Social Media. Is it?
There’s an argument at the moment that social media is simply mass media distributed through new channels. This may well be true and here’s why…
Over 50% of twitter news source comes from just 20,000 contributors worldwide.
How can that be true? Well it seems that us tweeters have adopted a lazy ‘get it out their first’ attitude, which simply relies on re-tweeting other peoples’ news. Not very ‘social’ media really is it? This simply results in the same media owners and influencers doing just that via new channels. Same old, same old.
There are fewer active bloggers, because these new media channels rely on short bursts of content, which can be digested and in most cases forwarded on (re-tweeted or other) to make us all look informed.
We’re all guilty of course. Why bother being original and innovative, or having a strong opinion delivered with passion and insight when others simply get there before you? I think we’ve reached a stage where social media has established itself as a channel; we’re just not sure how to use it properly – or maybe we’ve already become influenced by the influencers? We want to keep up and are so desperate to demonstrate that we are new media savvy and have an opinion; we just churn out crap and choose to forward on other peoples’ good examples (or crap) rather than take the time to develop our own unique content, saying more about ourselves, a topic or a brand.
The future? Well individuals are going to become far more selective over whom they follow and the choices of media they consume. The bragging rights over the notoriety of those they follow/who follows them is bound to wane. Sifting through reams of authors all who write (or forward) similar content is time consuming, so we’ll just select the unique ones of particular interest or the sources we trust most. I’m already doing this.
Time to set the standard.
But what about businesses? Well this is where there’s a real opportunity to be unique, engaging and different. If the consumer is being more and more exposed to mass media (again) through social media clutter, then surely there’s a space here for brands to set the standard. And if their audiences really embrace those setting the standard, then surely they’ll just re-tweet it…right?
