GUEST POSTING: The social media tribes go to war

the-outsidersIn the first of a regular series of guest postings, Telstra’s Mike Hickinbotham argues that social media practitioners are splitting into two camps.

The recent debate about the Tourism Queensland and Witchery videos has appeared to have created two distinct online ‘tribes’.  I’ll reference a classic novel to highlight the differences – The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

On one side we have the advertisers – the socials or the ‘socs’ (pronounced ‘soashes’) that are schooled in the traditional ways of top-down, one-way communication.  This preppy crew maintains their focus on advertising but incorporates elements of social media to offer clients or internal stakeholders an additional channel to reach the target audience.

On the other side of the tracks we have the ‘greasers’.  This working class group of bloggers are producing content on a regular basis to engage a community of people that follow their work.  The greasers are often administering last rites to traditional media (i.e. newspapers).

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