What is Social Media: Media Ownership
This article is part of an ongoing series regarding Social Media, and its implications to advertising and marketing effots. This is Part 3, please read Part 1: What is Social Media, and Part 2: Spot Advertising, if you missed them.
Social Media is not a Revolution. Social Media is an evolution of communications technology. In our last article, we discussed Spot Advertisements, such as radio, newspaper, and television, and their modern Internet equivalent. Renting communication space from a party that is attracting attention, and drawing an audience. While this can be effective, another option is to become the media that is attracting attention. Being the media offers the advantage of not only giving you a free place to advertise, it allows you to influence what the audience values.
Controlling the media has been an important factor in controlling people throughout history. That is one of the reasons, freedom of the press is such a highly valued virtue; and why totalitarian states take measures to control what people may publish. There is a reason that powerful individuals tend to be associated with the press. Lenin popularised his revolution overthrowing the Russian Tzar through self-published magazines and leaflets. In recent memory, one only need to look at the power held by Conrad Black to see the relationship between power and media.
Being the media allows you the ability to influence people’s wants. Martha Stewart achieved this brilliantly.
Martha Stewart
Ms. Stewart hosted a television show, that encouraged people to live their life a particular way. For 1 hour a week, people tuned in to learn how they could impress their neighbours. What Martha was really doing, was defining what goals needed to be achieved to impress neighbours. It did not matter whether these actions were important prior to her stating it; with the size of her audience, once the expert had stated it, it was believed by thousands of people across North America.
If you didn’t catch what Martha had said, or needed more detailed instructions, buy her magazine. Did you like the tools she used to create those displays? You can buy them from her product line.
Her television program and magazine were advertisements for the Martha line of products. She generated her own demand.
Self Publishing
In the past, there was a significant expense associated with publishing, with a high probability of not recuperating those costs. Paper, ink, writing, printing, distribution, sales: all of these things are a major expense. This high cost of entry has ensured that very few groups are able to enter the market, and therby influence the audience.
As with all things communication, the Internet has changed the expense of publishing.
For the low monthly expense of web hosting ($5/month at Plaid Sheep) we are able to publish a nearly infinite amount of information. The cost of entry has traditionally been in the specialised knowledge of arranging text for the web. This has been an ongoing issue since the advent of the Internet: starting with gopher, archie and then the World Wide Web.
The advent of WWW technology changed everything, it offered a way to deliver rich content (images, text, and video) to everyone, what it lacked was the ability to for the average person to publish. It still required specialized knowledge (HTML). Over the years developers have written several tools that allow individuals to create online content with little knowledge of what is happening in the background.
Blogging is a simple mechanism to generate an online periodical. Blogs originally began as Web based applications that allowed users to publish information on a periodic basis (aka “a periodical”). Using this technology any individual with an opinion on any subject can publish information online for the entire any internet user. This offers product and service vendors a distinct advantage:
- You are an Expert: Anyone offering a product or service is presumabely an expert in that field (if you aren’t find another field). This means that uneducated people can come to you for advice when trying to learn about the products offered in your field. Like Martha Stewart, you want to be the expert they turn to. Obviously you feel your product or service is the best (if not, find antother field), therefore you can push your product or service.
- Low Cost: Outside of the initial set-up expenses, $5 per month is not a lot to invest in advertising. Outside of the low monthly cost, a little time is all that is required on your part.
- SEO: Search Engine Optimization. There is really a very simple key to getting noticed on the web: generate a lot of relevant content. Google, Yahoo, and Bing, all make an attempt to give the most relevant information to their users, by generating a lot of content you increase the chances of your website being the most relevant one. If Google is shooting for relevant information, you can make yourself the broad side of a barn.
Other Media
Print periodicals, while the first, were not the last to be adapted to the Internet. Many forms of media have an online equivalent:
| Original | Internet | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Magazine | Blog | Knock Off Wood: a successful online magazine that teaches people how to do simple woodworking projects based on big brand name products |
| Radio | Podcast | Free Talk Live: started as an online broadcast, but has syndicated its shows to several radio stations across the United States |
| Television | Vlog | Great Depression Cooking:An elderly lady has become an Internet sensation with her online cooking show |
| Book | Website | Subversion Manual: the manual for a popular software development tool. Written by the developers of the software, the online version encourages people to buy the handy hard-copy (which they get a cut of) |
Think Outside the flock,
The Plaid Sheep