BSCOM 370T University of Phoenix Wk 1 Impact of Modern Communication Discussion

BSCOM/370T: Social Media Communication
Week 1 Discussion – Impact of Modern
Communication
Materials
Gray, P., & Rackham, S. (2021). Social media communication (1st ed.). MyEducator, LLC.
MyEducator®
This week covers how social media experiences are essentially filling existing human social
needs. Being social and building connections in modern times have required us to evolve the
way we communicate, for both personal and business communication.
To understand and plan effective social media marketing and strategy, sometimes it’s best to
just focus on the “social” – the “media” part will become more apparent later only after you form
a connection.
Discuss how modern communication has impacted both personal and business/mass
communication. Consider such impacts as:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Personal communication:
The social circle influence on what we value and how we interact with others
Collapsing or combining of our various social circles into one big group of “friends”
Business and mass media communication:
The introduction of social media influencers
Stronger connections between brands and their audiences
The use of AI-generated data to create “personalized” communication content
Provide examples and support for your conclusions.
Chapter 1 The Social of Social Media
1.1Introduction
Topic 1 Introduction Transcript
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We all understand what the term “social media” means today. The term refers to the
apps or software platforms (mostly on our phones) that enable us to connect and
share media content with friends and others in many different ways. But to really
understand how these apps work and why they are billion-dollar businesses that
connect billions of users every day, we need to understand the need they are filling.
We need to dive into the “social” component of social media.
Figure 1.1: Vintage social networking.
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Photo from Esther Vargas, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr.
At their root, social media platforms are just like other digital innovations. Using the
power of technology, these companies are providing an easier, more efficient way
for us to meet a need or accomplish a specific task. Think about it this way: Airbnb
made it easier to rent rooms or houses for short-term stays. Google made it easier to
find information online. Uber made it easier to get a ride across town. Duolingo made
it easier to learn a foreign language. And social media companies have made it
“easier” (some would say to the detriment of actual relationships) to be socially
connected to our communities.
Perhaps the fact that social media platforms followed the same “industry disruption”
model of innovation that made other digital start-ups successful is the reason for
their phenomenal financial success? Or perhaps it’s true that since social
relationships are more complex than transactions involving ridesharing or
information searching, we really don’t know if financial success is the same as social
success? To help answer that question, let’s spend this topic discussing what social
connections mean and why they are at the core of what makes us human.
1.2Humans Have Organized into Social Structures for
Years
Humans have organized into social structures for years because humans are social
creatures. Of course, most animal life forms are social creatures. Ant colonies,
beehives, schools of fish, and most other animals exhibit varying forms of social
integrations. In fact, the very words we use to describe these groups of animals—
these specialized collective nouns—are tailored to describe these social
relationships found in groups of various animals. But back to humans. The social
environment for humans is vastly more complex and rich than those of our animal
friends.
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Whether you are a Creationist or a Darwinist, we can all agree that our human
capacity for advanced communication; our ability to comprehend the past, present,
and future; and our integration into highly specialized economies demands that our
social skills and connectedness be far more advanced than bees or ants or fish.
Indeed, we seem to be hard-wired as social creatures. Heartbreaking research on
tens of thousands of children raised in relative isolation in orphanages in Romania in
the 1980s is clear in this regard. We need human contact, socialization, and love
from our earliest days to grow, learn, and become healthy and happy adults. 1
Our earliest ancestors left us evidence of their social networks. Cave art, beads,
ornamentation, and communal gathering sites all point to the fact that humans have
been seeking “likes” and “shares” and social acceptance from each other for tens of
thousands of years.
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Figure 1.2: Our earliest ancestors left evidence of social networking.
Photo from Roberdan, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Research in Turkey and Lebanon showed that people around 43,000 years ago
were making and wearing strings of beads and shell ornaments of highly repetitive
designs. Some of the shells were relatively rare marine varieties, luminous white or
brightly colored. The bone of an eagle or vulture was incised for suspension as a
pendant.
These were presumably objects of social communication, readily conveying
information about kinship, status and other aspects of identity to outsiders.
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“Ornamentation is universal among all modern human foragers,” Dr. Stiner said. Not
to mention in complex societies that send social signals with wedding rings, designer
clothes and hot-label sneakers.2
Long before Tinder or Instagram, we humans have always worked to impress those
around us and understand our social standing within our tribe or group or
community. We seem to know (or quickly learn from trial and error) where we fit into
our group. Humans naturally seek social acceptance from our networks and look for
ways to strengthen those bonds through communication, collaboration, and the
occasional display of mad skills, strength, or valor (Napoleon Dynamite clip).
In fact, our social needs are vastly more time-consuming and nuanced than our
physiological needs. Working to “impress the boss” or “get noticed by the new kid in
class” or “show them I’m worth it” are all complicated projects that usually take
weeks or months to accomplish. Back in the olden days—BFB (Before Facebook)—
these interactions took place exclusively through in-person gatherings. We’ll talk
more about these ancient “social analog” tools later. Just remember, the reason
social media matters is because social matters. The device, platform, or content
being used may be new, but the need it is filling is as old as humanity itself.
