Is Social Media the new Direct Media?

With the advent of social media and marketers rushing to Facebook and Twitter to try out how the program can work for them. Our business has seen a crash in the efforts of new clients looking to test email and other DM programs. People want a sure thing, they need business offerings which will work and the certainty that current digital offerings gives will cause even more marketers to go in this direction. The symbiotic nature of Social Media is hard to challenge. First everyone says, you have to have a FB page, then you need to run a program to tell people about it so that down the road they will tell their friends and like and respond to offers. At some point, people are going to say "Why should I care?" - most of what has shifted to the digital space has come from the offline world. The only difference being that when a colleague likes the service, you get the benefit of their approval. People are wonderful at giving opinions, Facebook has benefited from this fact.