Impact of Social Media on Society

"Do you have Facebook?"

"Yes, of course. But I don't think you can find me, as there are too many people who have the same name as me. Try searching with my surname as well."

"Hey, you celebrated your birthday in K-Box, right? I saw the photos in your Facebook."

"Bro, I saw your comments about the YouTube video that I've posted in my blog. I'm happy that you are also deeply moved by the 'Dancing Peacock Man' as well."

Social media or "social networking" has almost become part of our daily lives and being tossed around over the past few years. It is like any other media such as newspaper, radio and television but it is far more than just about sharing information and ideas. Social networking tools like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Blogs have facilitated creation and exchange of ideas so quickly and widely than the conventional media. The power of define and control a brand is shifting from corporations and institutions to individuals and communities. It is no longer on the 5Cs (e.g. condominium, credit cards and car) that Singaporeans once talked about. Today, it is about the brand new Cs: creativity, communication, connection, creation (of new ideas and products), community (of shared interests), collaboration and (changing the game of) competition.

In January 2010, InSites Consulting has conducted an online survey with 2,884 consumers from over 14 countries between the ages of 18 to 55 years old on social networking. More than 90% of participants know at least 1 social networking site and 72% of participants are members of at least 1 social networking site. On the average, people have about 195 friends and they log in twice a day to social networking sites. However, 55% of the users cannot access their social network websites at work. In the past, not many adults were able to make more than 500 friends, but with social media, even a child or teenager can get to know more than 500 people in a few days by just clicking the mouse. Social media has devalued the traditional definition of "friend" where it means trust, support, compatible values, etc. Although we get to know more people, we are not able to build strong bond with all the people whom we met as our available time is limited. Hence, there is an upcoming social trend of people with wider social circles, but weaker ties (people we don't know very well but who provide us with useful information and ideas).

Social media also influences people's buying behaviours. Digital Influence Group reported that 91% of the people say consumer reviews are the #1 aid to buying decisions and 87% trust a friend's recommendation over critic's review. It is thrice more likely to trust peer opinions over advertising for purchasing decisions. 1 word-of-mouth conversation has an impact of 200 TV ads. With the prevalence use of social media, there is numerous news related to it from the most viewed YouTube video on "Armless pianist wins 'China's Got Talent'" to Web-assisted suicide cases (e.g. New Jersey college student who killed himself after video of him in a sexual encounter with another man was posted online). Thus, does social networking make us better or worse off as a society?

Positive Effects of Social Media

Besides having opportunity to know a lot of people in a fast and easy way, social media also helped teenagers who have social or physical mobility restrictions to build and maintain relationships with their friends and families. Children who go overseas to study can still stay in meaningful contact with their parents. To a greater extend, there is anecdotal evidence of positive outcomes from these technologies.

In 2008, President-elected Obama won the election through the effective use of social media to reach millions of audience or voters. The Obama campaign had generated and distributed huge amount of contents and messages across email, SMS, social media platforms and their websites. Obama and his campaign team fully understood the fundamental social need that everyone shares - the need of being "who we are". Therefore, the campaign sent the message as "Because It's about YOU" and chose the right form of media to connect with individuals, call for actions and create community for a social movement. They encouraged citizens to share their voices, hold discussion parties in houses and run their own campaign meetings. It truly changed the delivery of political message.

Obama campaign had made 5 million "friends" on more than 15 social networking sites (3 million friends on Facebook itself) and posted nearly 2,000 YouTube videos which were watched over 80 million times. At its peak, their website, MyBarackObama.com, had 8.5 million monthly visitors and produced 400,000 blog posts. In order to ensure that their contents were found by people, the Obama campaign spent $3.5 million on Google search in October alone, $600,000 on Advertising.com, $467,000 on Facebook in 2008, etc. Currently, Obama's Twitter account has close to 6 million followers.

In 2010, after the earthquake happened in Haiti, many of the official communication lines were down. The rest of the world was not able to grasp the full picture of the situation there. To facilitate the sharing of information and make up for the lack of information, social media came in very handy to report the news about the affected area on what happened and what help was needed. Tweets from many people provided an impressive overview of the ongoing events from the earthquake. BBC covered the event by combining tweets from the work of its reporter Matthew Price in Port-au-Prince at the ground. Guardian's live blog also used social media together with the information from other news organisations to report about the rescue mission.

