[ad#468x60]Before we even get started on this post I would like to confess something – I suck at making graphs and diagrams. I have been trying my hands on it lately so until I get better at it please bare with me. This is one of the reasons why I have been using “text” to explain my images. Others would have simply done it through their images without having to support their images with text to explain. Trust me I will get better 
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If you look at the image above it is hard to make out anything. What this image shows is traditional marketing and social media marketing. The black arrows that you see are traditional marketing. The little black circles and sticks are of course your customers. As you can see the black arrows aren’t penetrating through the circle and the reason is because it is getting harder and harder to market using traditional media. For example, while watching your favorite show you hate to get up to get a glass of water or go to the bathroom. What do you do? You wait for commercials to come on. It is intrusive and we would rather ignore it.
The red arrow on the other hand is social media. You can clearly see that this is penetrating into the market and reaching a certain number of people. These people belong to one group, one community. Say facebook. If you are taking the right approach to social media marketing, one of these users might go into a different platform and talk about it. You can see from the image an arrow pointing to another user inside a smaller circle. Now this user might talk about it within their community and then may be hit the other community that he/she belongs to. Say Twitter.
As you can see, at first it penetrates into one community and slowly from there on it moves along from one community to another. Social media is simply word of mouth advertising. You don’t pay a dime, you simply participate, become a valuable member and penetrate into the market. Once you take care of that, each user will carry on the message without them even knowing that they are actually promoting your products and services.
Word of mouth advertising has been the holy grail of traditional marketing and it is true when it comes to social media marketing as well.[ad#336x280]
{ 3 comments }
True, some of the diagrams showing up in my Google Reader have not been the most graceful around, but this one does pass the message effectively. Thanks for the post.
Alhan Kesers last blog post..How to be an SEO noob – 10 easy steps
Hi Ritu,
“Word of mouth advertising has been the holy grail of traditional marketing and it is true when it comes to social media marketing as well.”
So true.
The current interest in “social media” seems to be a rediscovery of what has always worked for local, trusted businesses. The Web allows national brands to more effectively affiliate with consumers by seeping into their social circles. Conversely, local businesses can use the Web to grow through leveraging the consumer trust they already have.
Your illustration shows the value of breaking through mass media clutter and into the area of trust. Our attempts at illustrating this can be seen on SlideShare (http://www.slideshare.net/timtracey/slideshows).
– - Tim
Tim Traceys last blog post..My Take: Microblogging (pronounced "Twitter")
@Alan and Tim : Thanks for stopping by. I am just glad I passed my diagram test