Social media – how impactful is it?

I’ve watched with some interest as many of my peers have got very excited about social media.

I'm intrigued by social media's power and ability to spread information. I especially like the fact that it is global. I’ve been a member of facebook for nearly two years, Linked-in and blogger for three. And I joined twitter a couple of months ago. Currently I am following Obama on twitter. Yesterday I joined Xing. You can probably tell that I’m a little obsessed with it. And it seems that everyone else is too judging by all the headlines in the marketing and PR magazines/blogs. But who is using these applications? And should PRs and marketers consider them?

You would think the whole world was at it from the miles of media coverage on social marketing in traditional media, online and in PR and marketing literature. But not everyone is using social networking. While nearly all my friends use facebook, and even their parents in some cases, not everyone is logging in as regularly as I do. Busy mums log in about once or twice a month. Only 1% of my friends are using twitter. About 5% use Linked in. And a handful of my friends have a blog – mostly about traveling or living as an expat. We're in our thirties so perhaps we're not the target audience. And this is why I don't consider it as the "white knight" that everyone else does.

I believe that social media can complement traditional communications channels but will not replace them, for now. We should not rely on social networking sites entirely to promote our brand especially if our target audience is not using it (which goes without saying). However, PRs and marketers should consider it, investigate it and find out whether it fits their company's objectives and is used by their target audience. Time will tell though and you never know, the majority of people over 40 might be on facebook and tweetering daily by the end of 2009. But as yet, I'm not convinced.