Tech tools and marketing mockery

I vowed to myself that I would try not to blur the lines between social marketing and social media marketing, but I just can't help myself. Google simply doesn’t distinguish for you.

First, my simple definitions:

Social marketing is the use of commercial marketing techniques to change audience behaviors for the benefit of social good.

By comparison, social media marketing is all about how to use Web 2.0 as a marketing tool.

The real confusion is in the overlap.

Social media (Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, Linked In, Blogs, RSS readers, Myspace, etc.) are all part of the toolkit of modern marketing professionals. Collectively, social media are like the Swiss Army knife of marketing: one medium with many heads.

Social networks are now accepted by many to be an equal among the communication peers: direct mail, television, print advertising, billboards, word of mouth, community actions, speaking tours, celebrity endorsements, product placement…

Interestingly, according to the Pew Research Center in the US, the internet—including the informal social networks—has now eclipsed newspapers as the preferred medium to get news (TV still tops the list).

So, to be a social marketer, one needs to be able to use all the tools available to spread messages and to foster a change in behavior…including the social media networks.

The problem is that people always want to be perceived as leaders in their field.

The belief is that early adopters of these new, ever-adapting, groovy technologies will be rewarded with success. To rephrase: the very use of social media marketing tools will bestow greatness upon social marketers.

The thing is that basic marketing theory—and basic common sense—informs us that the communication vehicle has to be the right vehicle for the target audience.

For example, after almost a decade of fundraising conference sessions promising the secret on how to use Facebook to make money, almost nobody is giving directly through, or because of, Facebook. Seems like the generation(s) of Facebook users don’t give that way.

Philanthropy consultant Renata Rafferty has recently challenged the fundraising community to consider the donors’ needs in choosing the method of communication. Somewhat bitingly, she writes:

“Do we foster a disservice to those generous people and to the cause of philanthropy as a whole by rushing to the new-fangled Web 2.0 social media techniques and telling them, at some point, that their rabbit ears (galas) are obsolete and analog (quid pro quo giving) is SO not where it’s at?”

On his thought-provoking blog, John Dodds puts marketing tools in their place succinctly: “tactics follow strategy…not the other way around.”

Social media marketing is merely a tool.

But social marketing is a discipline to generate improvements in the world in which we live.