Social Marketing ≠ Social Media Marketing

Even though social media and social media marketing have been around and developed for quite some time, there is still a lot of people confusing the two subject concepts. I have just finished delivering a talk on Social Marketing to a group of nonprofit executives and academia where an audience questioned that my speech was totally off-track which touched no social media. Social media marketing as the name suggests is the practice of using social media to do marketing. Whereas social marketing, on the other hand, is the adaptation of marketing techniques in doing good. Or in other words, it is the applying of all-rounded marketing skill in promoting a worthwhile social cause in raising awareness and attracting supports. Hence, it is a strategic marketing issue that covers almost all aspects of marketing, not just social media. Although there are countless of tactics that we could find easily day in, day out on how charities utilizing of marketing, such as direct marketing schemes, TVCs, cause marketing campaigns, event marketing, public relations for advocacy and alike, the importance is whether an organization has any comprehensive, integrated marketing strategy in place to guide its effort rather than doing so bit by bit on an ad hoc basis. Since I intended this post for differentiating the two terms, you will find on one of my future blog posts in which I elaborate why charities are indeed marketing-oriented organizations and require a marketing mindset.