It has been two years since CNN officially launched iReport as a section of its website where people can upload video material, with contact information. During the Haiti crisis, CNN had published a range of social media material but not all the materials were verified. The editorial staff would vet the reports from the citizen journalists and labeled them differently compared to unverified contents. On Facebook, a group, named "Earthquake Haiti", was formed to show support and share updates and news. It had more than 14,000 members and some users even pleaded for assistance to the injured Haitians in the group. Using email, Twitter and social networking sites like Facebook, thousands of volunteers as part of Project Ushahidi were able to map reports sent by people from Haiti.

The most impressive part of the social media's impact on Haiti is the charity text-message donations that soared to over $10 million for the victims in Haiti. People interested in helping the victims are encouraged to text, tweet and publicize their support using various social networking sites. The Global Philanthropy Group had also started a campaign to ask wealthy people and celebrities, like Ben Stiller and John Legend to use Twitter and Facebook to encourage others to give to UNICEF. An aid worker, Saundra Schimmelpfennig, allowed the advice from other aid workers and donors to post on her blog regarding to choosing which charitable organisations to support. In the meantime, donors were asking questions in Twitter, Facebook and blogs about their donations and endorsements of their favourite charities. After every crisis, the social media for social cause becomes a more effective medium to spread the word.

Negative Effects of Social Media

There are always two sides of every coin. Social media is just a tool or mean for people to use. It is still up to the users on how to use this tool (just like a knife, can help you to cut food or hurt others). Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project and Elon University's Imagining the Internet Center conducted a study on "The Future of Online Socializing" from the highly engaged, diverse set of respondents to an online, opt-in survey consisted of 895 technology stakeholders and critics. The negative effects presented by the respondents included time spent online robs time from important face-to-face relationships; the internet fosters mostly shallow relationships; the act of leveraging the internet to engage in social connection exposes private information; the internet allows people to silo themselves, limiting their exposure to new ideas; and the internet is being used to engender intolerance.

Some respondents also highlighted that there will be development of some new psychological and medical syndromes that will be "variations of depression caused by the lack of meaningful quality relationships", and a "new world society". The term, "Social Networking", has begun to deceive the users to believe they are social creatures. For instance, spending a couple of hours using Farmville and chatting with friends concurrently does not convert into social skills. People become dependent on the technology and forget how to socialise in face-to-face context. The online personality of a person might be totally different from his/her offline character, causing chaos when the two personalities meet. It is apparent in online dating when the couple gets together in face-to-face for the first time. Their written profiles do not clearly represent their real-life characters. It is more enticing for people to type something that others want to hear than saying the truth.

Besides the "friendship", creators of social networking sites and users redefine the term, "privacy" in the Internet as well. The challenge in data privacy is to share data while protecting personally identifiable information. Almost any information posted on social networking sites is permanent. Whenever someone posts pictures or videos on the web, it becomes viral. When the user deletes a video from his/her social network, someone might have kept it and then posted it onto other sites like YouTube already. People post photographs and video files on social networking sites without thinking and the files can reappear at the worst possible time. In 2008, a video of a group of ACJC students hazing a female student in school on her birthday was circulated and another video of a SCDF recruit being "welcomed" (was hosed with water and tarred with shoe polish) to a local fire station made its way online.

Much news has been reported about online privacy breach in Facebook and Facebook is constantly revising their privacy policy and changing their privacy controls for the users. Interestingly, even when users delete their personal information and deactivate their Facebook account, Facebook will still keep that information and will continue to use it for data mining. A reporter asked whether the data will at least be anonymized. The Facebook representative declined to comment.

In the corporate world, human resource managers can access Facebook or MySpace to get to know about a candidate's true colours, especially when job seekers do not set their profiles to private. Research has found that almost half of employers have rejected a potential worker after finding incriminating material on their Facebook pages. Some employers have also checked the candidates' online details in Facebook pages to see if they are lying about their qualifications. Nowadays, younger generations have a complete disregard for their own privacy, opening doors to unwelcome predators or stalkers.

Raymond Tay
Founder & Trainer of Leader's Wheel LLP

Having strong interest in personal development and helping others.

