Social Media Marketing vs. Social Marketing
Social Marketing is not the same as Social Media Marketing, at least not in the world of academia. Wikipedia specifically highlights that Social Marketing should not be confused with Societal Marketing or Social Media Marketing. Yet, frequently blogs and writers covering Social Media Marketing refer to their area of expertise as “Social Marketing”. Similarly when searching for “Social Marketing” blogs, I find multiple blogs covering Social Media Marketing rather than Social Marketing issues. There is even an online journal that calls itself Social Marketing Journal yet it covers Social Media Marketing and their definition of Social Marketing is that of Social Media Marketing.
This issue is hardly new, Jackie Huba of the Church of Customer blog has written about this over a year ago and Nedra Weinreich at her Social Marketing blog Spare Change as early as 2006, and produced a nice side-by-side comparison.
So why do I bother?
First, I have a social marketing campaign assignment due next week and was searching for some additional inspirations but searching for anything “Social Marketing” (in quotes) returns lots of irrelevant search results.
Secondly, it’s important that we use the same language and definitions to avoid confusion and misunderstandings as Nedra points out in other posts.
Do you know of any good Social Marketing blogs?
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