It’s a New Ball Game: Social Media Versus Traditional Media

I’ve written before about the profound differences between traditional and social media. You might enjoy reading about the 16 differences between traditional and social media, or this one on social media versus traditional media. There’s even a good infographic on the 10 differences in social media versus traditional media that was just updated last year to ensure the information is fresh. Just as I’m updating this post, originally published 10 years ago. The entire social media landscape is now different from when I originally posted this content. Plus, social media is now broader, consisting of multiple digital strategies that I’ve incorporated into this revision.

These are great resources for firms transitioning from employing traditional media exclusively. Clearly articulated in these resources is the fundamental transformation of thinking required to use social media effectively and the benefits of doing it the right way.

Examples of digital media versus traditional media include:

1. Pull versus push communication
2. Many-to-many versus one-on-one
3. Expensive versus less expensive (not free!)
4. Long planning horizons versus short planning or spontaneous
5. Confined to marketing versus multiple stakeholders

Let’s take a look at each of these differences individually.

Digital media versus traditional media

Why the transition to thinking about social media more broadly as digital media, to include email marketing, SMS messaging, blogging, digital advertising, and search engine marketing? Easy, the reach and success of social media have declined rapidly as these platforms’ owners sought revenue through changes in their algorithms that mean sharp declines in the organic reach of your content. The current organic reach on social media is a pathetic 1.3%. Thus, if you have millions of followers, you can do well, but without millions, you’re likely wasting your efforts.

Another reason for the transition is the effectiveness of other digital tools in generating a return on your efforts. Below, you can see a comparison of the ROI generated by various digital marketing channels. Note that email marketing offers the highest ROI, followed by SEO or search engine marketing. Organic social media doesn’t even make the list.

Pull versus push communication

When we talk about push marketing, we’re talking about pushing channel partners to move your merchandise under the assumption that consumers will buy it if they see it available in the stores where they commonly shop. For example, when a manufacturer calls on a department store to request it carry their brand, that’s push marketing. Pull marketing is using advertising to pull consumers into the store to buy your brand, which motivates the store to carry it.

But I think we can extend this to discuss communication strategies. If we talk about push communication, we’re talking about pushing your messages out to consumers in the hope they’ll act on them. Pull communication uses the power of your community to pull their friends in, making them aware of your products and adding at least tacit endorsement of your brand.

As consumers, we’ve become jaded when it comes to pushy communication from advertisers. We know that actors are paid for their endorsements and many will say whatever the script tells them to without any belief in the product. We’ve also been lied to so many times in previous advertising that we don’t believe much of it anymore. Plus, we’re really adept at removing ourselves from a brand’s efforts to advertise to us by joining “do not call” lists, bypassing commercials when watching TV, and ignoring everything on the right side or top of the screen when surfing the web.

The whole thing changes when you talk about pull communication. When friends ask about what movie or restaurant you like, or see photos posted from a particular event or place, or when you share your terrible experiences with a brand, they believe you since you don’t have any reason to lie to them.

Another advantage of pull marketing is targeting. You likely share essential characteristics with your friends—similar interests, demographics, and values. Thus, messages transmitted (Liked, RT, Pinned) reach just the folks you want to hear your message because they reflect your target market rather than falling on millions of deaf ears.

Many-to-many versus one-on-one

With traditional media, a brand talks at a large population without building an emotional response from them (although we see some exceptions). Ads aren’t engaging. In fact, we don’t read them, listen to them, or watch them if we can avoid doing so. I once conducted some research on prescription drug advertising. One of the questions asked respondents to share an ad they’d seen. A large percentage shared an ad with almost no words, just pictures, didn’t read or hear the required FDA material on side effects, etc, and mixed up the ad with the product it was promoting with another product (sometimes even treating a different disease). We don’t listen to or remember most advertising, let alone share it with our friends, unless we have a bad experience with the brand.

By talking with our target market on social media, in email marketing, through SMS messaging, and on our websites, we build a community that might share our message. Look at the social media reach depicted above, and you can see how using your community to share your message expands your reach. Let’s say you have a community of 2 million folks, and each of them has friends/ followers they share with. Some of those friends/ followers share the message with their friends/ followers, and the process repeats until the message is extinct after a certain number of cycles. This is the definition of viral messaging.

Expensive versus less expensive

Digital media is much less expensive than traditional media. For instance, the cost of a single 30-second commercial on this year’s Super Bowl topped $8 million. That’s a heck of a lot of money. Sure, you can buy less expensive advertising on cable channels, but you can’t beat the average cost of less than $20 per ad and CPC of pennies. Organic digital media costs you nothing.

