Thank goodness—because there are a lot of them. Wikipedia lists about 200 of the most popular sites, from Facbook to iWiW (it’s big in Hungary) to My Opera (the performance, not the web browser).

What’s scary is that list is woefully incomplete, and more sites are being added every day. And what’s very real is that there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to stay meaningfully engaged in more than a small selection of these sites without giving up on your core business altogether.

Graphic by www.sironaconsulting.com/

Writers and communicators of all kinds are always taught to consider their audience. And Niles agrees. “I’m a big believer in meeting your audience where they are at, and of serving their needs using the tools most convenient for them,” he says.

At Trade Press Services, we successfully create and place bylined articles in the trade publications and on the websites that your customers read. It’s common sense, right? For some reason, this same common sense hasn’t translated over to social media, where too many companies and writers chase social media like a dog chasing its tail.

Question one for anyone using social media should be “Who is my audience?” followed immediately by, “Which social media sites do they use?” While Facebook and Twitter are general sites for most any audience, there are dozens of other venues that cater to your company’s specific niche, or your audience as a writer or blogger. And many of your customers will be using multiples sites within that same niche.

As Niles says, “It might be that if one video service, or one metrics tool, or one microblogging platform works well for you, so you don’t need to spend any time duplicating your efforts with someone else’s. There’s no point in using three different services to reach the same thousand users on each.”

Above all, find what works for your needs and your audience. If something provides results, stick with it. If it doesn’t, don’t feel an obligation to continue with what is a likely waste of your time. As Niles concludes, “It’s not your job to build someone else’s social network or publishing tool.”

If you’d like to help your company find its social media niche, contact Trade Press Services at (805) 496-8850 or e-mail gerri@tradepressservices.com.

Here are a few possible answers:

1. Push media is so dominant that the push vs. pull dichotomy is no longer valid.

2. Pull media is so dominant that the push vs. pull dichotomy is no longer valid.

3. The line between push and pull media has blurred to the point of making the dichotomy meaningless.

I think that answer number three is correct, although arguments can be made for all three options. Push media is definitely as strong as ever. We’re hit with 24-7 cable news, hundreds of digital TV channels, satellite and internet radio. There are no shortages of choices of media waiting to ram themselves down your gullet if given the chance.

On the other hand, pull media, which I would say includes social media like Facebook and Google+, is even more pervasive. I would label these social networking sites “pull” because they require interactivity on the part of the participant.

But what I believe is really happening is that push and pull media have merged. One seeks to draw you into the other in a vicious cycle of online, continual connectivity. For example, television (push) encourages you to follow along with a TV show on Twitter (pull), while Twitter (pull) sends out reminders of when a TED talk is airing live (push…unless the TED talk allows for real-time audience interaction, in which case it’s pull).

The whole thing is a bit much if you ask me. We’ve long since entered an era of media overload. People ask, “Are you using Google+?” and the most common answer is, “Who has time for more social media?”

I sense a backlash against all this interactivity rising. Decision-makers don’t have time to surf your YouTube channel or follow your every tweet. Here comes the disclaimer: That’s not to say social media isn’t important, of course. But there is a real sense that, at least at the upper levels of decision-making within an organization, pull media like magazines, white papers, journals and websites are what people rely on to make solid business decisions.

Niles argues that journalists must adopt a kind of “scientific method” for reporting news that includes not only testing and verification to make certain journalists have their facts straight, but peer review as well. Peer review, in which the editors of say, the esteemed journal Nature put a scientist’s research through the ringer before they’ll publish it, is sadly missing in journalism today.

At one point in the past, it wasn’t necessary. Respected news sources like the major TV networks were taken at face value, as were newspapers like the Washington Post or Los Angeles Times. However, we live in an age in which the news media is slave first to ratings and sales and then to reporting the news. Fox News castigates the “mainstream” media for telling a slanted story, hoping to draw viewers who distrust what they perceive as news sources that have a political agenda that doesn’t mesh with their own. AM talk radio stations serve as the more conservative counter to public radio broadcasts, which is seen as a left-wing vehicle. Those of us left wanting “the facts” are forced to turn to the BBC, which we hope doesn’t have a stake in American politics or are forced to scratch our heads and wonder whose news is the real news, and whose is distorted and slanted. Throw in “iReports,” social media and amateur journalism, and who knows where the truth lies.

Niles is right when he calls for the news media to serve as an arbiter as what’s true and what’s bunk. Some websites fill this role today: politifact.com, for example, which is run by the St. Petersburg Times. However, those websites can be dismissed as slanted toward one side or another, or at least accused of such, and often an accusation is as good as committing the crime.

