Do You Know the Difference Between Social Media Marketing & Traditional Marketing?
January 6, 2009 by admin1
Filed under Social Media Marketing
OK, tell the truth, what is the first thought that enters your mind when I say the word marketing? I’ll bet if you are honest you will say something like “used car salesman”. Most of us have this negative picture about marketing that conjures up words like shyster and charlatan maybe even snake oil salesman.
It’s not really fair you know because without marketing no one would ever know where to get the products and services they need. Even more important than that, there are lots of things you wouldn’t even know existed without marketing. Now it could be argued that we need a lot less stuff anyway but that is a whole other conversation.
What I love is that the tables are turned in social media marketing. It is the consumer who is in control. In traditional marketing the marketers hold all the cards. They have a captured audience like on TV and radio with commercials or in magazines and on billboards. We may try not to pay attention but a certain amount still leaks through.
On the social networks the consumer votes for the businesses who provide the most relevant and useful information. There are many ways to vote such as answering a blog post, or using social bookmarking, or by clicking on a link, or joining in surveys, or by re-Tweeting a post, or commenting on Facebook or by viewing and voting on a You Tube video. The most important way to vote, of course, is by doing business with them.
The unwritten rule is about 80% relevant information and the 20% promotional on the social networking sites. I think you will discover that the people with the most followers are the ones that provide the most relevant and useful information for free. Of course it is still up to you to consider the source and research what you are given.
In our world which has become increasingly more complicated, more rushed, and much more isolated it make perfect sense to me that the newest trend in marketing is the old fashion coffee clutch, done electronically of course.