Don’t let that fool you, however. Even organic digital media isn’t free. You’ll need:

1. Trained, experienced folks to manage your digital media. These folks don’t come free. And, hiring on the cheap is not a good idea when these folks will be your voice to millions of folks on social networks, your website, and your other digital platforms. Asus found this out the hard way when they entrusted their social media to a lowly, inexperienced intern. The intern crafted a post he thought was funny that insulted 50% of the population and seriously backfired on the company. Pay for good people.
2. Automation software. Yeah, I’m not a big fan of automating your digital media, but specific tasks are just easier and more coordinated if they’re automated. Sharing posts to social networks is an example. You need a tool that helps with scheduling, resizing images, and listening/ responding (not necessarily the same tool). AI has dramatically enhanced our ability to generate content. ChatGPT even added a research feature that brings together information and citations on your topic. That said, I never let my software craft content — although you’ll find those tools out there—my advice: don’t waste your money and damage your reputation by trusting them. It’s perfectly acceptable to use AI tools or others you find to suggest content, even create a rough draft, but YOU need to write the final draft.
3. Monitoring. You’ll need a good tool (or several tools) to track your performance and provide insights you can use to optimize it. If you’re interested, I’ve curated a list (with the help of my community) of great tools for monitoring social media performance.

Long planning horizons versus spontaneous

You can’t manage digital media the same way you manage traditional media. Try it and you’ll likely kill your digital media efforts.

Traditional media is expensive to produce, not just transmit. A firm might spend $1 million or more on talent for its commercial, plus the cost of directors, camera folks, editing, etc. Because of this, it might produce two or three commercials a year. Because traditional media is so expensive, companies go through extensive creative and approval processes that might take weeks or months.

Digital media, unlike traditional media, is produced every day (or every couple of days). There isn’t enough time for lengthy approval processes or extensive content creation efforts, especially for social media. Listening, which is a critical element of digital media, means the faster you respond to a comment, the stronger your community and the less potential for negative comments to cause damage. That means fast content creation.

Increasingly, firms use a content marketing calendar to add some control to their digital media processes and build in some oversight. But things change fast, so folks handling your digital media need to be able (and empowered) to respond instantly to changing conditions with appropriate responses. You also need flexibility when something happens. For instance, Kenneth Cole posted a tweet about the Arab Spring uprising in Cairo and paid a heavy price in the Twittersphere for their levity during the tough time. When conditions change, you need to respond appropriately, not make fun of a serious situation or use it to your advantage, as Bing did over the earthquake in Japan.

Content is everyone’s job

In social media versus traditional media, you see a democratization of communication, with (hopefully) consistent voices across the organization rather than a single voice from the marketing department or paid spokesperson.

Good digital media practice is to have experts share their insights on the company’s platforms. An engineer might share (vetted) information about a new product, or a customer support person might share answers to his/ her most frequently asked questions.

Democratization comes at a cost for organizations not prepared to handle potential problems. For instance, someone in Chrysler’s social media team dropped the F-bomb in a tweet critical of Detroit drivers, and several firms have battled employees who accidentally published from corporate accounts, thinking they were sharing to their own accounts.

A content marketing calendar helps offer some control to brands without crippling their ability to respond to changing conditions. A content marketing calendar contains content, including images, publication plans, and approval. Thus, a manager can approve everything before it gets automatically produced (potentially with disastrous consequences). However, the key to making a content marketing calendar work is a quick turnaround on the approval process—more like a newspaper than a traditional media agency. I even produced a content marketing calendar template with everything you need to keep your digital marketing on track.

Editorial and design guidelines are also a critical element of your digital media process. Everyone working on digital media or crafting content for it should be versed in these guidelines to ensure posts maintain consistent branding across different authors. Remember that best practices in digital media change frequently, so your editorial and design guidelines need updating frequently.

You should encourage employees who don’t create content to follow your digital platforms and engage with them by liking, sharing, and commenting. Employee engagement can jump-start a community around your social networks.

Final thoughts on social media versus traditional media

It’s a whole new ball game out there.

It’s a mistake to think you can avoid all the problems and uncertainties associated with digital media and simply stick to traditional media as a more secure alternative. But your strategic decision isn’t digital media versus traditional media, it’s how to incorporate social media into your brand strategy best, because traditional media is losing reach and impact.

According to Business Week, prime-time TV ratings fell by over 41% between 1977 and 2003, reflecting a fundamental shift in our TV viewing habits. TV viewing is more fragmented — across 100 TV channels beamed into the typical American household as opposed to only 4 in 1977 and 27 as recently as 1994. Increasingly, consumers watch TV programming on their schedule, either online (with limited commercials) or through streaming video platforms with no advertising.

At the same time, newspapers are dying off and radio succumbing to paid (advertising-free) subscriptions like Sirius. Increasing municipal regulations is squeezing out billboards as a nuisance and a safety hazard. The only bright spot in traditional media is the blossoming of magazines designed for niche markets.

More than a crisis of reach, the competition of social media versus traditional media is one of the ability to ring cash registers. Here, digital media wins. Not only can digital media more effectively measure its impact on a company’s bottom line, but its ability to convince consumers to part with their money is superior.

Mass marketing, an integral element of traditional advertising, was one-size-fits-all. Thus, messages weren’t optimized for conversion but aimed at an enormous reach (which we saw earlier is declining). Digital media allows infinite customization based on an individual’s specifics, such as cookies. Instead of celebrities promoting products, we now have our friends promoting them through endorsements, such as liking and sharing.

Taken to its ultimate end, digital media allows (even encourages) consumers to create content around a brand, serving as brand advocates and providing assistance to those who question the product or its use.

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