I have a dear friend, Cherie Hebert, who is an advertising executive and principal of BBR, a local ad agency here in Lafayette. (BBR, by the way, stands for Blond, Brunette and Redhead. Cherie is the brunette.)
Cherie uses the term "social marketing" to describe what I refer to as social media marketing.
Another friend of mine calls it "social networking," though she means the same thing. But, is it? With no disrespect to my friend, I think the answer, obviously, is no, or at least, not exactly.
Lots of people network socially everyday without any intention of using it for marketing purposes. For them, it's a matter of connecting with family and friends. For us, it's something different. We have a motive that extends beyond connections. We're interested in "transactions," those of a business nature.
If social marketing and social networking are horses of a different color, how exactly do we use social networks for marketing purposes?
I believe the answer is three-fold: Listen, Engage and Measure.
LISTENING
By listening, we learn what people are saying about us, our brands, products, services, stakeholders, industry and competition. We also learn who's saying it and where they're doing the talking. We learn who the influencers are as well. All of that provides us with insights that lead to the second phase, engagement.
Frankly, we put the cart before the horse if we simply jump into the waters doing things like creating Facebook Pages or blogs without having first done our due diligence by listening. With software tools such as
Techrigy,
Radian6 and
Trackur, there is no excuse for not doing so. Even if you take a DIY approach and just use Google Alerts and Twitter search, you need to have your ear to the ground.
Listening is not relegated just to the inhabitants of the social media sphere either, but involves your own marketing objectives as well. Listen to your marketing plan as it were. What is it saying? After all, social media marketing is still marketing and has to tie to established goals and objectives.
I think we still look at social media as a "curiosity" or novelty. It's not. It should be able to stand up under the same scrutiny applied to any other form of marketing.
ENGAGEMENT
Once you know the who, what, when, where and why, then it's time to focus on the "how" and engage the marketplace via channels that will very likely be obvious by now. While I have to concede that Facebook and Twitter are givens in most respects, there are many other ways to approach this -- online video, podcasts, niche online communities, blogs, other social networks, and so on.
The one characteristic that separates social networking from social marketing at this stage is "intentionality." You have to approach every form of engagement with the intention of reaching precisely the audience it makes sense for you to reach. You don't need to connect with everyone. In fact, that might work against your purposes.
Though we no longer merely target audiences, but also participate in approachable communities, we still have to have to create demographic and psychographic profiles for each of our markets. By creating what author
David Meerman Scott refers to as buyer personas, we can better filter who would be a good fit for us and who would not.
Again, it's not different than other forms of marketing. We're just using social media as the avenue. Sure, we have to play by the rules. That's a given. But, we can do that and still achieve certain objectives.
MEASUREMENT
I admit that we're still in a nascent stage so far as
measuring social media is concerned. However, because social media marketing is still marketing, it must also stand up under the same
statistical scrutiny as other forms.
I'll do some posts later on that go into greater depth where measurement is concerned. My point here is to suggest why and how social marketing is different than social networking. Measuring the return on investment or engagement is one such marker.
I'd like to know what you think. In what ways do you see social marketing, as my friend Cherie puts it, as different from social networking?