The Burning Question: Traditional or New Media?

There are many perks to "new media," or the term that we used to use in reference to social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs, video sharing, interactive marketing, etc. According to Nielsen's "State of the Media: the Social Media Report" for the end of 2011 (1), 4 out of 5 active internet users visit social networks and blogs -- and most do so from their mobile device/phone (40%).

What is even more interesting is that internet users over the age of 55 (many of the baby boomer generation) are driving the growth of social networking through the Mobile internet. Although new technology can present a challenge for older generations, baby boomers are often associated with a tendency to redefine traditional values, so this makes perfect sense to me. Many adults are now using social sites for online dating, scheduling and administrative needs, cloud apps for storage, and social media sites like Facebook as a way to stay connected to family and communicate to children and grandchildren. Social media is no longer a "young person's" activity. The phenomenon is growing and becoming a very tangible aspect of every day life.

One reality remains: as our society becomes more reliant on social media, are we subconsciously replacing older, traditional media such as newspapers, magazines, and TV news? Recently, many news outlets have focused on this exact topic. Bill Moyers posted an interesting infographic (2) that supports this argument that new media is, indeed, replacing the traditional and this is the year that it becomes official. Many current media efforts are now geared towards the method of dissemination -- mainly, social media. We use the title of our press release as the subject line for our email, our tweet, and our FB post that links to the press release, living on our website. According to the Moyers article, 50% of Americans have learned of a breaking news story from social sites, rather than from TV or the newspaper. About 46% of Americans get their news online at least 3 times per week. Finally, this year online revenue surpassed that of print newspaper revenue in 2012.

I think that this is a phenomenal development; I say that as an engaged user who manages a social media platform for my brand, as well as my own personal accounts. I am on social networking sites on average 5 times per day -- for monitoring purposes and for pleasure in my free time at night. I do not see this as a negative for my personal life (I maintain strong face to face relationships, am an avid reader, and an athletic runner). However, some people do find that social media has a negative effect on our society -- making our "friendships" and communication too dependent on online relationships.

Another negative (listed in the above infographic) is the drawbacks that social media sites have when they act as a place to share important news stories. Often, inaccuracies lead to misinformation (that is shared quickly through networks to reach thousands of people in a few seconds time); amateur reporters can compromise integrity or exploit subject in a story; and length restrictions can some times take away from the depth of a piece. However, all of these arguments against social media can be true of any news outlet (traditional or new) and I don't find that they make for a compelling case. I also disagree with the argument that social media detracts from personal relationships (para above) as I find that it connects me to many more friends and acquaintances than before, and enables me to communicate with them to set up an "in-person" time to meet.

Social media has the potential to do wonders for a marketing platform, as it can be a tool for sharing info and also the glue that connects campaigns within an overall marketing strategy. As a media relations professional, I can share content via social that send traffic back to a website where I have hosted a Youtube video that can, subsequently, link people back to the brand Youtube channel. All of these efforts can happen organically, without investing budget dollars, yielding a huge return on investment. In the field of healthcare, the Mayo Clinic has proven that social media can be an effective, low-cost mechanism for recruiting patients for clinical trials (3). Social media helped recruit larger, demographically diverse populations (ideal to reduce biases)for specific studies. This is something that we are currently doing at Home Base to help recruit for our studies focused on post traumatic stress (PTS) and traumatic brain injury (TBI) research. I will post research content to social media once a week, linking back to the section of our website that explains Research at Home Base http://www.homebaseprogram.org/general-information/research.aspx. All language is pre-approved by the IRB and carefully crafted to ensure clarity and comprehension.

The challenge with social media is to keep a professional legitimacy for your brand, as there is a distinct difference between personal and professional use. For many, the social sphere is still unknown territory and people are still figuring out how to best utilize the tool to reach a targeted audience. See this article today from Boston Magazine (4) on a study that the Boston Globe did looking at Bostonians and their use of Twitter. In my mind, it is all about content. Follow people who provide good, quality links, comments, and posts. If they don't make the cut, you can remove them with one fast click of the mouse.

This article is the part of a series of posts that I will make throughout my graduate studies in Marketing and Communications. With a focus on both healthcare and interactive marketing, I hope to gain a better understanding for effective health messaging--which I think plays a key role in a happy, healthy society. Please leave your comments or write to me: camorous@gmail.com.

