This multi-part series will provide information on social marketing and answer the following questions:
- What is it? (I already can hear, not another buzz word….)
- Why is a new definition required beyond Social Media, Social Networking, Social CRM, or Web 2.0 Marketing? (gotcha there)
- So what? Why should I worry about this? Hint: Revenue Generation and Customer Referrals (I assume this would be important to you)
- What does a Social Marketing strategy look like?
- What does a Social Marketing Roadmap look like for this?
- How do I leverage what I am already doing?
- How do I build a Social Marketing Business Case?
- How do I measure Social Marketing?
Now that I got the major questions out of the way, let move next into the definitions;
Social Marketing – The re-orientation of traditional marketing to reflect the new post-digital, network relationship oriented, and influencer-driven social interactions. Social Marketing leverages a multi-channel, multi-directional approach towards building relationships with a transition away from the structured Marketing roles of product management, product marketing, marketing communications, public relations, channel marketing, sales support. Instead, marketing is reoriented around enabling the key interactions that support the buying process.
Social Media – Basically, you have the social networks that you participate and the online communities that you own which are built into your corporate website. See my post on Social Media is Like Fishing for more details. Social Media is changing buyer behavior, coming more fluid, and marketing must adjust the model to to support the reflected changes. See my post on the Changing Role of the CMO for further explanation. Read more
Online Communities – communities of interest built upon a foundation of Web 2.0 social networking tools; profile, blog, wiki, social bookmarking, calendaring, media sharing, etc that enable the user to interact with other users and content through the website. See my post on Online Community Blueprint for more details.
Post-Digital - If everything is becoming digital, why does digital matter? The buyer doesn’t really care if the interaction is on the web, they just want to get what they need. A lot of marketing still segments online and offline which creates an artificial barrier to developing a seamless customer experience.