1.3Social Capital Matters—Hierarchy, Class, Station, and
Influence
A quick visit with one of the troops of mountain gorillas of the Congo might be an
interesting place to begin our conversation about social capital, hierarchy, and social
classes. The gorillas live in large families or troops normally consisting of a dominant
male, or silverback, four to five females, and the juveniles born from those
relationships. Other male silverbacks will sometimes be a part of the troop if they
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believe they have a chance to become the leader at some point. They defer to the
leader and help with providing security and protection to the troop.
Mountain gorillas do not protect or defend a specific territory; rather, they forage
throughout the day and make a new nest, or camp, each night. The troop chooses to
stick together, following the lead of the large silverback male, stopping to eat when
he does, and making leaf beds where he decides to make camp for the night. What
does the dominant male do to deserve this level of trust and leadership within his
troop? Researchers who have spent decades studying these amazing animals report
that the dominant silverback of the troop is always attentive to the security of the
troop and will fight to the death to protect his family from danger.
Watch This
Here is a video of a gorilla stopping traffic!
The adult females of the troop each know their status and place, usually ranked by
age or time within the troop. Mothers with newborns are often “moved up” in status
as the dominant male takes extra interest in the safety of the most vulnerable.
Adolescent members of the troop are “schooled” through invitation and demand from
their parents to learn proper gorilla behavior. And when male or female adult gorillas
don’t see much of a social future in staying with their natal troops, they will leave in
search of greater social status with other troops. In the mountains of Africa,
mountain gorillas jockey for position, status, and attention using collaboration and
conflict to find their place in their social networks.1
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Figure 1.3: Gorilla.
Photo by Joshua J. Cotten via Unsplash.
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While our social rules are different from the mountain gorillas, how we each fit into
our own social groups regarding class, hierarchy, and how we spend our social
capital isn’t far off. Educational achievement, physical strength or beauty, leadership
skills, and earning power all play into how we as humans seek and select mates.
When we are failing within a current social circle, we often branch out and see what
other groups might welcome us in. At times, we recognize that we need to be
teachable and put up with the seemingly never-ending demands of a dominant boss
or parent so we can “earn our place” in the troop. We generate social capital this
way. We play by the rules or find ways to be recognized for our strengths and
thereby earn the right to lead ourselves.
Social hierarchies are not set in stone, although the rules governing them are tricky
indeed. In some circles, such as religious congregations, the most valuable social
currency is humility and obedience. In others, like sports leagues, it’s all about
individual and team performance. Some find social acceptance through wealth, and
others through quiet perseverance. Knowing what groups or troops matter to you is
the first step in building the social capital that will be valued by others.
1.4Other Ways to Build Social Capital
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Figure 1.4: Social capital.
Photo by Pixabay via Pexels.
Social capital is the term we use to talk about the trust and level of support
someone has within groups or communities. When we say that someone has “high”
social capital, we are saying that within their circle of friends and community, that
individual is highly trusted and can leverage that trust into action. When a beloved
high school track coach retires, and the school district or town raises money to build
new track facilities in the coach’s honor, it was that coach’s social capital that made
that happen. The coach had earned the respect of the town and the town felt
obligated (or honored) to be able to help others at his request.
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In 2000, Harvard University political science professor Robert Putnam wrote the
book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. In it, the
author makes a compelling argument that many of the social institutions that held us
together as a society, not just bowling leagues, are simply fading away into the mist
of history. Church attendance, club registrations, neighborhood block parties, the
signing of petitions—all down significantly. He warns that the very fabric and glue
that holds us together, our stock of social capital, has plummeted, making us all
poorer. The culprits to this decline? Changes in work and family structure, the very
nature of suburban life, and increased time with screens of all kinds. Were the book
written after 2007, I’m confident social media platforms would have topped the list.
Here are a few quick facts from his book:
•
“Joining and participating in one group cuts in half your odds of dying the
next year.
•
Every 10 minutes of commuting reduces all forms of social capital by 10%.
•
Watching commercial entertainment TV is the only leisure activity where
doing more of it is associated with lower social capital.
•
Declining social capital—trends over the last 25 years:
o
Attending club meetings:
▪
o
Family dinners:
▪
o
58% drop
43% drop
Having friends over”
▪
35% drop”1
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Figure 1.5: What are we doing to maintain and strengthen our social capital?
Photo by Kalle Stillersson via Unsplash.
Activities that promote the growth of social capital within communities are those that
pull us together and allow us to get to know and serve one another through personal
interactions. It’s seeing neighbors volunteering at the local library. It’s attending the
town’s Fourth of July parade and being recognized by those lining the street and
some of those marching in the parade. It’s being trusted enough by the pastor of
your church to receive a phone call from him to help a family in need at 3:00 in the
morning.
If we are not bowling in the local league, playing on the company softball team,
visiting the local library as frequently as we used to, coaching Little League, or
attending church picnics, then what are we doing to maintain and strengthen our
social capital? If we are not part of any of these communities showing ourselves to
be dependable, to be honest, to be available, how will the members of these
communities know that we can be trusted and that we will be there for them in their
time of need?
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1.5What Can the Past Teach Us about Modern Social
Media?
Figure 1.6: Social circles.
Photo by August de Richelieu via Pexels.
