Social Media Marketing vs Traditional Marketing

We learnt a lot of things about social media in lecture 4 and 5, such as example platforms in social networking, social marketing and commerce, and social multimedia. Before these lectures, I just thought that the social media was only for entertainment or people relationships build up tools, never know that social media also can used by commercial purpose. Customers can interact with company, provide feedback, and learn more about company culture, products and service through social media marketing. In lecture notes, I read that “Social media has changed the way to do traditional marketing and even online marketing.”, so I am very curious about the difference between traditional marketing and social media marketing, and what advantages of social media marketing. To help the analysis, I read thought the lecture notes again and did some online research.

Ok, let's talk about what is traditional marketing and social media marketing first. Traditional marketing is advertising through TV, radio and print such as newspapers, magazines and leaflet mostly. Users are forced to get the latest information most of time, which interrupt their focus, such as watch their favorite TV show, listen to their style of music or read the latest news of their interest. Unfortunately, company can only attract 1-2% people using this way.

Social media marketing put effects on create attractive content and encourage readers sharing with their social networks. Usually, it's much more convinced when a friend tells you about it not the company itself. So we can say this kind of marketing is driven by word-of-mouth. There are many social networking websites such as facebook, twitter, google+, youtube, blogs and so one nowadays. Everyone can interact with each other and build relationships through these platforms. When products or companies join those social tools, peoples can share products experiences. These social media allow users to copy the promoted products information including comments post on their own websites, which is sharing to their friends. By repeating message, more and more users see the message, more and more potential customers created, more and more traffic brought to products or company.

For traditional marketing, it is always the hardest part to keep your customers, hope them will come back and bring more customers to you. But for social media marketing, it is opposite. It is about recognizing that your existing customers are your best assets. You can reach your existing customers to remind them to come back and make word of mouth by using social media.

Social media differs from traditional marketing that it involves two-way communication. After watching a video about social media marketing (as following video), I list the advantages of social media marketing as following:

·         Customer acquisition: reach much more customers and networks of people.

·         Brand awareness: brand much easier and faster; less competition yet.

·         Targeted Marketing: easily targeted, tracked, and quantifiable. can be tracked on real time. Inexpensive.

·         Customer intention: communication with customers about new products, special promotions, or merely education on your business.

·         Immediate results: increased site traffic, lead acquisition, ultimately increased sales.

Although there are so many benefits of social media marketing, you cannot throw other marketing tactics away. In fact, social media marketing works best when combined with other marketing activities especially email marketing. At last, I read a good blog written by Dr Vikram Venkateswaran really want to share here - How Social Media Marketing complements Traditional Marketing: Oprah Winfrey Example. It uses Oprah interview as an example to explain the social media is not replacement of traditional media but a very impotent component of the marketing mix.



Open Source Development

I did not know that our knowledge can be divided to different cognition levels and types, building knowledge is a process, and our mind can be engaged in social networking environments by doing social tasks and about knowledge there is something called Epistemological Belief before learning the lectures on week 3.  In this lecture, I found that a topic about “open source” is very interesting which is also related my job now. So I did surfing on the Internet to do some related research to know further, also tried to thinking and analyzing this topic according my own experience.

On Wikipedia, I found some descriptions for open source development. Open Source Development is the production or development process of software whose source code is publicly available. The source code can be available and visible to anyone want to study, change, and improve it. On the contrary, “closed” means the software vendors keep the source code secrets to public, only their own developers can read, modify, and change the source code. In the past, the open source development method was not so structured. There were no clear tools, phrases for development. The situation becomes better since the found of open source community. There are many popular open source software products nowadays, such as Linux, Apache, PHP, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chromium, and Android, etc.

 

There was concept of free sharing of technological information very long ago, even before computers came out. In the early years of automobile development, a association which grew out of the Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association, was found to make member companies free shared patents openly between all the manufacturers. When internet came out and became more and more popular, the sharing of source code on the internet began. And now, the term of “open source” is widely known, and this development method praise highly in IT area.

I am writing programs in my company now. It is really convenient to have “open source”. Sometimes you just need using open source and do some modification, customization, the applications and programs can be produced quickly, it is a very efficient way; Sometimes you really meet bottle neck, cannot fix the bugs or problems, just post the source code on the internet forums, or discuss on development community, you can find the solution very quickly, after all, this is pooling the wisdom of the masses; Sometimes the technology is very new to you, you really don’t know how to start, just find tutorials, sample code, experience sharing on internet, you can follow step by step easily, etc. It is really a good thing to have “open source” in the world.

I did some research to comparing Apple IPhone and Google Android phone last semester, and analyzed that Google Android phone would beat Apple IPhone in future because of its open source platform. “It’s hitting Apple where it hurts by giving away ‘App Inventor’ – an application just about anyone can use to easily make applications for Android.” (Daniel Roth, How Android Will Beat iPhone: Google Gives Away App Inventor). Many companies built innovative new business model around open source, by deriving their revenues from other method such as support and training services. In “Android business model threatens Apple’s strength in smartphone market” we can find that open source business model can win in the market. Also, "There is a trend towards governments around the world encouraging the use of free or Open Source software (so called 'FOSS policies')." (Open Source)

But there is still one thing confusing me, is that open source for developing everything? Is there anything better to be developed closed?