Social Media or Conventional Media

Information is a humongous wealth, which can never be quantified. Throughout history, we have always respected those who knew more than us and the urge to know more about the people around us and the lives they live has never ever dipped. Media has been our go-to-guy when it comes to enlightening us on things happening around us. It has been the game changer a lot of times quite evident from the marks it has made in the golden book of history. Be it the pamphlets that brought the French people onto the streets to fight the inhuman and indifferent monarch or the tweets that brought up a revolution in Syria, media has existed in different forms.

Conventional media is common form of marketing and spreading information through Television, Radio, and Newspaper. While Social media is innovative form of marketing and spreads information through Internet and Social networking channels like facebook, twitter .It is not easy to choose between them, as both have their share of pros and cons. However in my point of view, I feel Social media is better than Conventional media. Every second, on average, around 6000 tweets are tweeted in twitter .On average, a person spends 20mins per day on social media. These statistics show how effectively social media has garnered users. Does that mean it is all good and green? To get a clear picture, let us discuss the pros and cons of social media in detail.

Audience

Social media has a larger audience compared to conventional one. With every passing day, life is getting busier and busier, and the need for getting information on the go has increased to an unprecedented amount. In a recent survey conduct by PayFort's Infographic on Global WebIndex's media consumption says, globally, 16-24 year olds spend an average of 7.5 hours per day online with mobile devices representing 43% of their online time and also Infographic reveals that they spend only 0.75 hours per day on Traditional media. According to the Internet live stats, 40% of the world population is active on Internet. Nearly 1.23 billion people log onto facebook daily active users. This stats shows how predominant the social media is.Even the conventional media publishers have started using social media to reach the people.

In the field of Marketing

In the world called 'Marketing', getting the feedback from the customer is as important as delivering the product to him on time. Conventional media does not facilitate the instantaneous interaction between the customers and dealers. Social media outplays conventional media in this game. It allows people to review the product, without a hitch. According to State of Inbound Marketing 2012 the Takeaway: 42% of marketers report that Facebook is important to their business. Another major advantage of using the social media as a marketing tool is the cost of operation. Cheaper yet effective ways of advertising on the internet have put the old newspaper ads into oblivion.

Spreading information

Spread of Information through a conventional media is slow, at snail's pace to be precise. Moreover, conventional media primarily focuses on the news specific to a particular region usually their place of operation, while the internet serves the global audience. At times the conventional media finds it difficult to report the truth. This characteristic can be attributed to the undesirable presence of political parties in media. When people were protesting for revoking the ban on Jallikattu, the conventional media failed to report the situation in its true colours. It was the internet that came to the rescue of people who were in dire need of ground zero report. The facebook and twitter amassed support in huge numbers from different parts of state and world, and brought unadulterated news to the ears of people.

The other side of the coin

Social media is an angel of our era, but she has her fair share of troubles. Checking the authenticity of information posted on the internet, is almost impossible. Just like the audience, the ones who put information on the net are big in number. So to track the things they share and to deter them from modifying information, we need a stronger system to be created.

On the whole, social media has certainly got a lot of advantages compared to conventional media. With time, I believe social media will effectively counter its present drawbacks and serve the purpose of spreading authentic information to the public like never before.

-Govarthanan K