It’s easy to jump on the “mainstream media is dead” bandwagon. Journalists are jumping ship, outlets are fragmenting and readership is, in many cases, down. What’s more, it’s what a lot of the “cool kids” are saying so it must be right… right?
But here’s the thing – your local newspaper still probably has higher readership than your corporate blog… and as for tier one outlets, well, you’re probably not even close to their audience size.
Their audience is still bigger than yours
Mitch Joel recently wrote about the conundrum facing newspapers – more and more people say they will go elsewhere if their favourite news site suddenly introduced fees. Beneath the surface though, there’s a useful point for PR folks. As Todd Defren wrote in a separate post yesterday, “Though the news media still struggles to figure out how to make $$$ from journalism, the audience is present and accounted for.”
You catch that? The audience is present. It’s not as targeted as niche communities, but the reach is there (the reach/niche debate is one for another day).
Long term/short term
Social media is at its best long-term. I believe that; you probably do too. Yes, you might get lucky and get immediate attention but let’s face it, that’s not so likely.
As Dave Jones noted on a recent Inside PR podcast, agencies are fond of telling companies not to worry about social media results now; that in a few years they will – without necessarily having any evidence to back that up. See how your CFO or client reacts when you tell him he needs to wait for a couple of years to see the result from the budget he carved out from other marketing programs to give you.
How will you reach people?
You may have the best social media program possible, but if that’s all you have, how will people find out about it? Devoid of an audience, you run the risk of standing alone in a forest and shouting at the trees.
Depending on your company, you may already have an established visitor base for your corporate website. If so, the weight is off slightly but you’re still not off the hook. Search engine optimization is obviously key, but vaulting up to page one of important search terms isn’t usually a short-term endeavour.
Where does that leave us? With the established audiences of mainstream media – whether you’re buying placement through ads or earning it through media relations.
The definition of mainstream media has broadened (we can now count sites like TechCrunch, Mashable, Daily Kos, HuffPo etc as mainstream) but the old channels still matter.
What do you think?
In some ways all this digital stuff just makes traditional media more important because any traditional media is more easily amplified. Tim Dyson wrote a good post on this. http://tinyurl.com/yaxmlgq
I follow Dave, and I agree with him. Social media pundits fall over themselves about how it’s going to change everything. Nah, most people still want their nightly news, be able to flick a switch and get a half-hourly radio update, or settle down with a paper or magazine – all without much effort. @prlab
I think we can now officially announce that the Internet is tradional media. Same with cell phones, top end social media spaces and when YouTube remains Top 5 on earth we can safely toss them in too.
In our haste to be cool, we forget about an important words when measuring and deciding and researching certain mediums. It Depends.
The “sleep at night” “traditional” media won’t work if you buy it wrong, your message lacks direction or call-to-action or it is not placed properly. That is the same with every other way to converse with human beings.
Does radio work? It depends
What about TV? It depends
Will social media channels help me? It depends
How about standing in a street corner yelling at people? It depends.
Bang on Dave. It’s like companies that say social media should be your sole approach to a strategy or campaign – I’m always very wary and worried when I hear that. Like you say (and Kneale Mann does in the comments), everything is tied to how you implement it. This can be social, traditional, digital or whatever you want to call it. Mess it up, you’ll get messed up results. Get it right…
There’s something to be said for learning from what’s gone before and then complementing for best overall results.
Great post, Dave. Couldn’t agree more. Part of the problem is calling certain media traditional, new, social. It’s all media. You have to share your stories with media that already have built in audiences AND with the audience you are trying to reach via your own publications.
Dave,
Totally in agreement. Social media is one tactic in a well thought out public relations program.
I don’t think it’s so much a question as to whether old channels still matter, but rather how our (brand managers, agency leads, account planners, etc.) evaluation and use of those media channels change to synch (‘anticipate’ is too much to realistically expect, no?) with consumer media habits, lifestyle changes, economical concerns, emotional connections, and other influential factors creating the decision filters and habits of consumer lives.
A myriad of complex and sometimes paradoxical pressures affect our perception of value and decision-making criteria (on a consumables level, its why someone might buy generic shave cream but branded cereal). Brands that take some time to understand the “soft” drivers are smart.
I think a critical concern for brands – whether they alter their mainsteam media ratios or not – is the position and message they assume when reaching out to their consumers. The age of ‘me’ is over, now it’s all about you. Delivering relevant, targeted content (irrespective of the channel) will go a long way to ensuring consumers listen, whether they have to pay a fee or not.
@heatherrast
“The age of ‘me’ is over, now it’s all about you.”
I like that – it certainly resonates with the way online communications is headed. It also raises an interesting question:
Is this really new, or have people always wanted that and not been given it? Is it just that thanks to the Internet people now have more choices so can go elsewhere AND have the ability to voice their discontent with companies that take a “me-focused” approach?
Mainstream media is definitely still an important part of any marketing strategy but building an online presence really is paramount these days. Like you say, the volume of people actually viewing your ad/site/blog is the key point here. It’s no good having an incredibly smart & beautiful brand online if nobody actually sees or engages with it. However, getting top notch SEO can accomplish the targeted exposure which ‘traditional’ media is not necessarily able to achieve. Social media is a great way to boost your ‘brand personality’ and let your audience know that you’re up-to-date, interesting and informative; IMHO though it has to be employed as part of an overall marketing strategy, not a standalone channel of promotion.
Mainstream media advertising, as you say, is arguably still the most effective way to reach a whole section of society quickly, but as I mentioned above, this exposure isn’t targeted in the same way successful SEO can be.