Misconceptions of Digital Media Marketing

The advent of social media in India has given birth of many experts in this field. Sometime my friends and colleagues also tries to call me by either suffixing or prefixing this word, but I make it a point to stay away from this temptation and remain an ever eager to learn digital media enthusiast. Over a period of around two years of digital media profession, I have learned that I disagree on some of the points with many experts here. These points are given below:

1)      Only ‘Content’ is King in Digital Media: Many experts still make us believe that only content is the king in digital media and by content, they mean the words written. I somehow disagree with them on this point. Had words been only powerful armoury  in digital media sphere, we would not have seen billions of photographs and videos uploaded on different networking and sharing sites and commanding ‘Likes’ and ‘Comments’. Meteoric rise of Instagram,  Pinterest and photo and video uploads on Facebook and Youtube has actually set the ball rolling for Visual Social Media. If I have to work out a meaning for ‘content’, keeping digital media in mind, then I would say that anything whether it is written word, picture, video, applications, games etc. It has got the ultimate objective of getting response from audience and visitors.

2)      Only ‘Search’ is digital media: Google is powerhouse with unlimited power; without doubt, but it is not the entirety of digital media. I have seen many digital media agency and business organizations having team doing only keyword research and PPC bidding. Despite being a big time internet junkie, I have never searched for anything other than ticket booking and netbanking, which would have benefited any organization financially. Netizens does not log in google all the time for searching information. Has this been the case, then sites like stumbleupon, reddit, applications like pulse.me, flipboard, kobo, whatpad etc.  would not have been so popular. In one of the organization, where I was consultant for setting up the business, I interviewed many candidates for digital media team and out of them, only one talked about campaign planning, execution and analytics, rest of the lot were doing only keyword research and PPC bidding in their previous organization. This scene is worrisome, because it may be giving money to media agencies at this point of time, but it may lead to dissent and fatigue among clients very soon.  For me, search plays a very crucial role in digital media marketing campaign, but it is just a part and not the entirety.

3)      Facebook is “Social Media”: Facebook has more than 950 million active users, but twitter also has more than 200 million user, linkedin has more than 100 million user and other networking, pictures and video sharing sites are also boasting millions of active user, but there is huge fixation of business organizations and digital media agencies with Facebook. Both chase the dream of having and promising maximum number of “Like”, without putting any emphasis on cost- to- benefit analysis. Facebook’s active user number is like a big crowd, where people go for merry making; they have their own business to mind, not yours. So, you need to shout from top of your voice to make these people hear it and if somebody is shouting with higher decibel than you, then be ready to get lost in that noise. Moreover, lot many are shouting on Facebook to attract crowd. Facebook is not the synonym of social media not its definition. Other networking sites also has substantial number of users with their distinct purpose and taste. So, it is always better to map your energy, choose the playground, meet the players and score.

4)      Google Analytics is Web Analytics: Last month, I went to meet and present my digital media plan to one of my ex-boss, who is CEO of a reputed company, I was putting bigger amount of emphasis on web analytics, because my team puts me far ahead in this field than anybody else. His question was “How is your analytics different from Google Analytics?”. When I went on to explain him in detail, he cut me short and asked me to send my proposal, which will be reviewed by his SEO team and if they agrees then it will be taken up. First and the last thing came into my mind that time was ‘meeting is over and you have been asked to go’. Google Analytics does not track activities of the browsers, which does not support JavaScript, like I.E 3, Opera 2.1, Mosaic 3.0. If you go to Google support, it is clearly written that it can crawl any text and it can crawl and index flash files as well, but it does not guarantee that everything about site can be collected and presented to you. Google search has got limitation in crawling and indexing Silverlight files, videos, iFrames. That’s why, it advises SEO experts to limit the use of rich media files and use as maximum text as possible. But in the scenario of visual digital and social media, where sharing videos and pictures have become a norm, how can you restrict its use. Moreover, traffic is now towards, WAP sites, which due to limited processor speed as compared to desk devices and limited internet speed, can accommodate fewer words and pictures, how will search be helpful and how Google Analytics will provide credible analysis is a big question.

Further, Google Analytics provides a histogram of actions happening on your website and other comparative sites, but it does not provide sentiment and semantic analysis. I may be interested to know the number of visitors, their timing of visit etc on my website, but won’t it be better if I get to know that what they want from my site is also made available to me. Free version of Google Analytics does not provide this service, which many people are using.

I hope the practiceners of digital media stay away from building and believing the misconceptions for their and digital media’s benefit.