What is Top Down vs Bottom Up?

You may have heard these terms used by PR folks and marketers engaged in the socially responsible movement space and wondered What is Top Down vs Bottom Up?

When you are trying to get your message out to the world, there are essentially two ways of doing it: Top Down and Bottom Up. Until the advent of Social Media, it was widely considered that Top Down, or via the media, was the way to go because it was the fastest way of reaching a lot of people.

In many cases, it often is. Increasingly however grassroots organizations and others are finding that they are able to reach the people they need through email marketing and social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and Linked In, and through other sharing platforms like YouTube and Pinterist.

When those activities reach enough people or touch some kind of nerve or create an effective rallying cry or platform, the mainstream media come to the organization to cover the story instead of the organization or movement going to them. That’s what’s know as Bottom Up.

To check out the meanings of other PR terms, please click this link to PR Terms, Glossaries and terminology.