Pew Research and Democratized Social Media

This presentation shows and explains the dramatic shifts in the demographics of users of social media between 2005 and 2009. Moving away from a mostly male to majority female population, and rising as a percent of population all the time, this is another marker on the perpetual presence (whatever the app forms in which it comes) of social media.

Social Media for Local Business

Dave Peck at New Media Chatter, chips in with an advisory, 6 Ways Social Media Can Help A Local Business. The basics: a blog, a Facebook fan page, a Twitter account. But more importantly, taking on the role of “an expert” in your field. This concept and variations will stand as a fundamental precept for effective use of social media in local. My comment on Dave’s post:

“The secret for any local merchant is that they are already part of one or maybe many more social networks. In the old days, those were called “market segments;” but that phrase must be BANNED forevermore; it is far too static for the dynamism inherent in any social network that can now be animated by social media.”

Plus: if you attach your Twitter address to your napkins, brochures, shopping bags, store signs, ads on the sides of buses, you get more directly inside the flow of viral networking among people likely to have an interest in your stuff.

Local vertical health care

MetroHealth Media, Inc.

Current assignment involves carving out a piece of the local consumer health care market by converting a print directory called LifePages that serves the DC metro region.

LifePages serves a sub-set of the local consumer health care vertical: complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), holistic and natural health therapies and practices.  These are now more consistently referred to as integrative health and medicine, a serious component of the rapidly growing prevention and wellness sector, as people step aside from mainstream medicine to test supplements, massage, meditation and other therapies. Acupuncture is perhaps the best known “non-traditional” (unless you live in Asia) treatment to evolve into acceptance. Meditation, herbal remedies and “energy” work are on the same path.

Since the time and dollars spent in pursuit and practice are almost entirely local, it fits the local/vertical formula I’ve focused on the last couple of years.

Old News, Good Comment

I often find myself wondering if I really read what I just read in commentary on what’s to happen to the news industry, the media industry, the advertising industry. So I delight when finding something I agree with, even if it is six months since posting. In his review of Google’s flirtations with newspapers and the offline movement of digital advertising, Richard Waters of the Financial Times’ ft.com summed up the central task:

“…Assembling a large body of like-minded consumers will involve tapping into a variety of small-scale markets.”

This is particularly true in local markets. We all hop from our positions in one small-scale market to another at our own whim, entwined with a corresponding variety of like-minded folks. I don’t think it is any more difficult than that, is it?

For the full context, check out Waters’ ft.com story:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/4e057d1e-eac2-11da-9566-0000779e2340.html

Filed under: Advertising, News Industry