My Company Site: http://www.leaderswheel.com
My Learning Blog: http://www.leaderswheel.com/raymondtay

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How Social Media Will Continue to Impact Online Search in 2010

Effective online search has previously relied upon the positioning of a Web site in the search engine result pages (SERPs), based mainly upon how many links were pointing to the site, thus indicating popularity, and how high of a page rank (PR) the site had been crowned by Google. Now, with the steady increase of the social media phenomenon, we can foresee this unstoppable force anchoring itself mightily and building a sturdy home. Page rank is quickly being replaced by friend rank.

Social media is not only the here and now; it's also the wave of the future that is here to stay. It will continue to grow and enlarge at rapid speed. Social media is by far a trend. According to Nielsen Online, social media networks and blogs are now the forth most popular online activity ahead of personal email. Member communities are visited by 67 percent of the global online population. The time spent in social media Web sites is growing at three times the overall Internet use rate, accounting for almost 10 percent of all Internet time.

Social Media's Effect on Google, Bing and Yahoo

Although the SEO ship has not sailed and should definitely be a part of your online marketing campaign, social media marketing is the alpha male in the online jungle and he brings many changes. Google used to separate "social" content. Remember the separate Google search bar you had to download for blogs? And another one for video and yet another for images, while nothing from the social media sites showed up at all? Now Google streams ALL platforms into one system called Universal Search. This means blogs, videos, images, news and user profiles and comments from social media sites are now integrated into the natural SERPs, shoving many previously placed Web sites right out of those coveted top spots. Bing and Yahoo both have incorporated very similar systems.

With that said, you now understand how critical SMO is to your online marketing campaign. By using social media sites such as facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, you can actually capture a greater number of organic search positions. Did you know facebook alone has about 350,000,000 members from across the globe? Talk about having your audience right at your fingertips! Once you learn how to identify and connect to your target audience, you can definitely take your business to the next level and the next.

Intertwining Social Media Optimization and SEO

When properly executed, social media optimization can seamlessly dovetail SEO efforts. The ongoing, fresh content creation, social bookmarking, engaging and conversing directly with your audience, attracting inbound links by being a resource for your audience, etc. - these methodologies are essential for pushing your Web site higher in the SERPs, increasing Web traffic and reaping the rewards of conversion and overall ROI. SMO leverages an additional, effective set of online tools to accomplish the same goal as SEO: more exposure and better positioning for your Web site on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. The challenge lies in knowing how to use those tools effectively and without spending all of your waking hours in vain.

The bottom line is this: The days of launching a basic SEO campaign alone within such a competitive online space and joyfully watching your site rise to the top of SERPs are long gone. Not only has SEO become far more complex than it was just a few short years ago, but SMO has transformed SEO from a relatively straightforward strategy into an intricate discipline that is confusing and frustrating to most.

While social media optimization is a must for any business seeking to boost exposure in the search engines, most companies are not up for the task at hand. Turning to someone with social media expertise and experience to successfully go head to head with the alpha male of the jungle is the key reaping rewards from your online efforts.

Contact Crystal Frog Marketing today to face the alpha male for you. Also, keep your eyes peeled for our next article: Your Social Media Marketing Campaign: Top 5 Tips for Successful Execution.

Natalie Revell is the President/Marketing Director/Founder of Crystal Frog Marketing. Crystal Frog Marketing (CFM) produces Clear Solutions and Giant Leaps by utilizing new perspectives and new media strategies to take small and median businesses to the next level and the next. By partnering with their clients and focusing on two primary areas of concentration: the business profile and how customers perceive the business profile, CFM is able to help clients solve problems in the niche markets, gain visibility and positioning in their marketplaces, increase brand awareness and become 'the one to call.' CFM has successfully launched and strengthened many businesses and has extensive experience in the logistics and mortgage/credit repair industries. For more information, please visit http://www.crystalfrogmarketing.com/

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Social Media: Highest Cost, Lowest Impact?

Many people in the business community are still skeptical of the value of social media. Some feel that it's a fad and others approach it with trepidation as a result of marketers continually ramming it down their throats that they need to 'get with the picture'.

I find it presumptuous to think that if you're not engaged with social media that it's hurting your business.

Social media is just that, it's 'media'. It's not a phenomena or a beast that must be tip toed around for fear of it biting. I'm neither in awe of or cynical about social media, it's a communications tool and another avenue to publish content.