Looking at our social interactions and relationships, we often use the words “social
circles.” One way to think about our social circles is like this:
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Figure 1.7: Social circles.
Most of us have different facets of our lives that may not overlap much at all. We
might see our “work” circle daily and yet they never overlap with our gym or church
circles.
Another way to view our social circles is by degree of intimacy, or closeness.
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Figure 1.8: Levels of intimacy.
When I think about the many amazing things that social media platforms allow us to
accomplish, I am amazed at how they can connect us across time and space. And
not just connect our family and most trusted friends, but actually provide a socially
acceptable way to stay connected with acquaintances and those that frankly, without
the ease of these digital tools, we would lose touch with and drift apart from entirely.
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That may be one of the most valuable components of social platforms: strengthening
those social relationships that wouldn’t necessarily make the “first circle” cut, but still
allowing us to engage, communicate, and connect with in ways that feel safe and
that we can control (mostly).
But here’s the challenge. We mentally and emotionally have these different types of
circles because we have different types of relationships. We don’t want everyone
from every circle to be in our kitchen or our bedroom every day. Unfortunately,
today’s social media platforms don’t do a terrific job at sorting out who our closest
friends are and who we just follow because they can be ridiculous sometimes. Since
all the platforms run on a series of “if-then” programming rules (algorithms), social
media can sometimes invite total strangers into our conversations and lives just
because they “think” we are interested.
In the analog days, where these conversations and relationships required sharing
time and space, we could generally navigate our time and attention to spend the
most time with those individuals and groups that were most important to us. When
crazy Uncle Fred “wished we could all spend more time together,” at the end of the
family reunion, we could smile and nod and be grateful that the next reunion wasn’t
for another year. Today, crazy Uncle Fred finds his way into my newsfeed almost
daily.
1.6The Modern “Give Get” Rule Is Older than Facebook
A key concept for social media interaction is what I call Give Get. It is the simple
realization that with most first-time social media interactions, we are generally
starting with very little trust and no real credibility. Social media platforms, while
designed to bring friends and acquaintances together, still have a lot of strangers
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and strange brands showing up and “pretending” to know us. Our reluctance to just
hit that “like” or “share” button is understandable.
The term “Give Get” is my shorthand name for the more commonly known idea
expressed in many cultures as the Golden Rule, or “Do unto others and you would
have others do unto you.” Or “It’s better to give than to receive.” Or perhaps, “Life is
a boomerang; you get what you first give.” In all of these quotes, the core idea is this
human truth: We tend to trust those who trust us. If we want to be trusted by others,
perhaps we should trust them first.
On the American frontier, as portrayed by Laura Ingalls Wilder’s classic Little House
on the Prairie novels, we see the power of social capital and the Give Get rule
played out throughout each and every book in the series. Frontier life was hard.
Crops failed, livestock died, storms and floods and fires made it so that for a small
town on the edge of civilization to survive, every member of that town needed to
work together and trust each other.
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Figure 1.9: The American frontier.
Photo by Chor Tsang via Unsplash.
The general store routinely gave credit to all members of the town. Debts were
common, and patience was the rule. When the new family arrived in town with
nothing more than a wagon load of kids, the town rallied to help them raise a barn, or
dig a well. Why? Because the town knew that adding one more successful family to
the town was good for everyone in the town. And so they GAVE, knowing that
eventually, that new family would be shopping (and paying off their tab) at the
general store, paying to send those kids to school, and trading their goods and
services for the betterment of the whole town.
As we tackle ways that social media can be used to build communities, introduce
new products to the marketplace, change people’s minds, and share information,
remembering the human truth of Give Get will help us navigate the page analytics,
click-through data, and ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) going forward. For now, just
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remember what Winston Churchill said: “We make a living by what we get, but we
make a life by what we give.”1
In social media marketing, we need to know how to give to get.
1.7Follow to Be Followed
Making Connections Transcript
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A key strategy for success in all social platforms is to create content that attracts
followers (or friends or likes or connections). Those individuals and organizations
and pages that do will be vastly more successful than those that do not. Building the
content that attracts those followers is not easy and will not happen overnight
(unless you change your name to Kardashian), but it is possible. We can learn again
from our BFB years about how followers were gathered before the “like” button was
invented.
Before Netflix’s Cobra Kai in 2018, there was the Columbia Pictures 1984 hit The
Karate Kid. And in that classic ’80s movie, it was Mr. Miyagi who taught us the keys
to successful social media marketing with these words: “Wax on. Wax off. Wax on.
Wax off.”1
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Figure 1.10: The Karate Kid.
Photo from Helgi Halldórsson, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Right now, even if you remember the movie, you are probably asking yourself what
that has to do with adding social media followers (and to those that missed that fine
example of ’80s movie magic, you are totally lost). Fair point. But let me continue. In
the movie (which was filled with then charming, and now racially insensitive
Japanese American accents), the wise karate master Mr. Miyagi helps Daniel(san)
learn enough of the martial art to save face, win the girl, and kick the bad guy’s
butt—all in about 126 minutes of screen time. Once fate brings them together, Daniel
is excited to learn how to chop, kick, and generally hurt the bad guy with his soon-tobe-obtained mad karate skills. His disappointment is palpable when the first lesson
Mr. Miyagi assigns to him is not all that karate-like. The first assignment from master
to student was to wax an old clunker of a car by hand with large, sweeping circular
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motions (“Wax on. Wax off. Wax on. Wax off.”). Of course, by the end of the third
act, Daniel(san) is using his hand-waxing, circular-sweeping muscles to drop the
baddie to the ground like the Karate Kid™ he has become.
