Staying Relevant using Social Media

Before the internet, publications had a very simple strategy to make money. Their market was mostly built upon the selling of their publications, whether that was newspapers, magazines or somewhere in between. Along with this, they would put some advertisements inside of their publications, so that they pull in money from both the customer and the companies supporting the publication.

Nowadays, instead of going toward publications, people are gravitating to get their news and content from social media websites. Using something like Tumblr or Pinterest, the customer now can control exactly who they follow and customize their social media to their needs. To keep up with this trend, publications are beginning to have their own presence on all kinds social media websites. This leaves customers to option to follow both single content creators, and also follow a company similar to New York Times or The Wall Street Journal.

Emily Fleischacker, BuzzFeed’s creative director, simplified this process by saying. “We think of Pinterest as our newsstand.” This process works for both sides of the engagement. The social media is happy to have the publication on their site, as it brings better content. And the publication is happy to be in contact with users who normally wouldn't go to the publication’s site on their own.

But, this still leaves the question, is this sort of engagement better or worse or just different than the older method? Can publications survive simply by putting their content all over the web and have the users be directed to their own website? It is obvious that publications “are scrambling to secure customers for their digital products, and are finding them increasingly through social media.” But, how can this bring long term growth to the publication?

Overall, even though this social media interaction is important and useful as mentioned in the article, I feel like it is very important to make sure that the publication is not just “following along”. By example, since most Pinterest users see so many different publications at once, they will start to see the New York Times as “just another old newspaper”. And with this, the user will not really prefer a specific publication.  A part of what made a publication successful before the internet was the loyal customers who either had a subscription or bought the paper on a regular basis. Someone on Pinterest may access the site every day, but may not go on the New York Times everyday, even though they post on Pinterest often. Some online publishers may also charge for their online subscription. But, if another site brings the same news to Pinterest as a paid one does, why would someone subscribe to your website?

            In conclusion, I feel like publications should focus on ways to grab users from social media and see if there is a way to make them stay on their site instead of the other social media. I do not have a solution for this, but I know that this is the next step for publications to stay relevant on the internet. 

Link to article: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/22/business/media/publications-see-pinterest-as-key-ally.html?ref=technology