People say social media is unicorn, but it’s really just a big powerful black horse.
Sure, social media empowers customers like nothing before it. And of course, social media creates a new level of real-time accountability for companies previously accustomed to asynchronous communication. These are the ways social media is different. But in other ways, it’s largely the same.
Let’s compare email marketing and social media.
Market Size
When people ask you how big the social media business opportunity is, tell them it’s about the same as the email business opportunity. Very big. But nowhere near search, or television, or radio.
Messaging Flow
Email is somewhat an option. The only people that get emails from your company are people that asked to receive them.
Social media is also an option. The only people that see your tweets, status updates, foursquare check-ins, and notifications of your new YouTube musings purposefully signed up for the privilege.
Audience Count
The people that have option to receive our email are called subscribers. They can unsubscribe and remove themselves from the group.
The people that have option to receive our social messages are called followers. Or fans. They can unfollow or unlike to remove themselves from the group.
Viewers
In the world of email, we count the number of people that saw or read each message. That metric is called “open rate”, email marketers call this the “render rate”.
In social media, we wish we could count the number of people that actually saw a specific tweet. But we have that metric in Facebook, where it’s called “impressions”, and on YouTube, where it’s called “views”.
Actions
Email marketers closely track the number of people that click links placed in messages. This is reported as the click-through rate – which is expressed as a percentage.
Social marketers also very closely track the number of clicks, but that data is usually reported as an integer (often through bit.ly) because we don’t know the number of views, and thus cannot determine the percentage. Facebook, however, does provide this data, and calls it “Feedback” (percentage of people seeing a specific status update that click “like” or write a comment).
Sure, social media empowers customers like nothing before it. And of course, social media creates a new level of real-time accountability for companies previously accustomed to asynchronous communication. These are the ways social media is different. But in other ways, it’s largely the same.
Let’s compare email marketing and social media.
Market Size
When people ask you how big the social media business opportunity is, tell them it’s about the same as the email business opportunity. Very big. But nowhere near search, or television, or radio.
Messaging Flow
Email is somewhat an option. The only people that get emails from your company are people that asked to receive them.
Social media is also an option. The only people that see your tweets, status updates, foursquare check-ins, and notifications of your new YouTube musings purposefully signed up for the privilege.
Audience Count
The people that have option to receive our email are called subscribers. They can unsubscribe and remove themselves from the group.
The people that have option to receive our social messages are called followers. Or fans. They can unfollow or unlike to remove themselves from the group.
Viewers
In the world of email, we count the number of people that saw or read each message. That metric is called “open rate”, email marketers call this the “render rate”.
In social media, we wish we could count the number of people that actually saw a specific tweet. But we have that metric in Facebook, where it’s called “impressions”, and on YouTube, where it’s called “views”.
Actions
Email marketers closely track the number of people that click links placed in messages. This is reported as the click-through rate – which is expressed as a percentage.
Social marketers also very closely track the number of clicks, but that data is usually reported as an integer (often through bit.ly) because we don’t know the number of views, and thus cannot determine the percentage. Facebook, however, does provide this data, and calls it “Feedback” (percentage of people seeing a specific status update that click “like” or write a comment).
