Can We Teach an Old Media New Tricks?

It seems that traditional media has learned a little over the past 15 years with the announcement that The Washington Post Company has officially launched its full-service Facebook marketing and advertising agency, SocialCode. The agency will offer page management, app development, social commerce, fan monetization, message testing, and advertising through Facebook’s ads, but it is still a large vessel and is moving slowly. All forms of marketing can be considered to complement each other because they do! But owners of large media groups tend to look at just about all marketing as competition! In the early to mid-90s, the print media developed a better relationship with the Internet, much like they have it today; I guess a few more papers would be in business today. Now, here comes Social Media. The Washington Post wisely jumps into play and creates revenue opportunities and streams today that, if they waited another two years, probably won’t exist, or at least on a much smaller level. A year ago, I listened to an online radio station from a radio group I once worked for and wondered why they were not embracing social media. They wouldn’t have had to do much at that point. Their clients felt that social media was important enough to take valuable time in their radio spot to ask the listener to follow them on Facebook. Still, it seemed that most GMs of local stations in mid to small markets just ignored that it exists. A few good ideas about how the two could work well together came to mind. Like most things, first in has the best chance to win, and which of the big traditional media platforms was going to embrace social media? Social or traditional media should be a little ahead of the curve. I can’t believe I still see some local radio stations without Facebook pages. Is it the attitude that if we don’t play in it,  then it doesn’t exist? Sorry guys, as much as you would like it to work that way, it doesn’t! I now have optimism in seeing so much potential that traditional media can have working social media with all the commonalities they genuinely share. I received a call from a GM that I know this week who wanted to talk about how to use social media for radio stations; not only that, but he was asking the right questions about how the two mediums could play together and that they (the radio stations) have to have something to offer social media. “How could we help our clients with their endeavor and at the same time maybe be able to create a small revenue stream for ourselves?” I was excited. There are many good ways that media can work together instead of always opposing one another. Together, we’re more brilliant, and in marketing, the wiser we are, the better results our clients get!!