if you’ve never given a second thought about social media impact perhaps you should. If things keep up the way the have then pretty soon there will be no such thing as paper boys. Almost everything you want to know can be found online nowadays and usually the content delivery method is quicker and with much more detail then the offline newspapers can deliver them.
Free Online Content For Everyone, Anytime
It is becoming increasingly difficult for many newspapers and magazines to compete with the barrage of online content that is out there because why would people want to pay for something that they can get for free online? It only makes sense right?
And what about all those old columns that people used to love to read in the papers? People used to place value on some of those opinions.
But now there is a little thing called blogs and this content network doesn’t care who the original content creator was. It can be anybody with an opinion or who just like to write. Look at Perez Hilton the owner of one of the most trafficked content delivery systems out there. He makes so much money a month just from advertising alone that he has advertisers knocking down his door to put ads on his site. All this guy had was a dream and a silly easy to make blog. Now he is one of the most well known producers of online media content there is. People recognize his name wherever he goes. How can a boring newspaper compete with that?
User Generated Content
Also with the popularity of blogs you are able to also see user generated content. With advice columns in newspapers you had to write to the person and then hope that they used you in there next writing. On blogs, even the most popular ones you can leave multiple paragraphs of information in the form of a comment to be seen instantly upon the approval of the blog owner. Some people visit these blogs just to see this alone. With that kind of interaction with users Perez Hilton is the perfect example of what blog syndication can do for you. Now everyone thinks they can be a blogger. There are millions of bloggers out there and they are free to setup. Anyone can go to blogger or wordpress and begin generating their own unique content within minutes.
I used Perez Hilton’s blog as an example when it comes to what advertisers are willing to pay to put their ads in front of a large crowd of buyers, especially the younger crowd who is obsessed with anything pop culture or about their favorite celebrity. Popular people with content syndication can make or break the sale of products by simply mentioning them on their blogs. That is the power they hold over the readers of their blogs. People will often go to websites to do a little research on a particular product first. And they are not researching to see if the product itself is good but what other people are saying about it. If the right people give it a good word then some people will buy no further questions asked.
How Can Newspapers Compete?
So how are Newspaper supposed to compete for that advertising dollar? They can’t now people do not have to be experts to write about something and if they can get the following then they can get possibly more readers then their local newspaper. How can a seventy five cent newspaper compete with a content system like that Buler anyone Buler?
Social media impact may not always be obvious to the casual onlooker but it is being felt in many places, traditional media that are slow to adopt will go the same way as the dinasours.
