Social Media vs. Social Marketing

In this online era, people are getting confused by the terms “social media” and “social marketing.” While they are related in a marketing sense, their “social” connotation is vastly different.

The “social” in “social media” refers to the social interaction of communicators using web-based and mobile technologies. Social media has taken on many forms, e.g., email; blogs; podcasts; search engines such as Google and YouTube; the network sites Facebook and Twitter, to mention the two giants; and the smart phone as mobile marketer.

The “social” in “social marketing” refers to the welfare of human beings as members of society.

Social marketing uses commercial marketing principles and techniques to influence people’s behavior to improve their personal welfare or to promote society’s well-being as a whole. For example, getting people to stop smoking, to refrain from moving firewood that contains tree-killing insects, or to consider organ donation. The main areas for behavioral action are public health, safety, the environment, and communities.

I use the examples above because social marketing is one of my agency’s best practices, and we have helped clients change people’s behavior in those areas, among others.

These examples are where social media supports social marketing to improve the reach of communications campaigns.

For our local county health department, for example, Crosby Marketing has been working on a teen tobacco prevention and cessation program called “Smoking Stinks” for nearly 20 years, using an integrated mix of traditional media and guerilla marketing techniques targeted to teens. With the advent of the Internet and social media, we added these amazing arrows to our marketing quiver, starting with a website.

The Smoking Stinks” website has grown to include a series of interactive games and activities, e-cards, facts presented in “teen speak” and interactive/downloadable kits to help teens quit the nasty habit. The program’s online/digital presence now includes social media platforms such as Facebook and a quit-smoking mobile app.

When we started the Smoking Stinks campaign, nearly 30% of the county’s teens were using tobacco products. As of 2010, that number had fallen to just 12%.

We’ve gotten great results for other social marketing campaigns, such as the “Stop the Beetle” campaign against moving firewood that could contain the Emerald Ash Borer that has destroyed millions of ash trees and our campaign for the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services to promote organ donation. Both these programs used a variety of social media to get the message across. (To view case histories with graphics of the Stop the Beetle and Organ Donor campaigns, go to our website www.crosbymarketing.com.)

So, social media is not social marketing, but it sure does help. Whether your marketing is commercial or social, you need social media in your communications mix.

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