Successful Companies Embrace New Media

Social Media Marketing

(February 2, 2016) – For years now, bloggers as well as business and media professionals have become increasingly aware about a new truth for the 21st century. There’s even a popular website called “Every Company is a Media Company,” which I would highly recommend to a professional in any field. The premise of the idea is simple, but revolutionary.

People love social media. People comprise businesses. Businesses love social media. Social media loves video.

As major social media platforms grow by expanding their service portfolio or by changing existing services, businesses can struggle to stand out from their competitors. Do you know how many ads Facebook users see everyday? That number is in the hundreds. So users see literally thousands of ads every week. How’s a Boston business to compete?

Being Creative is Not Enough

The standard advice to media creators has been to create content that is creative, funny, and/or original. These qualities are a great start, but a start is all they are. A lot of creative, funny, or original advertisements get buried in users feeds. For example, check out this awesome ad from the household cleaning product company Finish.

This ad achieves all the qualities that I just described, but it hasn’t made the rounds of social media or SEO that its creators probably hoped it would. Just because you’ve made an awesome video doesn’t mean that the video will be an instant success.

There are ads that are creative, funny, and/or original, and succeed on social media and SEO. For example, the overwhelming success of GoPro’s partnership with RedBull partially compelled GoPro and RedBull to reposition themselves as media companies that also directly sell consumer goods.

I first watched that GoPro advertisement, despite the actual appeal of the work, at a friend’s house on a Friday night. When was the last time you went to a friend’s house and consciously decided to watch an advertisement?

What’s the secret here? Why do RedBull and GoPro consistently perform so strongly according to every objective criteria, and how do they create audiences with legitimate media engagement? Both companies devote huge amounts of capital to their media divisions, as opposed to making one-off or traditional marketing campaigns. These businesses approach online media in a way that no one could have thought of five years ago.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I feel a strange compulsion to drink a RedBull while I bike down Commonwealth Avenue.

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