In this presentation Jim James answers a viewer’s question about how to balance the challenges and opportunities of digital and social media platforms with the established advantages of traditional media when communicating to internal and external audiences. He first breaks down digital media, highlighting three key opportunities—real‑time distribution, universal targeting, and measurable attribution—and three challenges—high creative demand, short content lifespan, and potentially high production cost. He then examines traditional media, noting its three main advantages—editorial authority, contextual perspective, and the ability to reach new, unknown audiences. James discusses how audience type (internal vs. external) and the level of disclosure affect the choice of channel, and he stresses that the situation (e.g., crisis vs. persuasion) and the desired outcome (e.g., rapid action vs. reputation building) further shape the media mix. The core recommendation is a continuously re‑worked blend of digital and traditional tools, selected based on audience, situation, and outcome, with an integrated campaign that leverages digital’s speed and measurability alongside traditional media’s authority and reach.
Chapters
Hi, well, I wanted to answer a question that's come in, which is, how would you balance the challenges and opportunities provided by digital and social media platforms with the established advantages of traditional media to inform internal and external audiences? Now, I think the best thing we can do there is pull this apart, so I'm going to start first of all by looking at the 2 different platforms, digital and traditional, and I'm going to look at the opportunities and the challenges of digital, then the opportunities and challenges of traditional. Then I'm going to just talk about audience groups, and then with a summary, I'm going to look at the situation, outcome, and audience profile mix, and then I'm going to look at a conclusion. First of all then, if we are looking to understand the balance between the use of digital and social platforms, between informing internal and external audiences, first of all let's look at digital. Now, opportunities around digital. First of all, digital is real-time. Right, so one of the great points about digital is that you can get it out there in a controlled way and immediately and global. So the second key aspect of digital is that it's potentially universal, can be extremely well targeted, and that is of course a massive bonus if you're working on public relations. At scale and at speed. The 3rd element of digital is about attribution. Now, when I say attribution, I mean that you can trace what has happened to that content, where it's gone, and the performance of that content. Has it been liked? Has it been forwarded? Has it had a click-through? So the opportunities of digital— that it's fast, It's everywhere and you can know what it's doing. And this, of course, means that you can track engagement. Now, the challenges then with digital— one is that it's demanding in terms of creativity. It's a competitive world out there for content, and if you produce bad content, then there is no guarantee that someone is going to look at it. So creating your own digital content demands creativity, and that applies whether it's text or still images, infographics, audio, or video. The second challenge with digital is lifespan. Now, as we've seen, the lifespan of content on Twitter can be less than 60 minutes. A video on YouTube may last less than 5 days. And if you post on LinkedIn, again, you may have 4 or 5 hours before it's fallen off the roster. The 3rd element of digital, which is related to this need for creating creative content, at speed is cost. Now, if you are outsourcing the production of digital content, it can become very expensive very quickly. Now let's just look at traditional media. Now, there are a number of opportunities around traditional media. Could you call them opportunities? It's another way of terming them— opportunities being advantages. One, of course, really is authority. Traditional media carries editorial integrity, and it's this editorial integrity that gives traditional media its credibility. It is really why all clients want to work with traditional media. Because it is having, in effect, a testimonial from a third party that is valued making commentary on your own company, product, service, organization. The second opportunity of traditional media is one of perspective. One's content, when placed within the pages or within the Frames or within the podcast tunes of being on a traditional media platform is that your content is embedded in and around content that is also of value to its listeners. So your own content has some context and is creating a perspective for people. And the third element is the audience. One of the key benefits of traditional media is that it will bring an audience which you may or may not have already. Now, this can be true of digital as well, but with digital, many of the platforms need for you to be subscribed. If you think about YouTube, for example, or LinkedIn, you need to be following somebody. You do get the occasional way of looking at new content. But on the whole, digital is serving content to people that are already looking at that content. Traditional media— think about the newspaper on the newsstand, for example— can reach audiences that the company or the organization does not know yet. So it's bringing a new audience. So the opportunities of traditional media are that it creates authority, that it creates perspective, And it introduces new audiences. So let's just touch on audiences because the question was, how would you balance the challenges and opportunities provided by digital and social platforms with the established advantages of traditional media to inform internal and external audiences? And this is really the key part of the question— which audience is being addressed? Now obviously If it is an audience that one doesn't know yet or doesn't have a direct relationship with, for example a government, then traditional media could reach those people in a way that digital may or may not. So if you're looking at external audiences, traditional media could bring new audiences, but there will be some audiences which are external which are known by external— we at EastWest think about partners and customers, both current and future. Now, the other audience in the question are the internal audience, and the issue here, of course, is that if you're using traditional print to communicate with your members of staff, your team, it will carry that authority, but there'll be some kinds of information which are private, company-specific information. And therefore, of course, the opportunity of digital to see what behavior was motivated by the content is key. So we have to look with the audience at if we're looking at external or internal or audiences, and what is the level of information, if you like, disclosure that we're looking at, and what is the motivation that we're looking to create. So in summary then, how would we balance the challenges and opportunities? Well, the truth is that we need to look at the audience, we need to look at the situation, and we need to look at the outcome And those 3 dynamics will determine the blend of traditional and digital media that can be used. In truth, there is a good argument that says one needs to have a blend of both digital and traditional. It's not a case of using 100% of one and zero of the other. But it really comes down to the audience. Is it going to be an internal audience or is it going to be external audiences? What's the situation? For example, if it's crisis management, then the speed of digital, the universality of digital, the attribution qualities of digital are key versus, for example, print or TV, which may be too slow to actually be able to publish and to arrive, but also we don't know who's received it and what action they're taking. So what outcome is being sought? If it is to change hearts and minds, if that audience currently doesn't understand the company, they're probably not going to be convinced by the social media campaign of the company. They'll be looking for perspective and authority that is carried within the pages or on the news of the TV or within the radio station, for example. So the outcome makes a big impact, therefore, on the nature of the strategy. So in conclusion, how would you balance social and traditional media to inform internal and external? The answer is that it is a formula which needs to be continually reworked depending on the audience, the situation, and the outcome, using the, the qualities of digital and traditional. And a great campaign will integrate both of them and introduce the elements of content, creativity, and authority in order to encourage the audiences to work in alignment with the goals of the organization.