New York's General Electric building

So what can be done? A new model that is emerging in the media is the non-profit news source. This model solves two problems: first, it helps to fund what the free market won’t, thanks to Craigslist and other services that have zapped newspaper advertising revenues. Secondly, it can, if done properly, become an impartial news source. To achieve this, a non-profit news source should a) not accept any donations over a certain level (maybe $5,000) and, b) publish an on-going list of its donors so that readers can see who funds the news source and who presumably might be biasing it with their dollars.

By limiting donations and ensuring transparency, these news sources can reduce the impact of big corporations, PACS and lobbyists, which all play a huge role in decision-making in this country today. It puts the onus of funding the news source on “we the people”, and not on GE (parent company of NBC), NewsCorp (Fox), Disney (ABC), Gannett, McClatchy, Tribune or anyone else. Maybe we can’t trust the corporations—but if we can’t trust ourselves to fund truly “fair and balanced” news sources with millions of small donations from the people themselves, then who can we trust?

AdAge has been tracking media usage by way of the Mendelsohn Affluent Barometer, a survey of wealthy Americans (in this case, those making above $100,000 a year in household income) conducted by market research company Ipsos. It turns out that wealthier Americans use mostly traditional media: newspapers, magazines, and TV.

Source: http://adage.com/article/adagestat/affluent-americans-print-media-tops/229002/

The obvious first reaction is to say that most affluent Americans are likely to be older, more advanced in their careers and therefore earning more money. And these same older Americans are less likely to grab the latest app for an Android instead of picking up the newspaper off the porch. However, when AdAge examined media consumption among young affluents (ages 18-34), the numbers weren’t all that different:

Source: http://adage.com/article/adagestat/affluent-americans-print-media-tops/229002/

So what gives? Why would wealthy people—young or old—cling so strongly to traditional media? I can picture a young lawyer being the subject of some ribbing from the senior partners at a stuffy law firm as he checks stock quotes on his iPhone or a 30-something banker feeling like she needs the print copy of the Wall Street Journal under her arm in the morning to feel dressed. And maybe that’s the kind of thing that’s going on—young affluents model themselves after old affluents and are less likely to be found reading Slate on their tablet at the local coffeehouse.

Without some comparison data of young and old “less-than-affluents,” it’s really hard to say. But what we can take from this data is that the death of traditional media hasn’t happened just yet, at least not among the wealthy.

Google has released “Google+” (let’s call it “Google Plus”), which is supposed to be the Facebook killer that isn’t really a Facebook killer. It’s supposed to be a better way to share, connect and hangout with others online—even people who don’t sign up for Google+.

The reality is, it’s difficult to know what it really is. Google+ seems like one of those “some assembly required” toys that kids open on Christmas morning. Circles, Sparks, Photos, Hangouts, Profiles, lions, tigers, bears…

A constant refrain I hear is “I don’t have time for any more social networking.” People are busy enough living their real lives without spending even more time maintaining their virtual ones.

Clearly, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and a few other social networking sites are truly worthwhile and have been proven effective in some circles. But I think we’re reaching a limit beyond which legitimate business people can’t devote any more time to social networking because they have to make sales, move products and sign deals. In other words, do their jobs. Social media is a tool, like a hammer, cell phone or copy machine. When the tool becomes the thing—when the means become more important than the end result—we have a problem.

Never forget that people do business with people and companies that they trust and value. Your company’s social media efforts should be aimed at making your company more important in people’s lives. When customers say “I buy computers from that company because of their great customer service,” then you’ve made your company more than a provider of electronics—it’s become a partner. Your social media should reinforce that goal.

When you find yourself adding yet another social media obligation to your desktop without that purpose in mind, but rather because it’s the next new thing, you’ve lost your way.

So let’s regard this Google+ thing with caution. If it’s worthwhile, let’s go for it. Rumors are, it may be the Facebook we always wanted but couldn’t have. Otherwise, it may be time to draw the line.

Social media? Bah! Humbug!

behind that of their B2C colleagues, according to the report.

For example, 60 percent of B2B marketers have no one on staff dedicated full-time to social media, compared to just 46 percent of B2C marketers. Only 10 percent of B2B marketers had engaged an outside agency for social media marketing, compared to 28 percent of B2C marketers. Most revealing was the level of acceptance of social media among executives: 36 percent of B2B marketers reported low executive interest in social media, compared to just 9 percent among B2C marketers.

