Why Is The UK Marketing Community Blind To Social Media?
Here in the UK most people in the marketing industry read publications such as NMA, Campaign, Media Week, e-consultancy, Marketing Week and Mad on a daily or weekly basis.
Something that has always surprised me about these sites is how little they have been able to penetrate the major social media websites such as Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and Sphinn. These social sites are full of exactly the same technology and marketing news and opinion that the UK marketing websites are writing about every day and yet stories from these UK marketing sites are being ignored.
Why do these sites get so much less social media traffic than most amateur blogs?
Overall traffic levels are actually quite high for most of the sites but if these were US based websites with a clear social media strategy then some would be attracting perhaps ten times as much traffic per day. While I can appreciate that Digg users are hardly the target demographic it is important to remember that social media traffic means more readers, more ad revenue, more links, more search traffic and greater reach and brand awareness.
These sites are making money based on CPM ad deals, what would it be worth for their traffic to double?
NMA has appeared on the Digg front page a couple of times although not in the last year, Marketing Week has appeared on Digg once 275 days ago and E-consultancy has also appeared once. Brand Republic, the largest site according to Google Trends, has never hit the Digg front page and neither has Mad.
Social Media Culture
The content on these sites is clearly of a very high standard so why are these sites missing the social media boat?
The issue lies partially with the websites themselves for not taking the time to build a social media culture amongst their readership but the main blame lies with their readers. If thousands of marketing professionals in the UK are reading these sites every day why are we not bothering to share the content online?
How can we expect to explain to clients about online marketing when we don’t even bother to participate in the social media space ourselves?
Social media is about giving more than you take. When you spend every day reading a website about social media and online marketing why not take the time to share content you find interesting so that other people can find it too?
The web works in a different way to traditional marketing. If you see great content in a newspaper you aren’t supposed to do anything with it. When you see great content online the general assumption is that you will share it with everybody else.
Post category: Social Media Tweet
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Branded3, a Leeds SEO & Digital Agency specialising in SEO, Web Design, Development & Social Media.
Comments
Read the 10 comments below, or add your own!
I think many people within marketing, PR and the mainstream media still live in a world of scarcity where they think information is to be jealously guarded, which they can then use to their advantage.
However, they are completely oblivious to the fact that today information is everywhere, like water, and most people are drinking from the same trough.
By point is mentioned in this interesting piece that relates to journalists:
http://strange.corante.com/2008/06/12/information-is-only-scarce-if-you-live-in-a-bubble
I believe Patrick that you are in a position to initiate a syndicate whereby UK readers are encouraged to inject UK media into the social media stream. Some kind of education needs to take place, whether this is done via a service or running events.
As far as I know quite a bit of the content of these sites is behind a subscription firewall which certainly reduces traffic and prevents easy sharing.
the brits will come around to see the benefits of social media once it’s understood that by sharing you can get soooo much more benefit. in the meantime, keep spreading the word !
some of “us Brits” get the value of social media…
Q) How often are the top stories on Digg about US culture? (elections/NFL etc)
A) Too much for UK marketeers to see any benefit in fighting to be on there
- rightly or wrongly that is how some of the old school see it.
I have a colleague who is a traditional PR man, he looked at Digg and made a very valid point – if I wasn’t interested in stories about the US or technology – how many of the top stories would interest me?
Interesting post Patrick, I’ve wondered similarly myself.
Conversely some UK newspapers have gained quite a lot of digg coverage, though I suspect in many cases through deliberately covering the sort of irreverent stories that are more likely to do well in social media, than the more business focused publications you’ve listed.
Likewise, amateur blogs are right at home with social media sites. It’s their domain.
I think there’s more to it though. I’m not sure how best to articulate this – but I think there is an underlying feeling for many UK users that digg – and even Sphinn – are somewhat US-focused.
This is often borne out by the traffic resulting from a Digg first page.
From a personal perspective, I recall e-consultancy.com being mentioned on Threadwatch.org (which had a strong UK community, though far from exclusively UK) a number of times – and I never thought it felt out of place. Whenever I see e-consultancy on Sphinn I’m always a little (pleasantly) surprised to see it there.
Many UK marketers aren’t ‘online marketers’. They might understand their brand but when it comes to the full potential of the internet it’s surprising how little so-called ‘marketers’ know. That’s why they hire SEO/Online agencies to work with them – so many of the contacts we work with are the company’s ‘marketing manager’.
The UK lags behind the US anyway – maybe as people become more aware of the power of the internet more UK-centric social sites will appear where British stories actually make the front page
Interesting! I wasn’t aware that the UK hasn’t embraced social media as much. Perhaps just more of an opportunity for those who want to become evangelists…
I agree with the comments that most of the social media sites seem to be US-centric. Maybe there’s an opportunity for Digg, or the other sites, to setup localised front pages for different countries – uk.digg.com perhaps?
Cheers, Jon
Right, inspired in part by this discussion I’ve decided to set-up a PHPdugg (very much an alpha site so far) http://www.ShareMe.co.uk
I say again, very much an alpha, if any of you readers would be interested in having a play – fill your boots.
Beta launch is 9th Nov – I work in radio, so I’ll be pushing all my journalist contacts to add this button to their site… see socialtech.biz for the shareme.co.uk button.