3 Statements About Digital Media That Needed To Stop Yesterday

#1: “Everyone should be on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus and…”

No. They shouldn’t. Every brand is different. With different audiences, goals, budgets and more. When you visit a physician, do you want him or her to tell what you should do without examining you and understanding your symptoms?

This is an irresponsible statement to be making before getting to know a business and it puts tactics before strategy. But it sounds really authoritative and all-knowing in a speaking engagement so people say it for some reason. Stop doing that.
 

#2: “I heard that young people are leaving Facebook.”

Not entirely true. Let me ask you a hypothetical: If you built up a social media channel so that its membership was equivalent to the 4th largest country in the world…you’d eventually reach a point where you’d top off and lose some members, right? 

It’s just inevitable. You’d be so big that the only way to grow would be to conquer another planet with similar life forms because most of the ones on this world would be that much on board with your offering.

In other words, in the context of things, Facebook is still pretty damn big.

Plus, I do not see any convincing data that supports the idea that “young people” are leaving Facebook in droves.

By the way, are we quantifying age groups here? Because there are a couple of them that could technically be considered “young.” So your teen is on Snapchat. Is your son or daughter someone who makes buying decisions for a particular brand and does that apply? Not sure? Then don’t say something that’s not true for every brand. 

Again, it’s one of those blanket statements that’s tossed out there without concrete facts and then picked up by someone else as The Truth Because I Heard It. It would be silly if it weren’t so dangerous. 

Here’s the thing: Everything we’ve known about marketing in an online sense is that when it comes to online tools and trends, they’re always evolving. So what you heard 6 months ago may not apply 6 months from now. And falling in love with shiny tools before you even know what your message should be and who should be hearing it isn’t a good idea anyway. Change is a constant.

 
#3: “(Newspapers/SEO/Media Choice Of The Month To Pick On) Is Dead.”

Ah yes. The “death proclamation.” I can’t stand statements like these because most, if not all of the time, it isn’t true.

SEO gets the brunt of this. SEO isn’t dead and there’s no evidence to suggest it will be anytime soon. Partially because as smart as Google can seem, it still needs a lot of help to understand your intent in a search. It’s not a mind reading search engine.

Print? Radio? TV? Gosh, here’s a weird thing – people are still consuming content and not throwing out their TVs, canceling their subscriptions or pretending there isn’t a radio in their vehicle. It’s still present even as we’re shifting. Does that mean your brand should consider those mediums? Not until you’ve planned your strategy and done research.

See, it’s important to take a step back and remember that what we’re seeing isn’t a flat-out disappearance but rather the content itself is moving and evolving to a new location for that same kind of content to be consumed – it’s not “dead” and there’s a difference.

For example, we’ve long heard newspapers are dead. Yes, the print versions are taking it hard. That’s absolutely true. But do people still crave content in electronic form by a newspaper to be consumed on their tablets and smartphones? Yes. Is the content good quality? Then people will go to it. It’s just in a different place to adapt to the digital times we live in. We still consume the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, etc. And if those papers don’t live up to having high quality standards for content? We’ll find another location to deliver what we want but we won’t abandon the medium altogether.

There’s still going to be a ravenous demand for good quality pieces that resonate with an audience. Plus, as journalistic posts integrate even more with social media, that content is going to become more shareable and powerful than ever.

The race to make statements in such absolutes
about digital media needs to stop.
We will always have a whole lot of charts, graphs and data that are immensely valuable to our insight. But we have to take it further than accepting it at face value and reference against what we’re trying to accomplish for each of our individual brands. We’re only going to become more customized and personalized from here. Let’s act like that development is coming rather than assuming one size fits all for every trend. Our clients will be able to make decisions with better intelligence for it.

As Chief Executive Officer of Caliber Brand Strategy + Content Marketing, Dan Gershenson consults for both businesses and advertising agencies who have no time, resources or both to create high quality, compelling content on behalf of their brands (or their client's brand). This content can be virtually anything from blogs and White Papers to social media channel posts and eNewsletters. For the last 20 years, he has been a Copywriter, Creative Director and agency Owner.