Many of you may have heard that markets across the globe are fracturing into ever finer segments. You may have also heard that this is been driven by the rise of social media.
But if people are getting together to discuss specific interests and this is leading to an emergence of ‘new markets’ to emerge then surely these interest groups must must have existed already. It just we didn’t know about them. So in this sense social media doesn’t ‘create’ new markets and market segments. It just identifies them.
The mountain of data that social media produces can now shine a light on who these people are, and what they like. And voila – we have new identifiable and serviceable markets.
Want to grow in this brave new world? Then learn to collect and read the data and then use the tools to communicate with them as they progress down the path towards making a purchasing decision.
All the tools are there and the people are waiting.
A great article from the examiner.com explores the rise of social platforms in 2009:
“Social media hit a tipping point in 2009 as sites like Facebook and YouTube increased their presence in mainstream media while sites like Twitter and Digg emerged. On top of the obvious, thousands of new and legitimate social media websites hit the scene with hopes of being the “next big thing”.
While most credit and attention are being given to Facebook for unofficially winning the social networking battle with MySpace, Bebo, and others, Twitter and Digg were the real winners in 2009 for very different reasons.”
I read an article from The Baltomore Sun today that very quickly showed that large companies are really starting to understand the potential of social media.
It said:
“Before the latest social media revolution, Jessica Gottlieb would have probably watched helplessly when her kids, Jane and Alexander, were trapped on the tarmac, waiting for their Virgin America flight to take off.
But that’s so 2008. When it happened to her last week, the Los Angeles-based blogger reached for her iPhone and twittered about her troubles. “Dear Virgin Air,” she wrote. “My children have been on the tarmac for one hour with 90 more minutes to wait. I am at JFK gate b25. Pls RT.”
That last request — please “RT” — is shorthand for Gottlieb’s nearly 10,000 followers to “retweet” her message, or rebroadcast it to their followers. And re-tweet they did. Within minutes, Virgin had phoned Gottlieb to reassure her that her kids would be fine.
“They contacted the gate agent manager and explained to us the entire weather situation,” she says. “Within 20 minutes of that conversation, the plane took off.”
The same forces that threaten to unravel a repressive Iranian regime are revolutionizing the way Americans travel. Social media sites that allow people to interact in the moment are changing how travel companies talk to their customers — and how their customers talk back. ”
Social media is everywhere. There is a huge amount of talk about Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, Skype, Ning and all the other platforms out there.
If it all seems like some crazy fad, think again. The human race is built on social interaction. We evolved to communicate with each other. Being social is what the world wants.
Well everything is about to change. The power-house that is Google has been noticeably quiet in the social media space, apart from buying YouTube and Blogger, for quite some time. No more. They are about to release the killer app. It’s called Waves and it is going to turbo boost social networking. The future is almost here!
The video below is quite long but if you want to know where the world is going to be in less than a year I recommend you look at it.
“This one has been developing for some time now right before our eyes, but the titanic nature of the faceoff between what are arguably the two most aggressive representatives of Web 2.0 — Facebook and Twitter — has only recently heated up to the boiling point.
As Brad Stone, of The New York Times, observed this weekend, Facebook’s leaders have recently taken the bold step of providing “a set of technology tools that will let other companies create programs that tap into the heart of the social network — the endless stream of photographs, status updates and comments that people post to the service.”
In doing so, Facebook is trying to catch up to Twitter, which already allows outsiders to have their way with its interface and its content.
Stay tuned. This battle promises to be the best since Microsoft and Netscape squared off in the browser wars a decade or more ago.”
“As Owen Van Natta, the new chief executive of MySpace, starts his second week at the sprawling social network , he faces an acute demographic problem.
While Facebook is adding users, MySpace is losing them. Many user profile pages on MySpace are either cluttered or neglected, resembling a strip mall with pockets of empty storefronts. The users who remain tend to be younger and poorer, putting a drag on advertising revenue from blue-chip clients.”
Recent article from the Chicago Tribune (April 27, 2009)
“While just a few years ago the mediums were associated with the teenage and 20-something sets, that’s changed. Two-thirds of all online users visit social networks and blogs, according to data from Nielsen Online. And the largest growth in social media users last year came from the 35- to 49-year-old group.
With the average age of its readers approaching 40, BradsDeals.com didn’t consider social media the best fit until this year.
“When we started on Facebook a few weeks ago, I wasn’t sure we were going to connect with people because our demographic is older,” said Brad Wilson, founder and editor in chief, who also began using Twitter recently.
The company has attracted 2,500 followers through Twitter since March 1 and nabbed 1,200 Facebook users since launching a fan page this month. Now, traffic to BradsDeals.com is streaming in at more than 1 million hits a month, up 150 percent from a year ago, Wilson said, adding that consumers’ focus on frugality also factors into the site’s growth.”
We’re not going to pretend that we know everything about newspapers. Nor are we saying we can somehow magically see into the future. But some things just seem obvious to us. Let us know what you think.
He said that he was ‘mad as hell’ at what he saw as intellectual property theft.
