Lexicon is always tricky in emerging fields.
Last week I had three meetings with three companies seeking essentially the same service, but each used different terminology to ask for it.
The corporate communications person is interested in social PR.
The online marketer wants social media marketing.
The traditional marketer seeks buzz marketing.
What they all want is a way to engage their customers and influencers directly. In each case our recommendation revolves around authentic one-to-one communication based on sharing original, compelling content. Of course, everyone wants the campaign to be viral and measurable.
In truth we have been using the terms interchangeably, and mistakenly…
Social PR is its own field, in which conversations often substitute for placements, and the base for communication remains still informational, rather than content-driven. It is less viral, and aimed at influencers, not individuals.
Social Media Marketing appears to be gaining traction with the inside-baseball Twitter crowd, but I have always felt a little uncomfortable coupling social media = individuals publishing and sharing authentically with each other + marketing. The nomenclature feels a trifle exploitative.
Buzz marketing is flat-out-wrong in my estimation, because Buzz (prospects) is the yin to the yang of word-of-mouth (people that have sampled the experience, product). If Buzz is out-of-whack to Word-of-Mouth, you have a potential crisis. And well, Buzz always seems a little insincere to me, whereas word-of-mouth is the single most important factor in the success of marketing.
Having started my first social-buzz-pr-word-of-mouth-online-thingamajig in 1993, I am properly wary of categories in general. The main point is that any nomenclature that creates a distance from its traditional category is doomed to have a shelf-life. Ultimately, social media becomes media becomes marketing becomes PR becomes advertising. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
2 responses so far ↓
Connie Bensen // January 9, 2008 at 4:39 pm
I agree that agreement needs to be made on terminology. That will take some time though as things become mainstream. And it’s difficult to establish terminology without definitions. I’ve noticed that some of the wikipedia def’ns are quite weak.
You have outlined 3 audiences. But do they all want the same thing? success in marketing online (I assume?)
I think it becomes more of a matter of educating people/clients. To do that first, one must establish what their knowledge is & then start at that level. And together as a community continue to establish the definitions & terminology. Jeremiah Owyang is doing a great job of that. He has a talent for doing that on his blog & in Twitter.
Ike Pigott // January 9, 2008 at 5:04 pm
The real challenge will be that each company will ultimately have to decide which internal comms will “own” the Social Media tools.
If you belong to one community where WidgetCo adds value and “gets it,” you have a good feeling about them. Yet, if representatives of WidgetCo invade another community you’re in with phony marketing games, you’ll lose your mojo fast.
It will take a long time for people to see companies as having anything other than a single face.