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February 22, 2008
Social marketing vs. social media marketing
There's growing confusion between the decades-old discipline called social marketing and the new concept of social media marketing.
Social marketing is the planning and implementation of programs designed to bring about social change using concepts from commercial marketing. Social marketing "products" are big ideas meant to change attitudes or behaviors, such as getting kids to stop smoking, protecting the environment or encouraging condom use. It's agenda-based marketing often driven by non-profits. It is a recognized marketing discipline that was popularized in the early 1970's by Philip Kotler and Gerald Zaltman.
Social media marketing is a new flavor of marketing that uses social media such as MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Yahoo groups, etc. to create communities of like-minded interests and, perhaps, interact and converse with customers and potential customers. Social media marketing doesn't work too well with an agenda, unless it springs from a collaborative, grassroots effort from inside the community. It was popularized by bloggers .
I've noticed numerous references on blogs and podcasts that mislabel social media marketing as simply social marketing, probably for reasons of shorthand.
Let's not shortchange the real social marketers who've been working hard for years to change the world by confusing the two disciplines with an incorrect shorthand.
UPDATE: Nedra Weinreich in the comments points us to her side-by-side comparison chart of the two disciplines.
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A very, very good point, and a sin I may as well admit to performing in the interests of shortening a title without actually realising the implications.
Consider me in the process of amending my description in a few places. Although perhaps Social Media Marketing is a bad choice of title for a reason besides the confusion.
It also implies it's only about social digital outlets, and not about entire companies changing the way they work and interact offline as well as online. It's no good engaging a community, then ignoring them when they phone, for example, or trying to get them involved online without corresponding offline meetings and events.
Yep - Social Marketing is defined by the goal, Social Media Marketing is defined by the tools. used.
A lot of Social Media Marketing is basically online World of Mouth Marketing. I guess you could call it Word of Mouse Marketing. I'm always leery of defining genres based on tools Jazz played on a banjo is still jazz, it doesn't become bluegrass. But there is probably a valid place for Social Media Marketing in terms of best practices in usage of a given toolset, just as there's a place for E-Mail Marketing as a set of best practices in the usage of e-mail (a tool) for delivering Direct Marketing messages.
Great distinction, Jackie. Here's how I'm thinking about it ...
Social marketing is about macro chance, involving many people. It is about the relationships between large groups of people, or between large groups of people and the society in general.
Social media marketing helps people connect, one at a time. It is about the relationships between individuals, individuals and companies, or between companies. But, in each case, it is about one-with-one relationships.
As rsomers points out above, we need to be careful about defining genres based on tools (Great banjo/Jazz example ... Bela Fleck would be proud.) What I love about social media marketing is not only the technology, which of course is cool in its own right, but how it enables us to connect and form relationships in ways we couldn't do it before. I got out of college before voicemail existed ... we had to work hard to be in touch with people. We now have many more tools that helps us create relationships, and social media are some of the most useful, and exciting, of those tools.
Jackie - Thanks so much for making that very important point again, and for the link to my article on social marketing. I put together a handy-dandy chart a while ago to help explain the differences (http://www.social-marketing.com/blog/2006/09/social-marketing-vs-social-marketing.html), and more recently wrote a guest post on the Influential Marketing blog about why this is so important (http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com/weblog/2007/11/whats-in-a-name.html).
I know that at some point I have learned the difference between social marketing and social media marketing that you have just clarified. I also know that I am guilty of mislabeling the two and have used them interchangeably. Thanks for making the distinction clear. I will be sure to use my words carefully and not shortchange the real social marketers!
Jackie - thanks for your post. Our friend Nedra wrote another excellent post on the subject in 2006 when a highly visible research firm insisted on using the term 'social media' to mean social media marketing and the not-for-profit marketers challenged that usage. http://tinyurl.com/2ntcjz
Jackie: Thanks for this post. Two questions:
1. Do you think "cause marketing" is becoming the new term for "social marketing"?
2. Do you think some people use social media as a synonym for blogging or CGM? Some posts I've seen suggest the term is misused in that way also.
Krista,
1) Not being an expert in either, I believe that cause marketing is when a corporation adopts a social cause to help promote it. And social marketing is the discipline of using traditional marketing techniques to promote an idea or social cause. Slight differences.
2) I think social media is an umbrella term that encompasses any online content that can be shared and that people can create a conversation around, including blogs, photo-sharing sites, video-sharing sites, forums, social networks, etc.
Thanks for explaining the difference between them both. It seems like there is a bit of confusion out there about these two things. ALthough, I do believe both are very important!!!!
I actually work at SAVO, a b to b technology company, and we definitely leverage social media in our sales enablement technology. We use personal pages (similar to my space), star ratings (on documents, insights or expertise) and comments to leverage an organization's expertise, insight and collective genius to drive better customer conversations. Ultimately, we enable sales to be more productive. Check out our latest webinar, "Moving Beyond the Sales Portal -- Capturing Mindshare in a Web 2.0 World" Click here to attend: https://savoevents.webex.com/savoevents/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=664757276
Thank you so much for this post!
This is a challenge us social marketers are continuing to discuss and address. And, as a social marketing practitioner, I think you are right on with how you define Cause Marketing. Changing the real 'social marketing' to cause marketing, I think, would
1) limit the abilities of social marketing and
2) cloud its end goal
Social Marketing initiatives are about behavior and attitude change, whereas cause marketing is generally thought about when a private firm joins up with a cause, as a mutually beneficial relationship. Though, usually, from a private standpoint, the firm is hoping the cause-partnership will increase the value of its brand or bring in more revenues. This would make a good blog post actually....how social marketing differentiates itself from cause marketing...I'm going to get on that in the next week. =) thanks!
Again, great post!
-SocialButterfly
I couldn't agree more... I just had this very same conversation the other day...
http://justinstauffer.com/whatido_socialmarketing.asp
A rose by any other name. Well, good. Now we have names for what parents and religious leaders have been doing for centuries, correction, millenia. The only thing we really need to watch out for is that some of it is opinionated, and not necessarily correct. When the Yuppie generation decided they would like to play and enjoy life as they did when they were young, they didn't put much into parenting, despite the fact, they were forced into it by the appearance of a phenomena, called children. The result was a generation of ill-equipped youngsters in desperate need of help. Now, with all the communication gadgets all over the place, like cellphones, and Ipods, how come we are still seeing so many screwed up people? We should just be clicking, and winning, and performing like little geniuses. Looks like we need a new category soon. Effective social media marketing, I think that would be a good name for it.
Well said, Jackie. One one hand, it's easy to understand people in a hurry saying social marketing when they mean social media. On the other hand, perhaps it's not accidental. Makes me wonder if the same marketers who are talking about social marketing when they mean social media marketing are holding their brands in tightly clenched fists, concerned primarily about controling that brand at all costs. Hmmm...
You have a good point there Jackie.. Great distinction. I think others are really perplexed about the difference or others really write that for shortcut purposes. Social Marketing is for social change, while social media marketing is the use of social media platforms which is a nice technique when it comes to Search Engine Optimization.
Nice post. I think too many people often think these phrases are interchangeable. Thank you for a clear definition!
