Have you heard the news? Traditional media is dead, say armchair pundits, professional prognosticators, and self-interested marketing gurus. And at first glance, they have a point: business leaders increasingly use podcasts, LinkedIn, newsletters, and webinars to build awareness, establish trust, and grow faster.
President-elect Donald Trump’s successful use of influencers and podcasts to win the White House has seemed to put the final nail in the coffin of traditional media. It’s no wonder the experts are falling all over themselves to declare “new media” as king.
But what if the experts are wrong?
There’s a good reason top CEOs still discuss earnings on CNBC and prioritize thought leadership op-eds at The Wall Street Journal. And while Trump avoided the legacy press during the campaign, Vice President-elect JD Vance was a regular in front of The New York Times, CNN, CBS, and other traditional media – a move that may have secured votes from a statistically significant number of undecided and moderate voters.
As Mark Twain famously quipped, “the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated,” and the fact remains that small, medium and large businesses which don’t include traditional media in their marketing and branding strategies will miss out on:
- Reaching audiences that prioritize traditional media.
- Adding more value to digital assets like newsletters and blogs.
- Gaining third-party credibility.
- Being on the front end of breaking industry news.
Here are five reasons to prioritize traditional media in the digital world.
Who leads the news? The news
Business leaders like Mark Zuckerberg are influencers in their own right – when they talk, people listen. And when Meta’s AI chatbot reached 600 million users, Zuckerberg’s announcement on his personal Threads account led to massive coverage from respected business outlets like Investors’ Business Daily, TechCrunch, and CNBC.
But Zuckerberg and the Meta team didn’t wait until the Big Day to let people know that their chatbot was growing fast. The communications team secured an extensive feature about the technology a few weeks before the announcement. And it was in – you guessed it – Fortune Magazine, one of the holiest grails of traditional business media.
That’s because Zuckerberg, a leading light of social media and new technologies, knows that traditional media still matters.
You may not have global access on a social media platform or the credibility to land a company announcement at a national media outlet. But you can become an early part of news cycles by seeing what’s coming and then putting your unique data, perspectives, and experiences in front of reporters, editors, and . And the best way to do that is not by waiting for influencers to pick up the stories from traditional news funnels.
It’s to be part of the original traditional news stories that drive the conversations on social media, on podcasts, and with influencers. The things we know that nobody else does can help others understand what’s really going on.
That’s why Mark Cuban is on ABC’s Shark Tank and does periodic Reddit AMAs. It’s why Trump did his viral McDonald’s event and Vance was on the Sunday talk shows the prior weekend. And it’s why your best shot to join the influencers is often to be part of the news cycles they don’t even know are happening.
Holes in the market
As Zuckerberg or Elon Musk use their own platforms to get the word out, many executives are following their lead by launching podcasts and turning to LinkedIn to control how their message reaches audiences. But that shift creates saturation – LinkedIn has added 150 million new users in 2024, making it much harder to break through the noise and capture attention without a massive marketing budget.
This shift means a growing class of business experts and potential interview subjects are now bypassing traditional media outlets that have significant audiences and lots of space to fill on their radio and TV segments, in their print publications, and on their websites. The New York Times, for example, attracts 70 million monthly visitors and drives news cycles that influencers use for their content strategy.
You can be an editor’s hero as he or she becomes desperate for the exact content you provide through thought leadership essays, statements in response to ongoing news cycles, and announcements of your own.
Let the big fish fight for the handful of big slots. You can become a much bigger fish in the pool where your actual customers hang out.
Third-party credibility
When 1.15 billion people are fighting for space on LinkedIn, it’s hard to break through the noise? When a podcast has you as a guest but doesn’t put your name on the site, the appearance’s value is limited. And your newsletter is only as valuable as the quality and quantity of people on it.
Conversely, traditional media placements add significant credibility to your content and your brand. Interviews, sound bites, or thought leadership in respected outlets become valuable assets when repurposed into social content or owned media. They also help those coveted influencers and podcast hosts better trust the quality of your message – they don’t just give airtime to anyone.
And you don’t have to get into WSJ or CNBC to achieve your goals. Again, let everyone else fight for those few, often ego-driven slots. You can get into the trade and regional outlets that are 10% as hard to get into but drive 80% of the credibility as the big dogs, then driving the message again and again through your newsletter, blog, and other marketing tools.
Yes, traditional media means giving up some control of your message. But if only your parents hear it, is it really driving value and increasing sales?
SEO Strategy
Social platforms are great for building followings and communicating directly with those cultivated audiences. But their models are all designed to keep audiences in their ecosystem – not lose them to your homepage and your e-newsletter.
Search Engine Optimization, on the other hand, introduces you to potential prospects who are searching for what you do and how you do it. Traditional media helps build the Google Roadmap so that you’ll appear above the competition because placements often have your name and organization, a description of both, and/or keyword-rich content about what you said in the outlet.
Meanwhile, a lot of podcasts and other programs don’t even put your name in the digital text.
Control your options
Getting on a podcast sounds great. But what if you stutter or need time to think when asked a tough question? Or what if your social media post gets a lot of the wrong kind of engagement? You don’t want to start a flame war on your company’s page. Legacy media exposure allows you to pick and choose the style of communication and the platform that you prefer.
- The stuttering team lead can publish a thought leadership essay.
- The nerdy CTO can jump on the niche industry podcast.
- The public-facing CEO can lead the press conference.
- The happy customer can provide the e-mailed comment.
You can’t control everything in earned media, whether it’s on an influencer’s podcast or in the niche trade outlet. But you can dictate which outlets you target, who represents the company to those outlets, and what spokesperson styles are best tailored to the audiences who trust the outlets.
Traditional media isn’t shiny and new – but it’s hugely valuable
Not that long ago, online print was the new and shiny object – getting on the front page or making a major weekly was a much bigger deal. It took social media’s viral potential to help online news fully mature and become ubiquitous with news consumption. New media will continue to evolve and, as it does, provide more adoption opportunities.
That means there’s no reason to rush to join everyone else jumping on the shiny new thing. It’s better to sit back, observe what’s out there, and engage strategically with what makes your brand stronger.
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