Social Media

One of the fastest growing phenomenons in marketing communications today is the explosion of social media platforms.  If you are looking to reach existing or potential clients, chances are those people are currently using one or more of these social media outlets.  Supplementing traditional forms of advertising with these revolutionary media options is quickly becoming necessary in order to maximize penetration into your target market. 

Popular forms of social media include blogs, message boards or forums, podcasts, wikis and vlogs.  These mediums can be combined to create entire online social networks. Using social media to market a product or service or to build brand awareness is referred to as e-marketing or Internet marketing.  This article is designed to help you gain an understanding of the mediums that are available and provide a brief description of each.

Blogs
A weblog, also known as a blog, is a method of online communication that consists of a series of articles presented in reverse chronological order. Blogs usually cover a certain topic chosen and written about by the “blogger.” What differentiates a blog from any other online publication is that the reader has an opportunity to respond to the article. The interactive nature of blogging is particularly appealing to today’s proactive audience.  For an example, visit the KC Buzz Blog at http://buzzblog.kcstar.com.  This blog is a forum for local, state and national political news.           

Internet Forums
Online forums are places on the Internet where people can start threads, or simultaneously running messages, and reply to other people’s threads.  Also known as web forums, discussion boards, message boards, discussion forums and bulletin boards, they are essentially a free-for-all of comments and opinions. There are forums for almost any topic, but they are not usually reliable sources of information because they are generally opinion-based. The primary difference between a forum and a blog is that a message board allows anyone to start a new thread or reply to an existing thread, whereas a blog has one writer and one topic. The only person who can modify threads is the forum administrator or moderator. Forums are useful to those who want to create general buzz about a product or service.  For an example, visit http://groups.google.com.           

Podcasts
Podcasts are multimedia files, such as audio programs or music videos that are distributed over the Internet so they can be played back on mobile devices and personal computers.  Podcasts are made available when a content provider puts a file on a web server and ensures that it is accessible through a known URL. A variation of the podcast for marketers is the marcast, also known as Podcast Marketing. This is essentially a method of producing and publishing promotional multimedia programs using the Internet. Marcasting allows companies to put out a web feed about new products and services to which users, clients and customers can subscribe. According to a research source, podcast users in the United States will increase from 840,000 in 2005 to 56 million in 2010.  An example of a podcast can be found at http://www.npr.org in the podcast directory section.

Wikis
A wiki, pronounced wee-kee, is a type of website that allows users to edit the content of the wiki website. Wikipedia.org, a wiki itself, calls wikis “very simple, easy-to-use, user-maintained databases for searching information.” These have proven to be a successful way to develop private and public knowledge bases. This area is also commonly used in the place of collaborative software in corporate environments, especially for project communication, document building and brainstorming.

Vlogs
A vlog, also known as a video blog or an attention blog, is basically a blog that uses video clips instead of written articles. Much like written blogs, a vlog is regularly updated with new material and presented in reverse chronological order. Vlogging surfaced as a relevant social media in early 2005, but seems to be growing quickly in popularity. This is evidenced by rapidly increasing membership for the Yahoo! Videoblogging Group, and by the success of the Vloggercon, an annual videoblogger conference. Vlogging has not yet caught the attention of most marketers. Some marketing sources suggest that as 30-second ads become obsolete in e-marketing, ambitious product placement will take over as the key to vlog marketing.

Online Social Networks/Social Software
An online social network is a place on the Internet where groups of friends, family and people with common interests are united. Social software is what makes communications between the members of these networks possible. Popular social networking websites include, but are not limited to, myspace.com, friendster.com, and facebook.com. Some reaching more than 85 million registered users, these sites have the potential to impact an enormous and highly coveted market.

The fundamental change that social media has brought about for marketers is consumer interaction with the media. As soon as a message reaches an audience, feedback, discussion and debates become inevitable.  Social media has marketing benefits, but it also has drawbacks.  Having complete control of the message reaching the audience has been sacrificed in some ways.  Traditional media and social media are becoming increasingly reliant on each other.  Recognizing this and making changes in how you reach out to your customers will ensure the best chance at capitalizing on this rapidly changing environment.

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