Social Business: Analysis – Part 4A: Adoption And Diffusion Related Myths

The Fundamentals series continues the analysis phase with a mini-series on assessing the value and effectiveness of social business. This mini-series will cover the following aspects:

• Reasons to participate in social business (covered in parts A, B and C)
• Internal considerations (covered in parts A and B)
• Debunking myths
• Social business in B2B environments

I’ve divided social media myths into three categories:

1. Adoption and Diffusion related myths
2. Engagement-related myths
3. Business-related myths

Today, we’ll look at social media myths related to adoption and diffusion.

A great number of myths and misconceptions circulate around social media. Here’s my attempt at clearing the air to show where we truly stand:

• Social media is still immature While the adoption of social media around the world is still growing, it is by no means a new phenomenon. Bulletin boards have been around for more than 20 years, blogging and instant messaging for more than 10 years, and social networking for more than five years. Social media has been around for a while, but its significance has taken flight in the last five years because of the scale of adoption; not because of the novelty.
• Social media is a fad The fact that social media has expanded across platforms and geographic boundaries up to a point where it plays an integral of many people’s lives today should be enough to debunk the myth that social media is a fad. Social media’s growing adoption and diffusion, and its profound effect on social business has meant that new business and operating models are under scrutiny and development to best deal with a changing environment.
• Social media is for the children Funny enough, children are not as active on social media as most people think. Television and mobile are the platforms of choice for that demographic and the average user ages for popular social media sites support this. The average age of Facebook and Twitter users is around 30, MySpace around 25, and LinkedIn around 40.
• Traditional media is dead Yes, print media has been in decline, but—as mentioned above—new business and operating models are being developed to cope with emerging technology. Nevertheless, it’s nonsense to proclaim that print, television and radio are dead. All media channels will be able to co-exist side-by-side with social media and strengthen one another in the process.
• Mass marketing is dead Related to the previous point of co-existence, mass marketing isn’t dead either. If anything, social media adds depth to the width that mass marketing accomplishes.
• Email is dead Another demise that is greatly exaggerated. Email isn’t dead. You’ve probably noticed that when checking your email this morning, or when you got an email notification of this new post. Email won’t die anytime soon either, it’s too common, too versatile and too standardized.

If you know any other myths related to adoption and diffusion, I’d love to hear them in the comments! Next week, we’ll look at engagement-related social media myths, see you then!