Sources:
1.) http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/reports-downloads/2011/social-media-report-q3.html
2.) http://billmoyers.com/2012/04/23/how-social-media-is-replacing-traditional-journalism-for-breaking-news/
3.) http://blog.pharmexec.com/2012/02/13/patient-recruitment-via-social-media-lessons-learned/
4.) http://blogs.bostonmagazine.com/boston_daily/2012/09/17/boston-intellectual-twitter/

State of Media State of Mind

With a couple other blog posts in the works, I feel silly starting yet another one; however, I am struggling to get my ideas out on paper right now. So this will have to do.Writer's block? Maybe, but it's more that I am out of practice writing freely like this. I have been working in Communications, editing and perfecting messaging, for so long that I am finding it hard to put my raw ideas down on paper.

 

Last week, I finally finished reading the PEW Center for Research State of the New Media 2012 report. It's long and full of detail, looking at the media world from all different angles. Worth reading if you are interested in the topic and have a long bus ride ahead of you. It's not one of those reports that you can squeeze into the five minute time slot  that you have between morning meetings.So, what did I learn?

 

1. American consumers are relying more and more on technology for their news. Mobile apps, ipads, and laptops make news acquisition easy, mobile, and customizable. No longer do we have to stay chained to our desks to catch up on emails or the daily newscast on TV. Instead, we can decide what news is relevant to us and determine how often we want personal updates sent right to us. Now wherever we go, we are always informed.

 

2. TV has experienced an increase in viewers and revenue for 2012 - even though newspapers continue to decline. We have been hearing about the inevitable death of print journalism for the past decade. When I enterred college back in 2006, I remember wondering if I was exploring a dying industry. All fingers pointed towards the new digital world of news, thus condemning the old fashioned newspaper to an early grave. However, I am not sure that this will be the case. It is encouraging to see that broadcast journalism has found a way to harnass JO, perfect example being the New York Times.

 

The success of online newspapers will depend upon the effective monetization of the print news medium. This is a problem that print outlets have grappled with for some time. Although I have no perfect algorithm to offer up (I'll leave that to the computer programmers and mathematicians of the world), I do notice some of the more effective methods that the NYT has applied as it goes digital. I will only mention a few: slow transition to paying for online news, free articles per month to encourage subscriptions, offering a diversity of mobile app options to fit consumer's needs, and increasing newspaper SEO to better utilize their online platform. All of these things can lead to a smoother transition and integration to the digital world.

 

The young professionals from my generation are not against print news. I believe that quality content still reigns over sensationalist jargon. It's all about how you present the news; the more accessible you can make the interface, the better it is for readers/viewers. No one minds a makeover (one could argue our society is obsessed with them).

 

3. News remains very important to Americans; in order to stay informed, they are using mobile technology to access articles and stay informed 24-7. I check the NYT.com website at least three times a day (as often as I brush my teeth). I suppose that news checking would be a habbit for any PR/Communications professional, but my actions also stem from an innate desire to know what is going on in the world. If I was tweeting right now, I might link this directly to the #AmericanDream. We live in a society where we are free to ask questions and we have the right to know the truth about healthcare discoveries, our ruling government, and world events. This innate desire to self-educate will be the milk that keeps the news industry alive. Of course, trust factors into this equation as well (trust between the American public and the media), but I won't go into that now. My point is: as long as we are curious and demand news coverage, the media will have a role to play in our society.

 

4. Technology and News industries will have to either team up, or battle it out. The teaming up part does worry me - large conglomerates and all that jazz. This was another topic that I studied during my time at BU. As it happens, I have the perfect example of this from today's CNN Money headline news: "Facebook Acquires Instagram for $1 Billion." Twitter, Foursquare, Pinterest, MySpace, the Google+, and Facebook are some of the top 15 social media websites that are leading the online media industry at present. In many ways, these power houses have a huge influence on the future landscape of the media world. Without these online forums, newspapers' reach would be much smaller and the speed of global sharing would be impossible. Social media plays a key role in driving traffic to sites, after that it's up tothe site and the content as to how long the user's interest is held. For this reason, many predict that - not unlike big media buying small media- social media sites like Facebook will continue to buy out smaller successes, in order to consolidate power. It may be a stretch to say that these companies will go as far as buying out big media like the BBC and CNN, but this remains to be seen. Already, social media is teaming up with news orgs to host shows and newscasts.

 

Although I call myself a social media nerd, it is a bit scary to realize that someday my raw news could come from the same place that people post about their daily activities (i.e. GTL BRB)-  a place like Facebook or MySpace.