Has Social Media Outdone Traditional News?

If anyone was in doubt about social media’s ability to circulate news faster than traditional media, the untimely passing of Michael Jackson will serve as a startling example: reports of Jackson’s death were posted on Facebook, Twitter and AOL’s TMZ blog well before traditional news broadcasters such as CNN, MSNBC and Fox managed to pick up the story. Even search engines like Google and Bing put in a relatively poor performance when it came to the news item’s coverage.

Is there something to be learned from this? While stories reported via traditional media are easier to verify (a plausible rumour about Jackson’s death would no doubt have circulated via social media just as quickly), it does demonstrate that social media can be much faster at breaking a story... provided it holds significant interest to the community.

This presents a unique opportunity for email marketing and also begs the question: is your business really promoting its offers and news releases on the most effective channels? Twitter, Facebook and the blogosphere might not have quite the same reach as traditional news portals, but they have a ‘word of Web’ network that allows stories to gain much more traction than a static press release or news article. How many marketers would love awareness of their brand to circulate as fast as the news of Jackson’s untimely demise did last night?

Integrating your email marketing with social media through invites to ‘share with your network’ invitations (i.e. post the email on your Facebook page, blog, social bookmarking page etc) and links to social media accounts could potentially launch interest in your business much faster than an online press release or other forms of advertising could. But to get the most out of this means creating shareable content – so put your creative powers to the test. Could your emails capture the world’s attention? The only way to find out is to try.

Photo credit: A Twitter user's page, uploaded by cambodia4kidsorg on Flickr