customer base (may be millions of customers) at a time which robs in terms of the specificity and the dialogue of traditional media. But in case of a social media this draw back could be overcome.

3. Targeting: While targeting a specific segment of the market or the specific segment of the customer the social media is much more specific or in the other way it could be easily distinguished in this respect. In the social media space that particular customer base share their ideas and thoughts about different products of their interest and distribute them among each other.

4. Nimbleness: Social media is much more agile in terms of the external environment change as compare to the traditional media. It takes very less time to respond to the external environment change and impacts the consumer buying and sourcing behavior instantly. But on the other hand traditional media takes a bit more time to take change as compare to the external environment.

5. Measurement: In case of the traditional media the measurement style of the effectiveness of the brand messaging is quite time consuming and lengthy process. But in the other hand in case of a social media it is instantaneous. In the social media space the customer reacts to the brands, the platforms and the applications instantaneously. In any case if that response becomes negative the social media have some chances to react to that negative response.

6. Newness: Traditional media is hardly unique in terms of the consumer per-occupation with whatever is new. Even though the huge demand of the consumer who seeks change social media keeps its pace by engaging the sheen in new so that it can attract the consumer attention from time to time. But in case of a traditional media the distribution mode hardly changes even though the content may change.

7. Exponential: even though it is very hard for any product or brand to thread the market social media has huge potential for the exponential growth in exchange of a low cost.

9. Proximity: In the social media space there is virtually no time and distance barrier exist between the consumers. It is more like creating a global and connected community by the customers. These characteristics of the social media open enormous opportunity for the social media for success and failure closely depending on the how well it measures its market dynamics.

10. Future: Now a day’s most of the time the consumer looks at the online advertising but in near future it will be in the huge mobile community. The advertising dollar will follow in the huge mobile community. It shows a new future for the social media space.

2http://simonmainwaring.com/blog/uncategorized/top-ten-advantages-of-social-over-traditional-media/