Old ways advertising VS. New social media

Looking back on how the marketers did advertising, got me thinking what really differentiate the old advertising and the new social media.

Old marketing communication used to give all information about the brand, product, company through many media to the audience. Is it only about pitching the information? Do marketers listen after they pitch all the information to the consumer? How do they listen? No. Yes. They listen in a hard way. Marketers need to analyse the data of people viewing, assume all the possibilities that can be thought by the audience, summarise the findings and take an action for it. How on earth could a man possibly knows what other man thought by using data? I most certainly could not. Therefore, marketers can only assume and sometimes assumptions are wrong- and that costs a lot of money. ( Coca Cola's taste case ) That's the biggie issues for doing the old marketing communication.

On the other hand, new social media offers what we all need, the platform to communicate. In the case of Obama campaign, they used social media to create its brand buzz and also as a platform to listen to its audience input. I sort of think that the really standing out features that social media offers is the consumer-centric communication. Consumer-centric communication means that a communication which are driven by the consumer participation ( where consumer can show their expression for the brand, two way communication emphasising on consumers ) whereas in the old kind of marketing communication, the marketing communication emphasises on the company rather than the consumers. Therefore, in social media, it creates the brand advocacy which made from the buzzes that derived from consumer discussion and drives the marketers to listen and do the action according to what the consumer said.

While the old marketing communication enforces the information that the brand want to pitch to the people ( company likes to exaggerate which sometimes made people hard to believe-too good to be true ), social media gives the WOM which are derived from real experience from consumers themselves. Therefore, social media have the advantages as it could enforces a brand advocacy that serves as WOM which suits all kind of users ( all kinds of consumers buyer readiness level )

Having said that, a brand could just pitch all the good information and gives the best buying experience to their loyal customers, and they will automatically made a good WOM statement and encouragement to the other users to buy the brand. That's the WANTED achievements.

Talking about social media as the marketing communication, according to MerchantCircle , social networking is the most used tool for a small business marketing communication strategy. Do you agree that small business should have the Facebook fan page or other social networking profile?