ince the beginning of trade and commerce, media advertising has always been a very important aspect of business marketing. Carvings and rock paintings that date back to prehistoric times are believed to have been the first advertisements. Later forms of advertising utilized symbols such as a boot, a wagon wheel, or a horseshoe. Still later came hand-lettered signage, then print advertising, then radio, then TV, and finally the internet.
All of these have proven to be effective mediums for advertising over the years and they all continue to be used to some extent and with varying degrees of success. The single most effective form of advertising however, without exception has always been word of mouth. Nothing sells goods and services more effectively than a recommendation from a friend, relative, or associate.
The key words in word of mouth advertising are "friend, relative or associate." A salesperson cannot be nearly as persuasive, because the prospective customer is very well aware that the salesperson is recommending his or her own product for his or her own benefit. In fact, the harder a salesperson tries to sell something, the more wary and apprehensive a prospective customer may become. Friends and relatives however, have nothing personally to gain (usually) by recommending products and services, so their opinions are perceived to be much more valuable than those of a salesperson.
People talk with one another constantly, and have done so since the earliest beginnings of spoken languange. There are thousands, no millions of conversations perpetually taking place all day and all night all over the world. A topic or idea can begin with a conversation between two or more people and can easily spread throughout an entire continent within days, and it has always been this way.
Over the years, innovations in communication media have ramped up the power of word of mouth advertising by enabling people to communicate with increasingly more ease and convenience. In the 20th century, the telephone kept friends and neighbors connected with one another. Now we have the internet, which serves a similar purpose through email and chat functions. But the internet also has the capacity to elevate communication (and thereby word of mouth advertising) to a quantum new level.
Enter social media. Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and many others. Now we can communicate literally with anyone on earth (who has internet access) about anything we want and at any time we want. We can make new friends and network with other businesses and yes, we can also recommend products and services we like to our friends and relatives, who can pass on our recommendations to their friends and relatives...and so on, and so on. Through the creative use of social media, a business can now get invaluable word of mouth advertising to and from literally millions of prospective buyers, and it can happen literally overnight.
Social media is still a relatively new innovation, but it has already taken the internet world by storm. It's popular with almost everyone, but it is most popular with younger people who are the customers that will drive the economy of the future. Many people who make their living in the traditional (aka "old fashioned") media are dismayed by this trend and want to believe that it's all just a fad. They liked the advertising industry just fine the way it was ten, twenty, or thirty years ago (understandably so, because it was and is their livelihood,) and they seem to hope that maybe they'll wake up one morning and realize that the internet was just a bad dream. I have news for them (no pun intended...) The internet and social media aren't going away anytime soon, and the sooner they realize this and accept it, the sooner they can get on board.
Don't get me wrong. I loved the old days and the old media and I'll always have fond memories about it. My career was in offset printing for many years, and I too was more than a bit nervous as I witnessed the rapid escalation of the internet in the 1990's, because I understood that it threatened the industry that I was comfortable and familiar with and the job that paid my bills. I quickly realized however that this new technology was the wave of the future, and that it was a much better idea to catch that wave and ride it rather than to try and swim against it and risk being swept away by the tide.
I can only imagine what the future holds for all of us on the internet and for the new social media. It's time for us all to to buckle in and take hold of the controls, because we're about to put the throttle to the firewall and go on one heck of a ride.