How is Social Media Changing Marketing?

It's simply giving an honest picture of a company's overall strategy and perception of value. By this I mean it's revealing low value as much as it's showcasing firms that can offer high value.

It's exposing weaknesses in marketing direction and how companies think about and understand their customers. If people have nothing interesting to say it shows, likewise if people are switched-on they're contributions are engaging.

All this means is that social media is not a bandwagon you simply jump on, like all successful communication it requires thought, planning and execution with clear outcomes stipulated first.

Beware of Experts & Employ Common Sense

There are countless people in the marketing world who refer to themselves as experts in social media. Many proclaim to have tactics that if you ignore, you'll be hung out to dry as the dinosaur of your industry. Social media is simply another avenue to communicate value with your audience.

The key difference with social media as opposed more traditional marketing such as direct mail aside from the cost benefit, is that you can communicate in real time, and it provides a way for your audiences to respond and interact with your content, effectively opening a dialogue with your market.

Setting up social a social media account is the easy bit, knowing how to apply it to your advantage is the problem. The key is not to focus on technology, focus on content and value. This means;

Putting yourself in your customers shoes

Thinking about the value you can provide

Mapping out your content

Including social media in your broader marketing strategy rather than a stand alone activity

Who's Listening?

Millions of people worldwide have at least one social media account. This suggests there's a huge potential revenue stream waiting to be tapped. The effectiveness of it however boils down to whether your message is being received by the people that matter. Are you talking to buyers or at least people who can influence buyers?

It's not such a big hurdle in the business-to-consumer world, but in the business-to-business space there are a number of potential barriers including time, corporate policy regarding access to social media and whether your economic buyer even uses social media.

Being aware of these constraints will help you develop your strategy rather than relying on blind faith.

How to Approach Social Media

Social media is not revolutionary in itself. It is simply another way to communicate and connect with your audience. What is revolutionary is the fact that social media is free to use and gives you the potential to get in front of hundreds of thousands of people.

The goal is not how many followers you have or how many updates you can post in a day. Your focus simply needs to be directed at how you can exploit these systems to build value with the people you want to transact with.

Be Selective, There Are No Rules

There are still some people touting that the best social media strategy is to get as many people in your networks as possible and that it's 'etiquette' to reciprocate with every follower or friend request. If your goal is information overload then this strategy will exceed your expectations.

There are no rules, so if you're not getting any value from a connection, lose it. The real value in social media is the quality of your connections and interactions. Connections will only develop into relationships when value is reciprocal.

Don't Engage in a Timeline War

Most social media platforms use a timeline to display user inputs, much the same way that email is prioritised in your inbox by the date it was sent or was received. It would seem to be common sense that in order to stay 'top of mind' and 'top of the pile' so no one misses your updates that you must continually be updating your status.

This expectation is as mad as thinking that a bestselling author needs to hit the shelves with a new title every fortnight to maintain their profile. Quality and consistency will always surpass quantity. If you bombard them with low value content they'll stop listening.

To Tweet or Not to Tweet?

Deciding not to engage with social media is a fair call for many businesses and professionals alike. Just because everyone else is doing it doesn't mean you should. You need to make a clinical assessment of your situation and question what value you'll derive from it. More importantly, what value will your target audience and customers gain from it.

The big question is whether your economic buyers are engaged in social media? Will they receive your message through it or is another form of communication going to get your message across?

There are some in the marketing world claiming that if you're not in it, you'll be left behind. I think that's an unfair assumption as there are many businesses that offer tremendous value who are not currently engaging with social media.

There is no right or wrong, so don't let anyone tell you otherwise. It's simply an opportunity to engage with an audience. The better question to ask is what value can I provide, and what is the best way to communicate that to my target audience?

What You Need To Do

Like all marketing activities if it's going to return value, it needs to have purpose and it needs to be accountable. The following key points relate to any social media platform such as Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook.

1. Determine Your Purpose

Determining purpose stems from understanding your audience and working out what value you can provide them. If you don't determine your purpose then you can't have any accountability.

Types of content you could engage with:

Technical: system or operational status notifying of downtime or changes etc. E.g. airlines making updates re flight cancellations

Time related: weather notifications, traffic, programming etc.

Thought leadership: tips, advice, thought provoking perspective etc.

