Why is social media so disruptive to traditional marketing?

Social is disruptive for a very simple but powerful reason - because it gives customers the opportunity to influence EACH OTHER - and to both discuss and define brands - much more effectively than they'd previously been able to do so. Simply put, it moves the nexus of discussion about a brand outside the marketer's reach - and fundamentally changes the nature of how a marketer must do their job.

Good question and one I asked in a recent Social Media Today post (Jan 16).

The upshot (via an excerpt)....

"At the heart of the matter lies the reality that digital marketing, especially social and mobile marketing, are highly disruptive because these technologies are successfully challenging the established “Content as king” marketing technologies of the last 30 years.

In content based marketing, the brand message was the payload in the efficient, centralized, mass content distribution platform. It worked because its effectiveness was dependent on reaching mass audiences where people trusted the content. The more trusted the content, the more the content producers could charge brands.

Then, in the blink of a digital eye, newer technologies offer marketers a community distribution platform that rivals the content distribution platform across the board. Social/ mobile marketing is cheaper to create and permits ongoing marketing that was not economical in paid media. It is also incredibly efficient at reaching scale (albeit somewhat chaotically). It is more nimble than content based marketing and most importantly, social marketing shifts trust from content to the community, thus delivering more efficient brand ROI (NY Times ad rates makes my point aptly).

This explains the crazy social/ mobile business valuations (e.g. - Facebook at $100B!). It also puts in perspective how the resultant violent shift in the “center of marketing gravity” left most content based companies; publishers, media companies, broadcasters, brands and the agencies, peering perilously into the gaping chasm beneath them. So what does the future hold? .."

To read the whole post -
go to http://socialmediatoday.com/judyshapiro/429749/all-kings-horses-and-all-kings...

Are social media alternatives actually disruptive to traditional marketing? Or is a perception of disruption really a reflection of an inability of traditional marketing practitioners to visualize the additive power of alternatives, and to visualize how to integrate and coordinate older and newer tools and programs?

You might deduce wher I stand on those questions from the way they are framed.

I think because its adoption rate is faster than past communication methods. One of the primary reasons why it is faster is that there is little/no cost barrier of entry. I have noticed, over the past couple of years, a significant change in how communication occurs in our household besides the fact that everyone grew up, married, and moved away.

Our pet sitter prefers to be contacted via text messages rather than talking on the phone which I thought was strange. My daughter used to call at least 3 times per week and that has stopped in deference to text messages being delivered at her convenience. More recently, I find that my wife and I send each other text messages during the week to communicate our intent as to whose turn it is to pick up milk. In fact, we are so focused on our iPads and iPhones I can’t remember what she looks like.
My next experiment is to convince the family parrot to stop bossing me around and just send an IM when he’s in a bad mood. However you look at it, an honest personal recommendation for a product or service goes a long way and social media seems to be the platform to obtain it.

Visalus would challenge the notion that social media is disruptive. They are leveraging social media to thrust their marketing forward at the fastest growing rate in their industry!

It looks to me that Social Media is only a distraction to those who do not yet understand it, and the dynamics that empower it. I visit a lot of pages that are, well, social. But a thousand friends or 10,000 likes do not equal a single conversion if the focus is chat. The first question, therefore (understanding that chat IS the vehicle), involves ascertaining what the focus IS, and are the social interactions targeting that focus. Traditional marketing staff and social media must integrate to answer the question, and social media specialists MUST understand their medium thoroughly to zero in on the correct audience.

Together, let's put the fun back into work!
Belldon Colme
belldoncolme@gmail.com

Is it disruptive or just misunderstood? as a new type of media, the challenge, in any case, comes to the "Integrated" part of Marketing Communications (IMC). IMC claims that a firm should have a consistent communication across all media channels. However, the nature of new media challenges a one-to-many approach, into a one-to-one approach, or even better: many-to-many .

I mean many-to-many, because corporate blogs, community managers, and other people in contact with new media are not necessarily managed in the same way as traditional media budget. It is not managed by a single actor inside the firm, but by many, including others outside marketing department. Gumesson calls these actors part-marketers. Furthermore, the message is no longer in the form of a 20 second spot, or in a static image. Maybe the disruptive part is that Marketing Communications now includes communications!