Social media: centric or voodoo-trick?
Reviewing over half of century reminds us the stronger the community structure is, the faster the information will propagate.
As a Millennial, my work experience is almost as thick as most famous social media platforms and I first met the communication industry at the very beginning of these online sparkling communities; I even took part in the launch of one of them in France — Flickr- and worked for other key players of the Silicon Valley, Yahoo Inc. and Intel Corp. Already at this time, it has been a well-known fact that Web 2.0 was introduced as a revolution in contemporary exchanges. But the high credit given to the phenomenon has always surprised me, as it is capable of burying History surprisingly well. The Kapferer rumour is now a case.
On November 22nd 1963, the President of the U.S. was assassinated in Dallas, at 12.30. He died at 1.00 p.m. By that time, 68% of all Americans had already heard the news, they were 92% by 2.00 p.m. and nearly 99.8% at 6.00 p.m. Therefore, in less than two hours, the whole country knew that an irreversible tragedy had occurred. Half of the population got the information through radio or television; the other half heard the news through word of mouth. 54% of people felt the urge to immediately talk about it and spread the news as soon as they heard it.
So, what will define lighting spread of information?
Its speed is the consequence of people’s hurry to talk about them around them. The transmission first occurs because the news concerns the group: its consequences are not bound to someone in particular, but rather shared by the whole group. The more structured and hold together by exchange networks the group is, the easier it becomes to get around it. You will probably recognize what ethnologists call tribal structures, wherein an opinion leader is of tremendous importance.
So, the stronger and the more glued the community structure is, the faster the information will spread, as well as in the early 60's than in our full connected era. In 1984, Kapferer was ignoring quite a lot about the booming industry of Media and information. Smartphones remain one of the few technical consumer goods that owners keep with them at all times. Obviously, all these means to spread information add up quite an amount of speed to its propagation. The Smartphone is the ultimate hardware individual and tribal tool, which enables oral, written and visual exchanges. Hyperlinks technologies have amplified a snappy worldwide propagation. It only takes seven seconds for a public piece of information to headline around the planet. Needless to say, such power is massive and hard to restrain.
Two Madison Square Garden in my pocket.
A few years ago, I joined and organized my first press conference for a Market Research and Business Intelligence firm, and because of a specific brand leadership tactic, I decided to cope it with a social media feed. To set up the stage, 80 core journalists were on board (+35% more attendees), an equivalent of 60 media brands, and above all, more than 33.000 people behind their screen joined the Twitter’s conversation in solely 90 minutes.
If you do the math, 33,000 users double the capability of the Madison Square Garden in New York or twice Paris Bercy Arena in Paris (renamed Accord Hotels Arena). Except for that morning, in the conference room, we were physically few compare to these scale figures. The metrics handle in my device amazed me. And I realized again the importance of this channel for communities’ management.
To find out more about this event featured in STRATEGIES, in its Top 10 social media Best Practices in France (Issue #1,624), please visit my website and download the performance review.
Jump in. It is a future source of growth
Certainly because of long hours spend with creative people, journalists and their critical thinking, I always try to scratch a raw fact as it comes to me first, especially when it deals with a general accepted idea. Social Media is a necessary piece of a strategy. But I feel like a mix of emotions. Offline channels are no less powerful in today’s virtual world. When you remember the worst happened more than 50 years ago in Dallas, the “magic bullet” had pretty challenged social networks’ sympathizers in their pride of speed. Marketers should remain reasonable when talking about digital like an all-purpose concept. Companies are still engaging money in internal print magazines (as their in-house social media platforms don’t deliver) and mass media continues to provide a wide range of content and reach a wider audience.
Nonetheless, Digital is on its way to hit to the sweet spot anyway and I admit social media is quickly becoming the rule model. A brand, a public figure, an Institution, no longer decides what tracks will impact or influence opinions. I am myself incorporating online features in quite every step of project management I work on as we see millions of interactions measured every day. Kind of massive. Enough to mute casual comments about it.
Having said that, I claim that social media is centric. As far as I am concerned, I possess 11 social media accounts and I plan to register in a new one in the next month to collect Hotels & Resorts clients’ feedback. I can’t force people to understand the concept of Forecasting but it will give them a better perspective if they could understand the concept of trends. For a wide share of PR and marketers, social media is the name of the game and it is not stretching the meaning of words to say it.
About Raphaël Couderc
10 years of proven track record in marketing and communications activities backed by a business school master’s degree and a world cup level athletic career. Read more: about.me/raphaelcouderc
