Monday, June 09, 2014

Will traditional media and new media be a long-standing marriage?


Everybody knows how digital marketing has changed the industry. How social media now is considered a must-used channel of communication through which, if used correctly, could define the success of your product or campaign.

However, let me just point out the obvious examples, to open up for what I believe will be the new trends to come in 2015.

·      Television Show Ratings Are Easier to Gather
      Starting with the simplest and most explicit way, Digital Media changed Television, the way Nielsen use to track and measure TV ratings has changed dramatically. In the past, Nielsen and others use to sent out surveys on which they will based their ratings results. Although this method is still used today, Digital and Social Media has strongly influenced on how TV shows are being measured. Surveys are done online, Facebook turned into a trustworthy source of fans, YouTube and Twitter helped the shows (and the commercials on it) to go viral, just to name a few new avenues.

·      Did you miss a show?
What happened to the habit of recording shows whenever we did not have a chance to watch it on TV? Definitely gone…
Despite TV regulations, the majority of the TV shows, now stream their past shows through out different new digital channels: YouTube, Netflix just to name a couple.

·      Live conversations while watching the show?
Again, why wait to those Monday morning conversations about the show, if you can create them while you are watching them!?

TV Shows now can became extremely popular if they use correctly their social media platforms. Twitter has definitely influenced Television too! TV shows, can take advantage to engage with their viewers during the streaming of the show! Television networks are taking advantage of this large market to engage with their fans by displaying hastags somewhere in the screen, so fans can easily get on twitter and see what others are saying about the show. Even the actors are sometimes involved, and fans can interact with them.

·      Facebook a great tool for Fans
When it comes to influence TV, Facebook is one of the highest used social media platforms. Almost all TV shows have their own Facebook page, where fans can interact and find out more information about the show and actors, get the latest info on recent episodes or episodes to come, and even participate on contests about the show. It is another great way to engage with the viewers, and make your show viral (when any fan likes a show, all of his/her friends sees it.

·      YouTube a third player that benefits the TV Shows in many ways.
YouTube influenced TV providing them the chance to expand their audience, keep engaged those who missed some episode, and even generate more revenues from commercials.
For any brand, to place an ad on a popular TV Show YouTube channel is always a great opportunity to turn the commercial itself into a viral trend. It is also a great advertising strategy for the TV Show since, if the commercial is good, it could get people to remember a show more.
At the end of the day, the goal of an advertising campaign is no longer just to advertise products, but also to create a loyal fan base on social media!

These are just a few and most significant examples of how digital media influenced Television, and revolutionize the way viewers consume it in the past few years. However, what’s next? How are consumers changing, and how traditional and new media will meet to respond to a more demanding and “anarchical” way of consuming content?

Here are some of the trends that I believe will take another turn on how traditional media and content generators will be forced to adjust and adapt in order to either survive or make the most out of them.

·      Business Disruption – it will definitely keep on going. There is no reason to believe that social media is
    done in terms of changing the traditional way of doing things.
·      Content Curation – we’ve seen some during the past couple of years, but I believe this will keep
     growing, and Media companies will focus even more on being generously useful, which will turn into
     customer’s loyalty.
·      Social Media Diversification – and it is related to the previous trend. Niche is no longer perceived as
    “small group of people with a particular interest”. Media Companies consider "specialization" the new way of engaging with users, and it will open up a lot of opportunities to re-marketing and re-targeting your marketing efforts (which will no longer considered a failure)
·      Digital “immigrants” – consider those companies who had not been big on digital yet, and will step in
     with an array of new ideas and trends. Also think of those companies from all over the world, who are
     winning their markets and competing with what we once considered the “only players” in the field.
·      Pre-visualization efforts” – companies and specially traditional media, will build up teams who will be able to cerate visualizations about consumption after a change has disrupted the industry (widely based on experimental facts)

Overall, the big question I believe it will be how traditional media will work out their challenges to make themselves interesting enough to avoid their rupture/divorce with the new channels of communication? and eventually show their consumers that they still are a happily married couple. 

Sources:

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