Before Social Media
23 Mar 2011
The other day I was having a conversation with a gentlemen at a nearby coffee shop and it led to him asking me as to how companies marketed their services/product before ‘social media’ kicked in. Was it harder or longer to get the message across?
I told him of a company I know that started at my university in 2002, has just 1 web product and now is a plus $20 million company. I know that they did heavy online marketing back in the days. This was before Facebook, Twitter etc.
I pondered his question for a bit and then realized that things hadn’t changed. Online marketing was still the same — SEO, SEM, Banner Advertising, Email Marketing, Directory Listing, Blogging and Affiliate Marketing. The goal is still to drive maximum traffic to the site. Content is still king. You still need to work on creating remarkable content and deliver it through these channels. What has changed is the transportation of content — social media is a 2-way transport channel/ medium where conversations happen (as more and more people are flocking online) — think of it as a big party hall where people are talking to each other but its all digital. It doesn’t replace the other channels — it complements them and takes your message to more people.
Your content is still the more important piece of the puzzle.