Media Fragmentation, It Always Seems To Happen

How much has social media fragmentation affected your audience, and at what cost? Traditional media tries to entertain an audience and keep it so they can then sell advertising within that form of entertainment. While the programming and editorial content have become corporate blah, for the most part, audiences have rushed over to other venues as their form of entertainment, namely forms of social media. If you’re a local business that has relied on traditional media as the way you share your image, brand, or sale, how with the masses, much time has been sucked away from the conventional media platform that you use? We’ve all seen the numbers of people and how much time is spent on social media. I always ask people, “Where do they get the time?” Individuals spending time with social media don’t just appear out of thin air; that time has to come away from something, somewhere. I would guess that a significant amount is coming from traditional media at the expense of some local businesses. Social media is great, I use it, I dedicate time to it personally and professionally, most of the time that social media occupies today is at the sacrifice of traditional media.  Not one, in particular, just a combination of them, mostly because I enjoy to content and find the information more valuable through social media. So what does the local business owner do?  Traditional media isn’t going to get any better.  Just talk to an old newspaper veteran, or someone from TV back when there were only three stations, or a person from radio when there were no duplicated formats in a market.  Media fragmentation has occurred — irrevocably, and it’s ok, it makes it more difficult for the local business owner as if today’s economy isn’t enough to deal with.  It makes a lot of our jobs more challenging, but how much fun would our lives be without any challenges!