Does Social Media Exist?!

The conclusion to an abstract in the Journal of Advertising reads ‘there is no such thing as “social media”’. This is a rather curious conclusion from a paper that is really about the effect of advertising on different social media platforms.

This is actually an important paper. Many within marketing (including me) tend to focus attention on producing content that will represent the brand and encourage a specific reaction – often resulting in a conversion of some kind. This article however explains that the perception of content is in part determined by the platform it appears on. For example, those of us who focus on using psychological principles borrowed from behavioural economics actually need to consider that the effectiveness of these principles may not be uniform.

For a marketer, this research is a crucial lesson in why we should avoid a blanket approach to advertising. Placing the same advert on multiple platforms may ensure consistency of message, but it is also likely to be inefficient if engagement levels vary.

In truth there is no one-size-fits-all approach for digital marketing. In fact, the very ability to tailor content to suit different platforms and audiences (perhaps even different personalities) is one of the great benefits of the digital revolution to marketers. Social media remains a valid term to describe the platforms that emerged from Web 2.0, just as newspapers is a good term to describe daily written news. However, just as we acknowledge that The Sun is different to The Guardian, we also need to recognise differences between each social medium.

#socialmedia