The lesson I take away from these common stories of “walk before you run,” and
“contribute before seeking to change,” and “give to get” is this: Followers and clicks
and shares on social marketing campaigns will come to those who put in the effort to
create content worth following, sharing, and clicking. People are reasonably good at
finding value. (Sure, clickbait sometimes works—even when you know it is clickbait.
It’s this one weird trick . . .)
Your target audience can even find valuable content buried deep in your social
media feed—as long as it continues to solve a problem. Thanks to the algorithms
that power social media platforms, good content (content that has proven capable of
generating clicks and comments from others) never dies; it just circles back again,
and again, and again. Content that satiates an unmet need will get noticed. And sites
and social content that consistently do the hard work of identifying what your
audience wants (Wax on) and delivering posts and ideas that they find valuable
(Wax off) will yield the amazing results of having more followers and engagement
than will fit in your dojo.
1.8Spending Your Social Currency Wisely
In one of Aesop’s Fables (number 210 to be exact), a story is told of the boy who
cried wolf. Here is the SparkNotes version: A bored boy tending sheep cried “Wolf!”
to get attention. The town came running to his aid. No wolf. He enjoyed fooling
people, so he did it again and people came. A third time he cried wolf. This time
there was a wolf, but the boy was ignored. Goodbye, flock. The moral of the story: A
liar will not be believed, even when telling the truth.1
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Figure 1.11: The Boy Who Cried Wolf.
Illustration by Milo Winter, CC0 1.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Online, as in real life, we need to learn to spend our social currency wisely. As we
learned earlier in this topic, social currency is all about trust. It is earned through
keeping our commitments and our promises to each other. If we want to be a part of
a community and enjoy the benefits of being a member of the troop, or one of the
families living in one of those little houses on the prairie, or being a part of a bowling
league, we need to do our part and contribute to the society we want to be a part of.
We need to show up when we say we will. We need to forgive the debt (or at least
hold off on demanding its repayment for a while). We need to offer real value to our
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community. We need to realize that we might need to give first and establish trust if
we ever expect others to give back to us.
In the world of social media marketing, this means that we don’t hype “non-content”
and expect others to pretend it has value. We don’t just copy and paste content from
other sites. It means we honestly seek to provide value to our friends and followers
and reward their attention and time with content that solves their problems. If we
want others to be a part of a community that we are organizing, be a good leader of
the group. Be knowledgeable about your area of expertise. Offer real insight and
make room for others to provide theirs. Don’t clutter up your feed with junk just to
meet your “new content every day” goal. Being a leader in social media communities
is hard. It means you’re likely going to be practicing “Wax on. Wax off.” for many,
many hours. But having the trust and credibility in your social circles is worth it. Be
the silverback who protects his troop from danger and provides for their needs.
1.9Summary
Chapter 1 The Social of Social Media
Figure 1.12: Social strategy.
Photo by Ketut Subiyanto via Pexels.
In the end, good social media strategy is an awful lot like good social
strategy (without the “media” part to make things confusing). Just be a good
neighbor. Share things that are true and helpful. Show up when you say you will.
Follow other leaders with respect and wisdom so that when you are in a position to
lead, you can lead wisely too. Social currency is earned over time, and unfortunately,
as the boy who cried wolf learned, it can be spent and wasted quickly in very foolish
moments. We cannot “cry wolf” to get attention for ourselves or our social sites when
there is nothing of value to give and then expect our friends and followers to forgive
us when they come running and find that we have nothing to offer.
Chapter 2: Topic 2: What Is Social Media? How Does It Differ From Other Mass
Media Channels and Content?
2.1The Basic Technology of Social Media Platforms
Topic 2 Introduction Transcript
What is happening behind the screen to keep all the content flowing?
It’s probably worth remembering that before the digital age, all media was both
location and time-based. This means that once the message—the newspaper,
magazine, movie, radio program, and so on—was created and distributed, its impact
was limited to those that “received” it. And once it was gone, it was gone. Other than
a few specialized libraries and archives that were not just virtually but also literally
inaccessible to consumers, most analog media content was produced, consumed at
a specific time and place, and then it was gone. Today, digital content and stories
can circulate widely and find new audiences years after they were originally
published.
Networked, IP addressable computers (the internet) and the way computers store
and index information digitally (files, photos, and videos as bits and bytes of data)
changed all that. Of course, using cell phone and wireless internet technology to
access those files from almost anywhere on the planet didn’t hurt either. And those
changes—content moving from analog to digital and from wired to wireless
distribution—is what makes social media platforms possible.
Figure 2.1: Archiving, finding, tagging, sharing, and retrieving.
Photo by Ekrulila via Pexels.
