The Conversation Prism
4/14/2010 at 7:45 am byThe Internet has fundamentally changed the way we communicate. Near-universal access to (nearly) all of human knowledge, cheap or free communication tools, and easy-to-use technology revolutionized messaging from the few-to-many model of nightly TV news to a many- to-many participatory model of communication. Social media sites and services enable like-minded people to find each other and exchange information and ideas through the interactivity of web communications. This communication revolution is also known as Web 2.0. In Web 2.0, reading became writing, lectures became conversations, and consumers became communities or tribes that participate in the generation and transmission of ideas.
Social media channels are specific tools and platforms which are the mechanisms for this web interactivity. Flickr is the most popular channel for photo sharing; YouTube is the big channel for video; and Twitter is the channel of choice for micro-blogging. Most people are familiar with these uber-popular channels, but might not be aware of others. Google Docs is a fantastic collaboration platform; Upcoming.org is ideal for posting event details; and Delicious is a channel for sharing web bookmarks. Citizen journalists can contribute to news sites such as OhmyNews and NowPublic. Digg, reddit and Newsvine also republish stories that readers contribute. There are social media channels for every method of communication and topic people are interested in.
A social media marketing strategy coordinates a message through these various channels. A message interacting across channels is greater than the sum of these same channels working individually.
PR guru Brian Solis diagrams an extensive view of social media channels in his Conversation Prism.
This diagram shows a snapshot of the most popular social media channels by category. The Conversation Prism is helpful when creating a social media marketing campaign in deciding which channels to use. If your marketing campaign is having trouble getting off the ground on a blog, the prism can be used to choose other channels from other sections across the diagram, such as Stumbleupon or reddit.