News aggregators like The Huffington Post and Google News recently came under fire from Dean Singleton, the chairman of Associated Press. He said that he was ‘mad as hell’ at what he saw as intellectual property theft. From Mr Singleton’s point of view social networking and search engines are killing the newspaper industry. He sees a future where people pay to log on to their content and other sites pay to link to their articles. Unfortunately for him this attitude is going to put him off side with a large portion of his potential market.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently told the Newspaper Association of America that newspapers were very close to committing suicide by alienating their online customers, the fastest growing segment. What’s more a recent study showed that the generation who grew up with Google and Facebook love news aggregators and free news. The study says “Not only are teens not rushing to pay for content but they also struggle to envision in what realm they would need to pay for content…. Ask teens where they find news, and they typically say Yahoo!, Google, AOL or MSN”.
Frankly it sounds like newspapers struggle to understand the opportunities and rules that govern the online world. There is a whole generation that has grown up with the concept of freemium economics. Try to charge them for something they have always had for free and you’ll lose them altogether.
They need to remember that their main customers are advertisers.
Newspapers are in the business of collecting and delivering information. They have to be agnostic and flexible about the method of delivery if they are to avoid being trapped in outdated and inefficient channels. The old model of monetising this information is on the way out. Even the term “newspaper” is starting to sound like a relic. They need to remember that their main customers are advertisers. If they embrace the new mindset and employ direct marketing principles there is a world of new commercial opportunities out there.
Here’s what we think hold the most amount of promise:
1 – More engaging advertising
One of the most difficult transitions for newspapers going online has been understanding how to sell advertising space online. Banners are OK but many of them are just annoying and get ignored.
Newsprint was a simple platform that advertisers could use to get a message out. Online newspapers need to create a new advertising platform. Develop a collection of tools that not only track users behaviour but allow advertisers to sell their products more easily.
Currently many advertisers create landing pages for banner ads. These pages pass on detailed information, get users to sign up or even make a sale.
If the digital arm of a newspaper were to develop easy to manage tools that allowed advertisers to perform these tasks, thus reducing the overall campaign cost and timeframe, advertisers would be over the moon.
Not so long ago we developed an online application for the Herald Sun’s sponsorship of the Melbourne Marathon. This application, utilising RFID technology, allowed each and every runner to see a video of themselves. With a bit more development time could have added targeted advertising to this type of application and created a platform that could be used for multiple events.
It is this type of thinking that advertisers are looking for.
2 – Utilise the Twitternet
Micro-blogging is here to stay. Twitter is currently the market leader in this space but who knows what will happen in the coming years. What’s certain is that 2009 is going to see the tipping point for Twitter. Well worded headlines can easily drive traffic to the source of the news. Again, The New York Times is already doing this. When this article was written the Times had more than 500,000 followers and this number will keep rising.
There are huge opportunities here to increase overall traffic.
There are huge opportunities here to increase overall traffic. Twitter lets people connect with ideas and information, and ideas and information are what news sources are all about.
3 – Realise that the brand is a social centre
Newspapers are brands with a customer base that identifies with it like any other brand. More than ever newspapers need to remember that fact and learn to leverage it. Connecting with local communities and encouraging them to add content.
Currently many online newspapers are concerned about moderating any user generated content and create rules and dedicate resources to achieving that end. An alternative and much better approach is to get other members of that community to vote on comments or images. Sites like ‘Digg’ do this very well. If a user posts an abusive remark it is very quickly voted out of the time line. Recently President Obama launched a website that did just that. Read more about it here.
This influx of user generated content can then be monetised. The Cincinnati Enquirer has a site that does this. CaptureCincinnati.com is a user generated photo sharing site. They have been selling a coffee table book and a DVD of this content and expect it’s popularity to continue to be strong. There could even be the possibility of users ordering photos to make a customised book through the site.
An online community based around a newspaper brand is a fruit ripe for the picking.
An online community based around a newspaper brand is a fruit ripe for the picking. You only have to look at the comments on any news site to see how eager the audience is to get involved.
4 – Personalisation
Some websites get it right but many don’t. Personalisation on the web is huge and is only going to get bigger. Google has a product called ‘iGoogle‘ that let’s you personalise a page. Stuff.co.nz is a news site that lets you order some elements of the page. Underlying these examples is an understanding that the end user has specific interests that they want information about. News site are uniquely positioned to be able to deliver that information in a very targeted way. If they focus on user experience people will flock to their sites.
BBC.co.uk have made an admirable effort with their widgetised home page, taking more than a hint of inspiration from iGoogle. You can drag the sections around, customise them a little, and add more from other areas of the site. However it’s only skin deep. The big leap will be developing this idea to a point where users have control over the whole experience, not just what they find on the home page.
5 – Open up even more
APIs or application programming interfaces are driving the progress of the web, and newspapers need to embrace them. APIs allow third party developers to connect to websites and deliver customised content. I know this sounds counter-intuitive but it is already being done. The New York Times Developer Network allows developers to create applications that deliver their content to the end user.
What The Times has realised, that many other news sources have failed to do, is that what they really have is an information platform – rather than an online newspaper, or even a website. Giving third party developers access to this opens up opportunities to deliver advertisers messages in a more direct way, allowing them to increase the size and value of their user database and cut down the cost of developing their own applications by only partnering with developers that get the formula right.
6 – Change the printed material
The news media industry is in transition, one day printed newspapers will be history. The industry needs to think very carefully about how they structure and deliver printed matter now and in the future. Design is paramount. The customer now has a choice. It’s time to respect that choice.
I think this recent TED talk demonstrates the proposition very well.