Of course, all of this archiving, finding, tagging, sharing, and retrieving is only
possible thanks to the supercomputers we carry around in our pockets
(smartphones) and the massive storage and computing power found at server
farms, which hold and index all this data. In simplest terms, social media platforms
are individual-account-based, hyper-indexed data storage networks. These
databases hold all the posts (content) we upload, along with all the information
connected to that content: who has seen it, the comments on it, where it was shared
to and from, the time it spent on users’ screens, and its number of clicks and likes.
This data can then be searched and retrieved through any number of different
connections to the content creating a highly detailed mapped network of both users
and content.
With this map, the social media platforms can (and do) monitor what content is
appealing to which audiences and what content the algorithms believe should be
“served up” to each individual user to keep them scrolling, engaging, and clicking on
the site for the most time possible. And that is each social media company’s ultimate
goal: to provide a positive user experience that maximizes time on platform and
content engagement.
Compare this customized, targeted, dynamic media and advertising experience of
social platforms to that of traditional media, and the differences are clear. Television,
radio, print, outdoor (billboards and transit ads) are all static, one-way messages that
may (but likely not) enjoy any add-on reach through conversations. While television
was the gold standard of advertising effectiveness for decades, social platforms that
can deliver targeted, interactive, and friend-endorsed video messages will win the
day every time for advertising results and, increasingly, viewership totals. In short,
we have traded in our big, dumb TV screens for small, smart screens, and it doesn’t
look like there is any way back.
Table 2.1
Social Media and Marketing
Traditional Media (Magazines or TV)
Social Media
One-way communication
Two-way communication
From sender to receiver
From sender to active receiver
•
•
Those who will become influential
Those who will evangelize the brand
Marketer hopes the receiver will buy the product
Message does not end with receiver
Some word-of-mouth
Credibility similar to word-of-mouth
Communication generally ends with the receiver
Greater flexibility for content and duration
Builds awareness at a much lower cost
2.2How Social Media Companies Make Money (Spoiler
Alert: It’s the Same Way Traditional Media Companies
Make Money)
Figure 2.2: The monetization model of mass media.
It’s important to understand how the basic monetization models of advertising work
as they apply to traditional media, digital media, and social media companies, with
only slight variations among them. First of all, think about the so-called “unspoken
agreement” among publishers, the audience, and advertisers as a three-legged
stool. Publishers (the first leg), such as streaming services, television stations, or
social media platforms, provide content that is of interest to their audience (the
second leg). These audience members, viewers, readers, or users are the most
important part of the equation. To pay, or at least help pay, for the content that the
audience wants to see, the publisher offers space, time, data, clicks, or views to
advertisers (the third leg) who are willing to pay the publisher for space, advertising,
listings, or messages to be shown to the publisher’s audience.
Since different publishers have different types of content that appeal and attract
different audiences, advertisers often use several different channels (not TV
channels but media channels) in combination to reach their desired target audience.
As members of the audience, we agree to have these commercial messages
interrupt the content we want in order to receive that content for free or at a lower
cost.
1. Publishers: One should never forget that all publishers are in this game for the
money. They are creating and providing content to serve the needs of
their second most important customer—the audience. Only then, when the
audience is engaged in the content, will the audience choose to stick around
long enough to serve the needs of the publisher’s most important customer—
the advertisers. It is the advertisers who pay the bills, and therefore they are
the most important customer to all publishers or content providers.
2. Advertisers: These businesses come in all shapes and sizes, from a new local
restaurant that wants to attract customers on opening weekend to a global
multinational company that sells chemical fertilizers to farmers and wants to
assure the public and government officials that its products are safe and
reliable. The one thing that all advertisers have in common is that they are
looking for a way to reach their specific target audience with messages that
deliver the highest impact at the lowest possible cost.
3. Audience: We, the people, are the most important leg of this three-legged
stool, for without our participation, without our willingness to engage in the
content, to watch, to read, to scroll, to click, to share, the media machine
would seize up and fail. We power modern media with our attention. What we
pay attention to, the publishers will create more of and monetize. If we all start
reading new online graphic novellas based on Shakespearean tragedies, the
publishers and advertisers will follow. If we spend more hours staring at our
phones watching cat videos, the publishers and advertisers will follow.
Figure 2.3: Newspaper.
Photo by Dziana Hasanbekava via Pexels.
When magazines, TV networks, or radio stations decide what content they are going
to publish (or broadcast), they always consider their audience and try to produce
material that most of their audience will choose to consume. This meant that
traditional media programming was designed to appeal to the broadest possible
demographic. Programs that were too “niche” or “specialized” often didn’t get
produced, or if they did, they didn’t last long since their “advertising appeal” wasn’t
large enough to attract enough advertisers to keep the program on the air. The TV
and radio programs, magazines, and newspapers that thrived during this time period
were those that consistently had large and homogeneous audiences. Audiences that
advertisers wanted to reach. This is how the programming content was created; it
was funded by advertisers wanting to reach the greatest number of potential
customers who would see the commercials and ads interspersed in the program
content.
With social media, it’s different, but not that much different. The publisher (social
media platform) attempts to provide content that their users (audience) will spend
time with in order to generate the highest levels of engagement from their target
audience. But instead of one magazine article or one television program being
crafted to meet the entertainment needs of the greatest number of viewers at one
time, in the world of social media, each user is served personalized content
designed to keep them entertained and engaged based upon their past online
behavior.
