In the Archaic Days

Information Technology , seminars, and even university studies showed you everything about the web 2.0 craze.

How Have We Improved Since Then?

I use to anticipate a great shift from web 2.0, I’d look at social media as a fresh step.  greatly changed my thoughts on the Web 2.0 craze, about social media, networks, and the like. However, to re-cap on this subject, I must question if there really is a drastic movement, or if not will it be soon to come.

In my wriiting, I talked about how Social Media and Web 2.O are two very misconceived terms. I stated that I tend to agree with Sir Tim Burns Lee. I even stated that this is something I thought about in web 1.O. I thought there would be a change in the world.

Did it Happen?

Tim Berners-Lee, in that since the beginning of the World Wide Web his intention was to create a new level of interactivity on the internet, so there really is nothing new about Web 2.0. I also argued that it is not a business revolution, because PPC ads are still the back bone of online marketing, and they have existed since the dotcom bubble. But, now I see other aspects of Social Media that are a business revolution.

What I’m Looking For

Directly referencing the following thesis (to follow-up my recent thoughts).

“New Media today is essentially no different from forms of media in the past such as radio or television. The only difference now is that there is a sort of placebo effect that the author is talking back to the mass audience. While at the same time Social Media, as a platform for communication, forces people to interact with advertisements in a way that has never been reached by any other form of media in the past.”

However, after writing the essay, and now through post-analysis I still see that this ‘pretend cynicism’ only made me appreciate social media (as an online marketer) more than I ever have before, but as a marketer, and not for your out of the box reasons. When you think about this concept long enough, at least from the advertisers stand point, you might catch yourself thinking “this isn’t that bad; on the other hand it’s great”! ;Social Media – Reality, allowed me to take a glimpse at this, and what I discovered through the creative process, opened the door to know thoughts.

Maybe this is the first time you’ve discovered what social media really is, or perhaps you can now start to see from a different perspective, on a more exegetical level.

Maybe you can relate to these ideas as an advertiser. Any analyst today would agree that pay-per-click ads are your least expensive form of media. But do you really know why?

Regardless as to whether social networks use pay-per-click ads or not, these advertisements still become more of an individuals (or group of people in a specific locals) conversation than any other form of media has achieved before.

Social media;

A spreading and contagious breeding ground for media on a post level.

Even offline advertisements benefit from social media. Revenue from it is spurred from social discussions and direct brand searches

How Much Media Share is Reached ?

Ads across the world wide web are a growing percentage of media viewership, and discussion spurred through social networks is at least 12 – 18% of brand awareness, and is the only source of what advertisers are seeing for the first time; Free Post Media.

For instance, if someone sees a paid advertisement on Facebook   he/she is much more prone to start talking about it with your friends than if you they it on television or the radio, because unlike your car passenger or your Football Sunday bud, you already are socializing with the world at your disposal.

The great benefit of social media is that even more so than any other channel on-line, you do not have to really on their paid advertisements for 100% media branding you just need to perpetuate it. Continuing with Facebook as an example, advertisements can take the forms of free widgets, groups, events, or fan pages. Social Media is most commonly associated with posting comments and discussions on forums and various blogs. The term is often associated with viral marketing, in which discussions about products are generated across web pages. When people communicate about these products through commenting, in the long run it is very little cost to the advertiser, outside of set up, ghost writers, and your commitment to standing behind your brands reputation.

I doubt Sir Time Berners-Lee ever envisioned the web to take on the form of interactivity it has between the consumer and the advertiser. He probably never considered websites like Facebook to become as popular as they are, and that online-marketers would never take advantage of these platforms.

So perhaps social media does deserve being termed as a new bubble; Web 2.0. [This is what I use to believe, this is what corporate educational institutions in the United States made me believe, this is what society makes you believe, this is what the placebo effect is... ] .

More and more every day, people are replacing verbal conversations in person, or even over phone to using online messaging or SMS features, with social networks such as Facebook or Twitter. Increasingly, people also read articles and watch clips online, and almost always on the bottom of the page will be an area to comment your opinion and rate the product. There is more and more engagement with products, news, etcetera between the viewer and the author.

In the referring essay, I described this conversation with the audience as a placebo effect, because when you comment back to the reader it gives the impression that there is a more personal relationship. Although there may not be any real personal connection between the two, this is a much more profitable approach to marketing than has ever existed. People talk more about a product, and do so with each other, more than ever before.

Most websites with forms and discussion boards will also integrate a way to social share their own websites, which further engages the audience to the material, by encouraging consumers to continue discussing a product on social networks. Using Facebook as an example again, the product can be posted to people’s personal profiles, where their friends can make comments and rate it. This clearly exemplifies the new involvement advertisers have in people’s personal lives and interaction between friends.

Social monitoring becomes increasingly important in measuring the effectively in which people communicate about a product.

It’s increasing.
Application, after application, after application will continue, until you are unable to differentiate them to a common like page. Social networks will continue to evolve, and tracking will become more and more integrated.

Advertisers and Marketers continue to harness new types of social engagement and brand measuring. Of course all of this allows for advertisers to continue discussions that people are having about what is being advertised. These tools enhance the placebo effect I described in my essay, in that it creates a sense that there is a real connection and way to communicate their opinion back to the author, because the author is always able to respond. Before Web 2.0, this relationship with the consumer did not exist.

So in a way, I do think that this new wave of social media is a business revolution to advertisers. Although the technology for this high level of interactivity has existed since the invention of the World Wide Web, the relationship between consumers and advertisers has changed a lot with the increased popularity of social networks and commenting. And, although pay-per-click advertisements have existed prior to the term web 2.0, these have never had as much effectively as they have now.