Killing Social Media in 2010 – Giving birth to Social Marketing

Posted by Colin Clark on Dec 2nd, 2009 | Comments home title

I’ve written before about how sick I am of the term ’social media’. At the time I didn’t have a good replacement for the term.

The Problem

First off, the term ’social media’ is a noun. It refers to sites like Facebook and Twitter (and hundreds of others), and doesn’t refer to anything particularly actionable.

Secondly, it limits itself to the online world. The way I see it, when it comes to online marketing, transactions can be classified in 1 of 3 ways.

From bits to bits. This is where you pay online and receive a digital product like an ebook or some online service (like quickbooks online or salesforce).
From bits to atoms. You order a physical good online and they ship it to your house or business.
From atoms to atoms. This is where the actual sale happens in the physical world weather you’re talking about a physical retail location or meeting up for a sales appointment.

Using the term ’social media’ (or ’social media marketing’ for that matter) makes me feel like once someone moves from the social networking site to either another site or the physical world you’re suddenly doing something different. Shouldn’t it still be social? Isn’t the whole process part of the same system?

Why Social Marketing is a much better term.

Social Marketing works in all mediums. You can meet a new prospect on facebook, then meet them for coffee. Then you can go back to your office and connect with them on LinkedIn.

You could also broadcast incentives (coupons or whatever) on your Twitter feed and then customers can print them out an take them to your physical location.

A printed coupon doesn’t really fit with the term ’social media’ but it fits perfectly with the term social marketing.

What to expect from me in 2010

Next year I”ll be discontinuing my use of the term ’social media’ unless I’m talking directly about about a particular site or social network.

I will be using the term Social Marketing for all things that involve a broader scope. I feel that it is a much more holistic and useful term.

Is Anyone Really Listening? Social Media Marketing (freelanceswitch.com)
Facebook Being Used To Promote The Most Offline Business (brucemarler.com)
Getting onto the social media wagon (wsisablog.co.za)
19% of Internet users use Twitter or update status site : Up nearly 100% since April (kevin.lexblog.com)

jebbanner

I understand your frustration but keep in mind that your clients aren't tired of a certain phrase, it's all still new to them. Use words that they understand and have familiarity with. Call things what people think they are.

To me all marketing is, and was, relationship marketing. The medium may change but it has, and will always be, all about relationships and reputation. Nothing much else matters. Nothing new under the sun, right?

Colin Clark

The one thing that marketers will never get tired of is arguing over semantics ;) What I'm doing is using a term that better describes what I want my clients to get out of working with me.

I liken it to the word Search Engine Marketing. Some firms do 'organic search marketing', some do 'search engine optimization' or 'content marketing for search' or ppc, but it all goes under the umbrella of search engine marketing.

Obviously the difference is that social marketing more relationship marketing.

The one thing I've found that I'd like to remedy is that lots of people focus on going out and getting business using 'social media' and they get confused when it doesn't work.

The problem is that they went out and used the tools without integrating it across other marketing strategies. I doubt that changing the name will fix the world overnight, but it definitely does a better job of describing workable strategies.