Figure 2.4: Baseball stadium.
Photo by Sung Shin via Unsplash.
And this specialized entertainment content is also combined with individualized and
personalized advertising content. Think of it this way: When the LA Dodgers play a
home game, 56,000 people cram into Dodger Stadium to have a single, live
entertainment experience. And the two million people watching the game on ABC TV
are having a single, shared media experience. But those same 56,000 fans in the
stadium could all pull out their phones during the seventh-inning stretch, open their
Instagram app at the very same moment, and they WOULD be having 56,000 totally
different online, content, media, and advertising experiences.
That is the power of social media. It takes the monetization of mass media and
makes it personal. It harnesses the power of massively powerful computer indexing,
storage, and content curation and combines it with individualized content and
targeting. Fifty-six thousand separate television experiences happening at the same
time in one baseball stadium. Two hundred million different social media
experiences happening in the United States every single day.
2.3Social Media Content
As we have discussed, publishers make money by providing programming or
content that audiences will want to watch enough to allow advertisers to interrupt the
programming with commercial messages. The challenge has always been that
content that engages and entertains us is expensive. Very expensive. Movies, TV
shows, and even good-quality YouTube videos are not cheap to produce. So, the
modern mass media channels are constantly thinking to themselves, “If only there
were a way to create engaging consumer content that could be created and
distributed worldwide, for FREE.”
Figure 2.5: Movies and TV shows are not cheap to produce.
Photo by Nicolas J Leclercq via Unsplash.
Enter the genius of social media platforms—the first mega-businesses to outsource
the creation of almost all of their ad-supported content to the audience themselves.
This content is known as user-generated content (UGC). But what could possibly
drive all of us hard-working humans to provide millions of hours and millions of
pages of content to these mega-digital publishers . . . for absolutely free? Pride. And
love. But mostly pride.
Why do we do it? I guess one reason is that we like to see things we write or that we
create get sent out into the social stream and be recognized as being clever, or
interesting, or worthy of sharing. We enjoy seeing notifications tell us that something
we did is getting noticed. We look forward to reading the comments on our posts and
seeing the emojis and reactions our ideas are inspiring within our communities.
Perhaps it is a modern way for us to earn social currency and try to climb the social
media ladder through creating and sharing content that our friends (and total
strangers) find valuable.
And, of course, it’s not all UGC floating around out there. There is lots of
professionally created content as well. As social platforms have gotten more and
more powerful, other media companies, like news and entertainment companies,
have also found ways to distribute their content on social platforms. News
organizations are finally getting into the digital space, not just with their own
platforms, but as content providers for Facebook and others as well. Consumer
brands are finding ways to bring not just “ads” online but content that people might
actually choose to watch. Entertainment companies are quick to put “samples,”
trailers, and older content out there so viewers will be willing to buy a ticket, or pay a
subscription, or tune in and watch a traditional advertising-sponsored program.
Today, there is a diverse mix of custom, recycled, curated, and user-generated
content that fills the YouTube hours, the Facebook posts, and the Twitter feeds of
hundreds of millions of people every day. And all of this content is carefully
cataloged and indexed to be offered with glowing endorsements from our friends and
family, bringing all the trust and confidence of their recommendations to our small
screens. It’s no wonder we are spending more time on our phones and less time with
other more traditional media; our social feeds are doing a better job of taking care of
us.
2.4Social Media Advertisers—Why Digital Advertising
Surpassed Traditional Advertising
Digital Advertising Transcript
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You’ve definitely noticed ads on Facebook and Instagram and when you do a
Google search. The ads are there, and most of us quickly scroll by them or click
somewhere else and we think, “This is a good deal. I get all these services from this
platform for FREE, and all I need to do is scroll past a few ads.” And you may be
right. After all, those little ads are easy to skip, and certainly not as annoying as the
“real advertising” like we see on TV during the Superbowl or our favorite Hulu show.
But guess what happened in 2019? The cumulative ad spend for the United States
tipped toward being predominantly digital, and that is a big deal. Yep, all those small
ads on all those small screens now generate more money than all the television,
print, outdoor, and radio advertising combined.
2.6: Digital vs. traditional ad spending.
Figure 2.7: Small ads generate more money than all television, print, outdoor, and
radio advertising combined.
Photo by jinyun via Unsplash.
As you can see from the data and projections above, it’s a race that traditional
advertising isn’t likely to win again. It turns out that advertising dollars are extremely
skilled at following the audiences. Advertisers don’t pay to run ads on programs that
people aren’t watching; they pay for ads on screens where the people are, and many
advertisers’ favorite audiences have moved online. Other analyses of time spent
online compared to time spent with traditional media confirms this as well. As a
country (and in most of the world), we are simply choosing to spend less time with
the traditional media channels and more time on social platforms and other personal
digital content than ever before.
•
Newspaper subscriptions are down.
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Magazine readership is down.
•
Radio listening, down.
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And in 2020, with so many people working from home, even the number of
billboard viewers is down.