This begs the question, why? Here are a few reasons that B2B marketers haven’t fully embraced social media marketing:

• B2B marketers are ROI-driven. A B2B sale can be literally years in the making, involving strategic organizational decisions and budgeting on the part of the buyer, as well as significant investment of the part of the marketer. The stakes are too high to gamble in a field where ROI has proven especially hard to determine.
• Likewise, B2C decisions are emotional, while B2B are logical. A tweet may drive thousands of consumers to impulsively download the latest hit pop song from iTunes, but it’s unlikely to sell an enterprise solution to a major manufacturing company.
• It’s generational. Social media is still largely a youth-driven phenomenon. As more top executives retire and are replaced by marketers who have long embraced social media as a part of their lives, you may see B2B marketers embrace social media more consistently.
• B2B marketing isn’t brand-driven. B2B companies are often entrenched in a niche in which there may be relatively few players, compared to a typical B2C industry. Therefore, social media’s role as an effective brand promoter is not as effective.

White Horse provides a spot-on summary of the state of B2B and social media by stating that the end result for B2B and social media will be a happy marriage of new and traditional marketing methods:

“We believe strongly that the ultimate evolutionary stage of social media marketing is its integration with traditional tactics, and B2B marketers are uniquely well-positioned to make this leap. Social tactics align more naturally with highly relationship-driven B2B tactics than they do with awareness-centered B2C tactics.”

Finding a solid answer to this question is not as easy as you’d think. Most of what you’ll find will either justify editorial coverage as “priceless” or claim that it has value that can’t be measured in the same way as the impact of a new piece of equipment or a more fuel-efficient delivery truck.

Still, where there’s a will, there’s a way. A Canadian industry group has come up with a comprehensive standard to judge ROI on media relations efforts: MR2P, the Media Relations Ratings Points system. Designed by the Canadian Public Relations Society‘s Measurement Committee, the program is described in a user manual available from the website:

The MRP (Media Relations Rating Points) system provides communications and marketing professionals with an easy-to-use tool that measures the effectiveness of any public relations campaign. The 10-point rating system can be used for any type of media coverage (i.e. print, TV, radio, online). The MRP system can also be used to measure crisis communications and unplanned media attention after the fact.

The primary objective of the MRP system is to create a standardized reporting mechanism that can be widely accepted and utilized with ease to measure coverage results. This system can be easily customized by Company or by project. MRP provides clear metrics to evaluate media coverage, track total impressions and cost per contact.

Each piece of media coverage is scored on a scale of one to 10. The first five points are for “tone” (with positive tone of the piece in question scoring higher), while the remaining five points are awarded for any of five criteria from a list, including such things as company or brand mention, use of a photo or image, a spokesperson quote, inclusion of the website, a call to action, and others. The total score of a media campaign is the average of the tone score plus the average of the criteria score.

Sounds impressive—but does the system really work? Canadian writer Ben Boudreau appeared satisfied with the system when he evaluated his own PR experiences as a finalist in a Canadian writing contest in 2007; he scored six out of 10 (60 percent). Brendan Hodgson blogs about his company’s use of MR2P when they rolled out a PR campaign for a large client. Their final score: 84 percent.

Hodgson was pleased with the performance, but only because the numbers matched what his clients told him: they were thrilled. My opinion? It’s great that there is a system to quantify PR and media campaign success and ROI. However, it is more important to meet the client’s expectations, whatever they may be. As Hodgson says of their expectations, “If this is how they define success, then run with it.”

on how the Internet is siphoning away readers and advertising dollars from newspapers and magazines. In these commentaries, the Internet is seen as a competitor or replacement for print media—an aggressor that is stealing jobs, putting writers on the street, and sinking levels of journalistic accountability to lows not seen since the days of yellow journalism a century ago.

However, these comparisons are spurious. The Internet is not a competitor or replacement, but rather a medium that is new and revolutionary (even though it’s been a mainstream tool for 15 years or more, its very nature is to continually reinvent itself so as always to appear new). Like other revolutionary technologies before it, it is fundamentally changing the way we live, work and play. It is creating desires, lifestyles, markets and habits that we could not have conceived of until they came about. In the 1960s, the world of tomorrow featured flying cars and robot housekeepers. No one ever predicted that the future would include an interactive world-wide computer network through which we exchange ideas, images, sounds and information. Like a clever Madison Ave. advertising firm, the Internet has us saying “I never knew I wanted this. What did I do before I had the Internet?”

The purpose of magazines and newspapers has never been to put ink on paper. The purpose has always been to convey information, whether that information was entertainment, news or visual information in the form of photography and images. The printed page was simply the best format available. We should use the Internet to achieve that same goal, and it’s a medium ideally suited to that task. But it can’t be achieved by forcing the printed page onto the computer screen, or by cutting and pasting print media’s business models.

