More on the dual meanings of ’social marketing’
Check out this great post, An Open Letter to the New “Social Marketers“, by Nedra Kline Weinreich at Weinreich Communications. She writes about the the dual meanings of the term ’social marketing’. (Thanks, Nedra, for inviting me into the conversation!)
To briefly summarize, the original quarter-century old meaning of the term ’social marketing’ is: to use marketing methods to bring about social or behavioral change. More recently bloggers have come to use the term ’social marketing’ to refer to blogging, RSS, podcasting, etc. Very different uses of the word.
In one of the comments to Nedra’s post, by Rohit Bhargava, it is pointed out that there might be a more common ground that brings the two definitions together. As Rohit suggets, both definitions are about:
“…connecting with individuals to promote a core belief in a cause, product or service …. It’s not about selling widgets, it’s about connecting with and fostering vocal advocates. “
That makes sense to me. Though I agree with Nedra, too, that there is still a lot of confusion by the dual definitions. This is a topic that would definitely be worthwhile having more ongoing dialogue about.
Check out other posts on Nedra’s social-marketing blog. For a quick summary, check out her Suidoo lens. (To learn more about Squidoo, read Squidoo’s free ebook, “Everyone’s an Expert (about something)” by Seth Godin.)