All this “down” had to result in an “up” somewhere else—and it did. The hours we
used to spend with traditional media have shifted to social media, gaming, and
streaming (ad-supported and ad-free) services.
2.8: Time spent per day on digital vs. traditional media, 2011–2020.
2.9: Average time spent with each medium in the US in 2019.
And if you are wondering who is winning in the digital advertising game these days,
it’s about who you would expect. Google (AdWords, search, YouTube, Display Ad
Networks), Facebook (and Instagram), and Amazon. Yes, Amazon. Did you know
you can advertise on Amazon—the largest e-commerce shopping platform in the
world? Of course you can. Go ahead and search for something on Amazon. Do you
see those search results at the top of the page that say “Sponsored” next to them?
This is digital advertising at the moment where advertising is the most effective—
when customers are looking to purchase something.
2.10: Top 5 companies ranked by US net digital ad revenue share.
Photo from eMarketer.com.
2.5Social Media Stickiness—Like Giving Away the Razor
so We’ll Buy Replacement Blades Forever
We can all thank the brilliant marketing folks at Gillette and Hewlett-Packard for what
can only be called the greatest marketing coup of all time. In the world of shaving,
the modern cartridge razor has two parts: the razor and the blades (or cartridges).
Only one of those two parts wears out and needs to get replaced: the blades. The
razor handle will likely last years (if not longer). So, how to make more money from
the folks that want smooth legs and stubble-free faces? The answer? Give away the
piece of the product that feels “valuable” for free, and you can charge WAY more
than cost for the replacement blades. Why? Because consumers don’t feel like they
should just throw away a solidly built, well-designed razor handle; they feel invested
in this razor handle. They trust this razor, so they stay brand loyal and continue to
purchase over-priced blades. True story. This tactic worked so well with razors that
the smart folks that pioneered the inkjet printer, Hewlett-Packard (HP), followed that
same playbook as they introduced the first inkjet printers for home use. A ridiculously
low-priced printer, outrageously priced ink cartridge refills.
Figure 2.7: Razor.
Photo by Максим Рыжкин via Unsplash.
These types of marketing strategies encourage “brand stickiness” and customer
retention. The same is true for social platforms. The more a platform can encourage
you (the user) to “invest” time and energy into their channel, the more likely you are
to stay put, spend time on the platform, and become a valuable customer for them.
To accomplish this, social media platforms provide almost everything to the user for
free and are constantly improving, upgrading, and adding services to make it easier
for you to stay and harder for you to leave.
But where are the overpriced ink cartridges or razor blades in this relationship?
Good question. The most valuable currency in social media, as far as the platform is
concerned, isn’t what you spend money on (unless you’re Amazon, then they care
very much about your spending habits). No, what the majority of the social platforms
care about is your attention. They are selling your time on their site to advertisers.
And the more time you give them, the more money they can make off of you. Your
time and attention is worth much more than replacement ink cartridges and razor
blades, and the giant social platforms will spend much to keep you coming back for
more, and more, and more.
2.6Social Media Innovations—Today’s Social Platforms
Continue to Adapt
Innovation around traditional media was generally centered around improvements in
the physical devices that brought us the content. Radios got smaller, and television
screens got bigger. New buttons were added to remote controls, and cable TV
systems gave us many more options and shows to watch that mostly weren’t of
much interest. But besides the evolution from SD television broadcasts (4 × 3
screens and 480 × 560 pixels → HDTV → 4K and 8K UHDTV, 16 × 9 aspect ratio,
and WAY more pixels than the old screens) to streaming services, the way in which
we interact with traditional media hasn’t changed much over the last 75 years.
The same is not true of social media platforms. Over the years, since MySpace and
Facebook began recruiting users, the platforms have multiplied, and all have added
features and services to pull us in for more minutes a day. They also each employ a
variety of tactics to get us to create more content for them. Instagram was born by
providing easy-to-use smartphone camera and image filters to make even the most
pedestrian photos look “cool” and unique. Facebook and others have enabled
sharing functions that make it easy for users to create quizzes and surveys and
games that enable social sharing and a “Ponzi-like scheme” where friends of friends
pile on and create a compounding of interest in our posts
Indeed, the proliferation of different platforms now makes it possible for us to have
an entire, 360-degree, multi-faceted conversation about anything using the pantheon
of social media platforms. Here is one of my favorites:
Figure 1.12: Social media apps.
And it’s not just the variety of platforms; today, each platform has its own set of user
notification tools and various tag functions that allow the system to perpetually
increase the reach of posts and comments and likes. After all, who doesn’t want to
see what post they were just tagged in? Most platforms have added some type of
livestream video functions that require immediate attention since the content won’t
be available later. These tactics give us the FOMO itch that pulls us back onto our
phones again and again.
In these, and in dozens of other ways, social platforms are adding “sticky” features
that make it easy to keep the app open and check it every time our phone comes out
of our pocket (Which, according to Asurion, occurs 96 times a day. That’s once
every 10 minutes.). That’s a 20 percent daily increase from a similar survey
conducted by Asurion two years ago. The scariest part is that 18- to 24-year-olds
check their phones twice as much as the national average. That’s 200 times a day.
