A Beginner’s Guide To Social Media (by a beginner): Lesson 6
The last few posts have explained how New Media enable you to create content using various on-line platforms – whether they are journals, photo albums or videos. Now I am going to explain how Social Media allows you to spread your creation around the Internet quickly and effectively.
Lesson 6: How does Social Media enable things to spread?
Social Media operates using the timeless principle of ‘Word of Mouth’. We do this every day when we say to others, “Have you heard…?” or “Did you see…?”.
As I showed in the last post, when a message is broadcast through old media channels the number of recipients is limited.
E.g. Television sends the message to viewers at home. Limited reach, little inter-personal spread.
Old Media broadcast relies on off-line spreading. I see an advert on television and can only pass it on to others when I see them. The next day at work, on the bus or in the playground. Hence my spread is limited to my immediate social circle and my ability to contact them.
When we utilise ‘New’ media channels we are still subject to the same constraints – our immediate social circle and our ability to contact - however the message can be passed along much much quicker. Within mere seconds in fact. Not only this, but the multi-channel aspects of New Media means the message can be passed onto a much wider circle of people. Not just our immediate sphere.
New Media allows more people to share the message to EVEN MORE people, quicker than ever...
So when you broadcast a message using a service like Twitter for example, you enact a snowball effect of spreading.
It may only reach 3496, but one of them – @chrisbrogan– ‘retweets’ it and rebroadcasts the message to his followers:
In turn, a few, many or all @chrisbroganfollowers may retweet the @hildygottliebmessage and what we have is a snowball effect of word-of-mouth travelling around the net and spilling out into off-line conversations.
The benefits of using Social Media to reach a larger number of people are manifold, be it for personal use (“I’m having a party on Saturday”) or commercial use (“I’m having a sale on Saturday”). Whatever the reason, the effects are still the same; the message has an increased reach because of social media’s unique ability to spread in a way traditional mediums are not able to.
(All diagrams used are the intellectual property of Scott Gould)