Begetting the Love Child of Social Media and Custom Publishing

Budget Strategy and ROI (Part 3 of 6)

This series asks the tough questions about evolving marketing strategies and the benefits and returns you should expect and plan for.

Defining social media

I have been grappling with the term social media lately. The community-supported definition on Wikipedia reflects how social media should be conceived.

“Social media is online content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. At its most basic sense, social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content.”

Social media as content and conversation

I like this kind of social media — awesome content married to zillions of targeted, shareable distribution points. But, when I look at the way the term is currently used, I am baffled and put off.

Unfortunately, today’s social media strategies are heavy on the social and light on the media. It’s mostly about getting on a site and getting followers. Or responding to every mention of your company. It’s only a fraction of the overall picture of what social media ought to be.

The weaknesses of ‘social media’

Social media in general usage has three main weaknesses.

1. Not Targeted — It tends to emphasize reaching as wide an audience as possible. In 2010, you will need to reach your customers in a much more targeted way.
2. Not Strategic — Even the companies who are doing well in reaching out to customers on networking sites are not tying those efforts in well with an overall strategy. Too many resources are required to keep up with the whole internet 24/7. It’s a black hole.
3. Not Measurable — This is the point that your CFO rightly has an issue with. You can’t possibly measure the effectiveness of 248 Twitter followers versus 2480.

The weaknesses of custom publishing

The Wikipedia definition above, with its emphasis on content and form, suggests a comparison between the practice of social media and the traditional field of custom publishing. Custom publishing has always had an emphasis on and success with highly targeted content.

However, in a digital world, custom publishing has three significant weaknesses.

1. Not Online — There is no way to spread the word quickly.
2. Not Timely — Long editorial and production times aren’t up to the speed of online publishing and interaction.
3. Not Affordable — Especially if you have many different audiences or customer profiles, it is very costly to target each.

If custom publishing is a sniper rifle, then social media is a sawed-off shotgun. But in 2010, you will want and need the best of both worlds without the aforementioned weaknesses of either.

Think strategy not just tactics

The solution is to turn back to the real, socially defined sense of social media. Content and conversation. Spreading your message in 2010 will mean relying on the aim of custom-published content, with the blast power of online media.

In fact you’ll need a grand strategy that flips all of the weaknesses of both right on their heads. The ‘social media experts’ out there are more focused on narrow-thinking tactics to excel in given channels like Facebook or Twitter.

Strategic thinking — both in channel breadth and in accounting for future trends — is the key to build momentum and keep your marketing wheel rolling.

Takeaway

Content, sharing and engagement go together for long-term success.

My questions to you

What do you think about the current state of social media? How do you plan to use content to share and engage with a targeted audience?

About the author

Andrew Davis -

In 2002, Andrew founded Tippingpoint Labs with journalist James Cosco. Since then, he's spent countless hours exploring the online universe and building a methodological approach to developing digital strategies that drive revenue or reduce costs.

Andrew's always asking big questions and analyzing data to understand markets, online forces and even business models. Andrew's research has resulted in the creation of innovative online metrics including Online Brand Value and Category Brand Value, eye-opening graphical representations of website evolution through the New Media Life Cycle and even using online data to predict offline revenue.

When he's not surfing the web, Andrew's traveling the globe speaking to a wide-variety of audiences about everything from social media to the future of print. Andrew is a frequent contributor to the Tippingpoint Labs website and has been creating valuable content since the early 1990s for The Jim Henson Company, CNN, The Today Show and MTV.

He's contributed to a book of short stories, called The Way Things Were and produced and co-wrote Roadside Ambition a documentary film about one small town with two huge balls.

"In a world where content is consumed as rapidly as it's created, companies need to develop a sound strategy to creating valuable online experiences that can, and should, be leveraged enterprise-wide. There is a content solution to every business challenge."