Or about once every 5 minutes that they are awake.1
2.7Not Just New Technology—New Biology
From the technology perspective, social media seems to be driven by the evolution
of software, mobile phone feature integration, and faster microchip speeds and
smaller sizes. But that isn’t the whole adaptation story. No, there are other elements
of the social media experience that are changing right along with the technology.
Using social science and consumer marketing techniques learned over decades,
today’s social media platforms are literally rewiring our brains. Or, more accurately,
our focused attention on these digital platforms is actively conditioning our brains to
respond biologically (dopamine is a powerful drug) in ways that might feel good, but
might not be in our best long-term interest.
Let’s take a quick look at how our brains are wired to learn and the role that
neurotransmitter chemicals like dopamine play in that role.
In 2015, University of Michigan researchers and professors Arif Hamid and Joshua
Berke posit that dopamine levels continuously signal how good or valuable the
current situation is in regard to obtaining a reward. This chemical messaging helps
people decide how vigorously to work toward a goal, while also allowing themselves
to learn from mistakes.1
Figure 2.9: Dopamine levels in our brains help us decide what we should be
working toward.
Photo by Robina Weermeijer via Unsplash.
In other words, the natural regulation of dopamine levels in our brains helps us
decide what we should be working toward. The euphoric “hit” of dopamine is a
biological signal of a job well done (or a job worth doing well) and the signal that an
important task has been accomplished. But what happens when outside influences,
such as notification screens, post-engagement metrics, or comments on our feeds,
are specifically designed in such a way to trigger that dopamine release?
The dopamine hits we receive in our prefrontal cortex when we check our social
feeds and see all those likes, comments, shares, and notifications tells us that we
are loved. We are accomplishing important work. Our efforts are being rewarded,
and we are admired by others. What do we then choose NOT to do? Once
rewarded, where is the gumption and drive to do “real” hard things like school work,
or relationship work, or work work? If our brains are getting plenty of happy juice
from the social media screens, are we conditioning ourselves to settle for those
successes at the expense of perhaps more tangible ones?
These social media platforms have created the perfect mix of public ego-stroking
and private anonymity, and from what we know about human behavior, that doesn’t
sound like the best idea to begin with. The developers have been hard at work
making these social media platforms as psychologically addictive as possible. Not
because they are evil people wanting to cause harm to others, but because their
objective is to learn what features, notifications, and experiences they could include
in the platform to make it “better.” Well, they did their jobs well, because these
platforms are now “better” at keeping us tethered to our social network feeds than
almost anything else in our lives.
2.8Our Commercialized Lives—Living in a 24/7
Marketplace
Figure 2.10: In 2009, the average American household watched 8 hours and 55
minutes of TV per day.
Photo by mohamed hassan via Pixabay.
Traditional media sure tried hard to capture every available minute of our lives.
There were (and still are) shelves of magazines for every imaginable hobby, different
newspapers for all political stripes, and endless cable TV programs from the bizarre
to the baffling. Nielsen Media Research began tracking the amount of television
viewed by American households in 1949, and at 4.5 hours per day, the high total
surprised many researchers. (Many assumed that television would capture fewer
hours in the American household than radio since radio was a more “flexible”
medium that people could consume while doing other things.) As it turned out, most
Americans didn’t want to “do” other things; they just wanted to watch more TV. And
as television networks grew, and more radio programs migrated to television, that
total number of TV hours per day continued to grow well into the 21st century. In
2009, television viewership peaked, with the average American household watching
8 hours and 55 minutes of TV per day—that’s more time than most people sleep
every day.1
One would assume that since the 1940s, with the growth of all things social, services
like Facebook, mobile phones, YouTube, and Netflix would have dramatically
changed those numbers. And they have. But not universally. What we are seeing is
a massive generational shift in media habits and consumption. Older Americans are
largely watching the same amount of traditional (cable) television as they have in the
past, with younger Americans abandoning traditional TV for the social platforms and
streaming video content now available.
Figure 1.15: US traditional TV viewing in 2020 by age group.
Don’t for a moment think that the 12- to 34-year-old crowd that has dramatically cut
back on their traditional television viewing has put that free time to work by deciding
to learn a foreign language or French cooking. Nope. They are filling those hours
with a mix of digital, online, social, and streaming content. And the totals are eyewatering. In 2019, estimates put total viewing and screen time at over 10 hours a
day. Throw a global pandemic in the mix in 2020, and those totals top 13 hours per
day on screens for US adults.2
2.9Summary
Figure 2.11: 10–13 hours every day are spent in media environments.
Photo by Kaboompics.com via Pexels.
What does it mean when 10–13 hours every day are spent in media environments
that are saturated with commercial messages? We are scrolling past hundreds of
commercial messages that get optimized to be more enticing every day. What will
happen to our social infrastructure of society when virtually no one is interested in
showing up for in-person activities? What happens to brains of teenagers who
instead of having real social interactions with friends and family, are spending more
time “plugged into” screens than they spend in school and sleep—combined?
The short answer is we just don’t know. Will we, as humans, continue to adapt and
increase our ability to deal with more information and more dissonance? Will we
simply ignore the messages that we choose to bypass? Or will all this personalized,
hyper-targeted, media and commercial saturation begin to overwhelm our
relationships and psyches?