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Social Media Versus Traditional Media: Brand Impact Analysis |
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Social media marketing, if done right, can have a significant impact on brand awareness and popularity. However, many companies fail to utilize this cheap (and in many cases free) method of marketing. By looking at social media ranks for companies, and comparing it with mainstream media ranks for the same companies, we can see which brands are taking advantage of this new medium and also draw conclusions about the effectiveness of social media.
A study from Immediate Future calculates social media rankings for
different brands by comparing each brand's "share of voice ranking".
This ranking is determined by how successfully the brand (or the
company) has embraced various different social media or how social
media has embraced the brand. The different categories used are the
Blogosphere, YouTube as a measure of popularity in online video,
MySpace and Bebo as measures of popularity on social networking sites,
Photobucket and Flickr as measures of popularity on online photography
based networks, and Digg , Ma.gnolia , and Del.icio.us as measures of
popularity on social bookmarking and socially-driven news and content
sites.
The results of accumulating mentions of each of the
top 25 brands in these different kinds of media are displayed in the
graph below in descending order.
Furthermore, the chart below
compares each brand's ranking, using the "share of voice" (or mention in
social media) method with Interbrand Top 100 global brands ranking,
which bases its ranking on each company's prospects for shareholders.
Now,
if you compare this ranking with the just-released results of a
nationwide Harris Poll of 2,372 U.S. adults (respondents spontaneously
replied, i.e. were not given a list of options), you get even more
different results. Ranked from 1 to 10:
Looking at these
different methods of ranking brands and the results we get sheds light
on important distinctions between social media and mainstream media
popularity. While social media has a significant impact on brand
awareness and popularity, this medium cares less about financial
viability of a product and more about the product itself, its
usability, and the buzz surrounding it. Furthermore, since social media
is largely a niche product, the impact is more attuned to the early
adopter and technology/online-savvy crowd. Mainstream media on the
other hand cares more about the bottom line and what the brand has in
store for shareholders.
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