However, this is exactly what we have tended to do with each generation of new media. For example, the first television commercials sounded just like the radio commercials of the day, with perhaps a still image of dish soap as the announcer droned on—a far cry from today’s clever and innovative visual displays. It was only when we realized that television was a unique, new medium that we began to utilize it at its maximum potential.

Print media professionals—or should we say information professionals—should stop trying to force their paradigm onto a fundamentally different media, just because both print and online channels share some common building blocks like “words” or “pictures.” They should instead embrace the Internet for what it is—dynamic, vibrant, rapidly changing and unique—and definitely not print. Nevertheless, there will always be an important role for print media, and always a large segment of the population that utilizes it.

Recent studies revealed some interesting facts about the ways in which women use social media.

The “2009 Women and Social Media Study” by BlogHer, iVillage and Compass Partners shows that women make up the majority of participants on many social networking sites, and they were more likely to turn to blogs than social networking sites for information. In addition, women reported spending less time utilizing newspapers, magazines, radio and TV in order to spend more time on social media sites.

The prevalence of women in the social media world is in contrast to their relative scarcity in the world of traditional media. For example, a smaller percentage of women than men read newspapers, despite continual efforts by the newspaper industry to attract the female audience. (See “Newspapers Execs Clueless about What Women Want” for more information and insight.)

The report surveyed nearly 4,000 women ages 18-77. It broke respondents down into two groups, those who did not engage in social media at least weekly (47 percent) and those who did (53 percent). Assuming that there are 79 million women in America who use the Internet, this means that there are about 42 million American women using social media at least once a week. Usage was broken down by type: status updates (e.g., Twitter), 16 percent; message boards or forums, 40 percent; and blogs, 55 percent. The big winners were social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, which claimed 75% of all weekly social media users in the survey, equating to 31.5 million Americans.

Also, an analysis of usage at several popular social media sites by the proprietors of Information is Beautiful using Google Ad Planner shows that women make up the majority of users at most sites (including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and MySpace), represent half the users at some (such as YouTube and LinkedIn), and are in the minority only at one: Digg.

What does all this mean? First, there is something drawing women to social media that is not drawing, and has never drawn them to traditional media. Without engaging in pop psychology or resorting to stereotypes, it could be that because social media emerged in the 21^st century, they were never subject to a male-dominated way of thinking like radio, TV or print, which all emerged when women were far less influential outside of the home. It could also mean that women prefer the non-linear give-and-take of social media, while men prefer the traditional “push” method of information dissemination found in traditional media.

Whatever the reasons, it’s always important to know your audience. Understanding that most social media sites have a majority female audience and that women rely heavily upon blogs for their information will help guide businesses’ marketing decisions and control the flow of time, effort and money in the social media advertising space.

I’ve blogged before about press releases and how important it is to find not only the right contacts within various media outlets, but also the right media for your message. It’s not uncommon for business owners, managers and even public relations professionals to have unrealistic perceptions about the media. (Media, by the way, is plural for medium, and should always take a plural verb form: The media are biased, but television is a vibrant medium.) Some may have no idea where to start when it comes to identifying the proper media to receive their message or assume they have no story to tell, while others may assume that any media outlet, from CNN to the Peoria Journal Star, is interested in what they have to say. The truth lies somewhere in-between.

To start finding answers, look to customers for guidance. Gather data. Find out who is the market for your product or service? Who buys your products? Who do you want to buy your products? And most importantly, where do they get their information? You don’t have to guess. Call your customers and ask, or work with a professional who can identify what your target audience is reading, surfing, watching or listening to.

Once you know the answer to these questions, the next step is to determine the best media outlets to target. In the case of most B2B (business to business) companies, the mass media are not going to be a wise choice. Not only is news time or news space scarce on television, radio, and mass-market magazines, it’s simply too broad an audience. Unless you’re IBM pushing very generic IT consulting services to hundreds of thousands of businesses across the country, you’re going to be lost in the crowd.

For this reason, trade publications are a viable option. They make sense for companies that really want to get the word out about their products, services and solutions. Think of trade publications (both print and online versions) as precision laser guided missiles, as opposed to a clumsy 10-ton mass media bombs. These are the publications that zero in on your audience—the folks who want and need your skills and expertise. By getting bylined editorial coverage (articles with your name on them) in these outlets, you can establish yourself as an industry expert, marketplace leader, and the first place your potential customers will look when they need something.

Trade publications—use them to increase visibility, credibility and name recognition in your industry. Trade publication coverage—editorial content that gets your message across. That’s what Trade Press Services does best. Call or e-mail us today.