News: industry developments, what you're currently working on if it holds relevance etc.

Content must focus on adding value, not selling.

2. Plan Content In Advance

Once you've determined your purpose you can start mapping out your content. Draft a number of updates across a range of subjects then broadcast them on a consistent basis. One or two succinct updates per day are worth more than an endless stream of drivel. Planning content may seem contrary to how these platforms are supposedly geared to operate using spontaneity, but if you want to build real value there's nothing wrong with preparation.

You should spend no more than 15 minutes a day on social media. Don't let it consume your time as you already have a number of other distractions in your daily routine such as email. Planning your content will ensure you avoid wasting time.

Don't use social media to the exclusion of other forms of communication. Look at ways it can work alongside your other marketing activities.

3. Build In Some Accountability

You are what you post, tweet and update, so you can't afford the time to let things trundle along. If you delegate social media management to your team they must be clear on what you want to achieve and what constitutes preferable and unacceptable content. This includes syndicated content derived from republishing 3rd party content.

There are only three outcomes from any content you publish; positive, negative or neutral. This means it's either supporting and building brand value, doing nothing for it, or at worst it's contradictory or eroding your value.

Keep guidelines simple but make it clear that any content outside your 'purpose' is not acceptable.

Never become a slave to any technology. Like any form of communication you need to use social media for the benefit of your customer. Include social media in your marketing reviews and make it accountable to your overall communications and brand strategy.

Measuring Success

It's not a numbers game. The number of friends, followers, connections or updates you have is not in itself a gauge of success. What's the sense in having thousands of 'followers' if the value you're offering is irrelevant to them.

The same goes for a shotgun approach in trying to follow or connect with anyone and everyone. This kind of behaviour simply creates noise where valuable content and messages are lost.

Success can be measured in the quality of your interactions and in the confidence that your content is positively adding value to both your organisation and your customer.

Hamish Chadwick 2011. All Rights Reserved.

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Impact of Digital News Media on Traditional Advertising Methods

If we go deeper into this matter and look around us, there will not be any difference of opinion and all would agree that digital media has the upper hand.

Many companies are giving up traditional marketing and advertising methods and turning towards digital media to promote their products and services.
Many big names had to cut their budgets to save the companies from heavy losses. However, they very wisely turned to digital media for advertising. This is a clear sign of businesses losing confidence in the traditional advertising methods.

Results in traditional media are considered less measurable than the direct response media like the digital media. It is like a war between the TV, Radio and Print media, and the internet and other digital media of advertising. When there is no control over the results of some advertising, and when an alternative more controllable media is available, who would prefer to continue with the traditional media! Yes, it is true; many big names have displayed huge profit even in this hard time of recession. All such names are in favor of digital news media for most of their marketing and advertising needs.

While we find digital media the best option, we cannot deny the fact that in some aspects, the traditional media is found useful. It is said that marketing of your brand suits more to traditional media. Well, it may be true but this rule cannot be generalized and would depend mostly on the product and prevailing conditions. Some very positively argue that for the sake of effective advertising campaign and for the best results, both types of advertising and marketing media must be used.

If we say that online media trends has badly affected the traditional advertising methods, we should not forget the fact that the customers' trend is also responsible for that. Customers have become more responsive to digital media now. They spend hours on the internet, not on the radio or other traditional means. All such media is becoming 'electronic.' With fast and wider access to information, customers prefer digital news media for purchasing or while deciding to avail some service. Such market trend and the ease of sharing information, as well as economic feasibility, are working very positively in favor of digital media. Now, companies cannot neglect the fast growing and fierce competition and have to adopt means that not only help them survive, but also to develop their business.

There is an unnoticed disadvantage of digital news media marketing or advertising. Since the ease of access to information on different identical products or services makes it much easy for the potential customers to compare the products, you have to offer the best. If not, the customer has all the information about other good offers available, with even unbiased reviews; he would definitely go for the better one.

Well, while digital news media has very negatively influenced the traditional advertising methods, it is certainly beneficial for the customers.

Seek4media.com, a growing community that attempts to deconstruct digital news media in all its pervasive forms across the web with up to date articles revolving around all types of interesting issues and offer constructive opinions on online news trends today from a prosumer perspectives. Our articles are created, reviewed and submitted by experienced and knowledgeable staff of professional writers

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