David L. Anderson - Marketing with Web 2.0: Social Networking and Viral Marketing

Marketing with Web 2.0: Social Networking and Viral Marketing

By David Anderson

Westmont College

Bassim Hamadeh, Publisher

Christopher Foster, Vice President

Michael Simpson, Vice President of Acquisitions

Jessica Knott, Managing Editor

Stephen Milano, Creative Director

Kevin Fahey, Cognella Marketing Program Manager

Al Grisanti, Acquisitions Editor

Jamie Giganti, Project Editor

Brian Fahey, Licensing Associate

Copyright 2013 by Cognella, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information retrieval system without the written permission of Cognella, Inc.

First published in the United States of America in 2012 by Cognella, Inc.

Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-1-62131-407-3

Chapter 1

A Changing Media Landscape

Introduction

The turn of the century has brought with it an explosion of different media formats. Such a vast acceleration in options has created a new kind of consumer. Todays consumers spend the majority of their waking hours interacting with others via web-based technologies. Instead of depending on traditional avenues for information, consumers are relying on instant access to informal and often unprofessional web-based venues. Consumers are discovering their own music, making their own videos, blogging their own opinions, and reading news from their own political persuasion. The result is the emergence of the independent and individualized consumer.

Marketers who wish to rise to the occasion are meeting the consumer on his or her own playing field. There has become a new demand for businesses to create an online presence through web-based technologies focused on social networking and viral marketing. Instead of focusing on only the former staples of construction and manufacturing, businesses now emphasize analysis, consolidation, and the integration of data. There is a critical need to understand and listen to consumer now more than ever.

Case Study: Interactive Mobile Technologies

The last decade has seen a rapid adoption of technology and the displacement of more traditional media. Technologies such as Tivo, the iPod, iPad, iCloud, and blogs enable consumers to put together their own customized news streams. Media consumers now live in their own bubbles, where the news they consume is different from that of their neighbors, both in terms of focus and political slant. While liberating consumers to make their own choices, the flipside of this trend is an end to the old waysand standardsof journalism. It also means that individuals can focus their news and music to continue to refine their listening patterns to the targeted exclusion of every other pattern.

Chapter 1 examines the impact of this technology, including the Internet, on media consumption. Chapter One explores the following trends:

1. Increase in choice and customization (accomplished by cable television, online news, and clearly defined news selection).
2. Increase in consumption hours (individuals are using technology more extensively and in more places, leaving access running all the time).
3. Increase in speed of the news cycle (for example, the output of a professional newspaper columnist like Mike Royko was five columns a week. Blogger Andrew Sullivan posts constantly day and night).
4. Increasing competition among advertisers for consumers eyeballs and attention (new approaches and gimmicks to capture attention and keep individuals interested).
5. The rise of the amateur content developer and the end of paid content (resulting in the mindset of if hobbyists are developing and distributing content for free, why should anyone pay for anything?)
6. The democratization of the media (within the media, the amateur is on the same level as the expert. Bloggers break stories and gain journalistic credentials. With reduced advertising, newspapers are not able to afford full-time journalists. A cheapening of production methods makes it easier for entry-level individuals look legitimate and gain an audienceno one knows you are just starting out).
7. Customization and isolation leads to the bubble effect (i.e., we feel comfortable getting our news from increasingly tailored/slanted sources, changing the nature and civility of the discourse because of this sense of isolation).
8. The decline of serendipity. (When do people get a chance to think for themselves instead of consuming media? Is it only when they are blogging/tweeting that they are not actually consuming media? How much are people influenced by the bloggers/tweeters they trust?)

In the 1950s, consumers found out about new music by watching TV shows like American Bandstand, listening to Top 40 radio, going to record stores, or listening to music at friends houses. If you liked a song a nd wanted to hear it again, you had to wait for the radio station to play it again.

Viewed through the lens of history, the changes to the media landscape in the 20 th and 21st centuries have accelerated at an astounding speed. In the 1700s, only a few people could read. If they were fortunate enough to read, they owned one book. When people in the 1890s wanted to hear music, they had to play it themselves. One constant in the Western media is that the number of choices and options is constantly increasing. Before the Internet, radio went from AM to FM. Music went from live performances to the radio to the phonograph. Then music rapidly moved from the phonograph to the 8-track, to tapes, CDs, and MP3 players. Benjamin Franklins newspaper was weekly. Then newspapers became daily, twice daily, several editions a day, to our current 24-hour news sources. Movies moved from the theater to the home to the portable DVD player to the iPod.

With the increase in media formats, options are available for almost every occasion. The amount of media being consumed has increased as well. Americans now spend multiple hours each day consuming media, often multitasking while doing so. They spend time in front of the television and the laptop, with the iPod, and on the iPhone. Computers are an integral part of every room in the house.

Americans no longer live a 24-hour day. We spend almost 10 hours a day consuming media, according to the Census Bureau. When that time is spent multitasking, and not concurrently, the average day can extend to 49.7 hours, not just 24. This includes work for 7.5 hours, commute for 1.4, eat for 1.8, sleep for 6.9, spend 4.5 hours with family, 1.8 hours with friends, 3.7 hours using the Internet, 3.6 hours watching television, 2.2 hours listening to the radio, .5 hours reading, and 15.8 hours IMing, texting, listening to mp3s, playing video games, e-mailing All together, it stretches to 49.7 hours.

The amount of media being produced, as a result, has risen to meet this demand. As noted earlier in this chapter, prolific newspaper columnist Mike Royko produced five columns per week during the 1960s. Today, the political blogger Andrew Sullivan writes constant blog posts each week, in addition to many stories for a number of different magazines.

Journalism is expensive to research, fact-check, and report. With the increase in the amount of news being produced and the move to a 24-hour news cycle, the type of news written, its accuracy, and its distribution has changed. Traditional journalism has been largely replaced by interviews, commentaries, and opinion, which is cheaper than investigatory journalism and on-the-ground reporting.