Reduce Over-Reliance on Facebook, Twitter & YouTube, Before They Eat You Alive.

Too many newsrooms still chasing those social media crumbs rationed by Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. WTF?

First question: Why? Second question: How did Newspaper, Radio and TV lose their grip on that dominant, local market position? Third question: what group of brain scientists let that happen?

Stop the madness. Geez.

If there’s one thing that newspaper TV and radio should have protected with their lives, it’s their dominant position as the most trusted source of news and information in a particular town or marketplace.

It wasn’t that long ago when advertisers had no choice but to spend at least some of their ad spend in the newspaper or on a local radio station. Business hoped to capture the attention of those looking for a job in the paper or checking movie times. If we’re trying to find out what concerts were in town, we’d tune into a specific radio station. But no more.

The inter-webs change that sweet time forever.

It coulda been a chapter from the business bestseller from Clayton Christiansen, The Innovator’s Dilemma. Traditional media was so busy making lots of money the old fashion way, and serving their current client base. They had no time for that pesky little thing called the Internet.

20 years later, that little ankle-biter called the web is now your worst nightmare.  The #1 advertising / marketing and news platform. It now pulls in the greatest amount of revenue.

What must local newspaper & radio do, in order to have a fighting chance of survival?

#1: stop considering Facebook YouTube and Twitter… your partner. Look at these players as the enemy, because they are. The eventually want to eat you. At the very least, these digital players want to castrate you, keep you barely alive, and then have you do all that pesky manual labor called news aggregation and content creation.

So much time and resources has gone towards wrapping up social media divisions within newspaper that nobody pause to imagine that ultimately you were only making your competitor stronger and more likely to squeeze you out of your own market sometime in the future.

Insane. Some local radio stations put on Internet 101 marketing events for their local customer base. They teach advertisers how to use Facebook and Google advertising.

Why spend time and money teaching YOUR customers about the competition?

Goof luck destroying the last remaining remnants of value that a local media sales rep can offer to a local small business.

Stay tuned for our next post: Impact the Influencers. WordPress Powered Hyper-Local News & Revenue Strategy.

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