Digital Media Platforms as Places to Be

This week’s topic on Digital Media for International Marketing module revolved around the different digital media – and especially social media – platforms that are out there. The way that I see social media platforms is through an analogy: for me they are like bars. They are the places we go to so to meet the right type of person we want to meet with.

For me the bar analogy to think of social media platforms as places reinforces the notion that normally we will find a very specific and niche market within each bar we go; some bars will have the cool people and we might want to be there because of them {think of how influencers can impact our platform use like when Amazon owned Twitch resigned Ninja}; and as bars their coolness wanes down when not so cool people start joining in {see this post about Facebook losing its coolness}.

Thus, platform selection for your digital marketing campaign is key.

Possibly one of the biggest mistakes when selecting the platforms to run a digital marketing campaign is to approach this selection process with lots of preconceived ideas about the platforms themselves, their uses, and who are actually there {Just because you use them doesn’t mean others also use them}. A similar mistake can be witnessed on more traditional mass media channels such as print (newspaper and magazine), radio, and TV where it was commonly assumed by top decision makers that the audience was majorly comprised by men who had very particular interests to one or two sports {see my discussion here about male preserve in traditional media sport}.

Moreover, different from mass media – and the name here says it all – where communication campaigns can reach wider audiences or masses, digital media campaigns are more niche in their approach as they rely first and foremost on the target audience already being in that place.

Thus, it is important to research the different digital media platforms, understand how people actually use them {especially to avoid being intrusive with your message – think of someone coming to you in a bar trying to sell something}, and know for a fact who are already in that place you want to have your message displayed.

Coming back to the bar analogy, if you want your digital marketing campaign to be effective then not only selecting the right platform is paramount. Knowing how to behave in such place – don’t feel like a fish out of water – is key otherwise your message won’t resonate with the already existing niche culture of that place.