Hi Peter,

I think the issue is with your definition of marketing, and the end point of that marketing being sales. Although marketing clearly needs to support sales it can do so both directly and indirectly. While somewhat maligned, the AMA definition of marketing is broader and allows for more activities to fall within marketing:

"Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large."

A host of "softer" marketing deliverables fall under this definition like customer care, customer service, education, etc. all of which are far better suited to social media than asking for a sale.

Wading into the weeds a bit, one huge difference is the nature of these new media. For the first time, we're talking about media that are as available to individual consumers as to advertisers. The resulting power shift is a (the?) major reason companies have to adjust.

@Johannes, @Kasper - I think I need a better definition of what you mean by a "holistic" use, keeping the frame of reference of a corporate marketer using social media, NOT individual consumers. I believe you'll end up at Stefan's point - to marketers, holistic means integrated and channels each have their purpose for the same end result: to generate business.

So @Adrian - whether the approach is hard sell or soft sell, the end game remains the same - to sell. There's nothing wrong, deceptive, or negative about that. But I do think it's a stretch to apply the AMA definition broadly, as if Geico's caveman ads have any greater socially redeeming qualities.

@Nathan - agreed, companies must adjust. But can a business operate successfully in this media when participation as an individual is the requirement?

Hi Peter

I think Adrian has a point.

The 2007 AMA definition he provided makes it clear that marketing is about value exchange with customers, not just one-directional selling to them. And the exchange of value continues long after the initial sale.

One of the main reasons we find ourself in the current tragedy of the marketing commons is because of this short-sighted, one-directional approach. And social media, perhaps above all other variations on a marketing theme, is supremely reliant upon the receipt of conspicious value by customers that is sufficiently newsworthy to tell others.

I agree that the purpose of marketing is initially to create a lead, but marketers really have to earn each lead today through the continuous exchange of value.

Graham Hill
Independent CRM Consultant
Interim CRM Manager

I would agree here with Adrian and Graham, which articulates it really well.

Sales is not the goal of every interaction with or between customers. Creating desire is often a long term investment (Spring Research in the UK found it took 18 months to purchase a car), creating loyalty and relationships takes even longer.

Many brands need to invest in these "value creating" activities, to bring uniqueness and extra value into their brand.

Take Fiat eco:Drive, not a smart way to sell more cars, but a brilliant way to engage existing customers, help them connect and generate an immense database on your participants driving habits/patterns.
http://www.fiat.com/ecodrive/

I like your definition, particularly the: "and/or be passed along to others."
I question though, how much that is valued by marketers because it isn't necessarily measurable. I am not a marketer, but I've seen many come into the online community that I manage and fail miserably. I've also seen some enter with great finesse and a willingness to get to know the culture of the community so they can get along and get the best return on their investment, which of course is time. I am discussing this very topic to the non-profit sector at the NC Center for Non-profits conference in Raleigh on Thursday.

I applaud those who challenge the Wikipedia definition on anything let alone social media, and I would have to agree with the sentiment of previous comments.

The word marketing, in my opinion, should never be used with social media. Social media is transparent, or its supposed to be anyway. Marketing does not lead itself to be so open. And lets not forget the core essence of social media – value.

I prefer social media outreach - the use of social media tools and applications to engage with a specific or niche audience for the purpose of bringing awareness, value and building a reciprocal relationship.

Peter, the "difference" is found within your definition. You state:

"Interaction between a company and individual via [digital] delivery channels, intended to share commercial content that will lead to a sale and/or be passed along to others."

Before Social Media, it was arguably impossible (and certainly not cost-effective) for a company to interact with *individuals.* They relied on mass media to reach masses of individuals.

Social Media has allowed companies to reliably interact with one person at a time, and to feel efficient in doing so because they know that those interactions occur in a public (and persistent, via GOOG) forum, i.e., by marketing to the individual, they impact a broader milieu.

Interesting topic and a good post.

For me Twitter helped to expand my social and conversational skills. True, it's on the Web and you can only type 140 characters, but you have to start somewhere.

Peter,

It seems to me you're thinking too linear. "Social Media Marketing" needs to start with your "tribe" and spread organically.

Think "out of the box" with me for a minute:

For marketing to truly harness the power of social media - one must focus on where the most effective marketing of today takes place. The answer is found in "word of mouth" marketing - the singular most powerful marketing force in existence today.

That said, why not harness the power of your tribe - you know - those people who are already using social media to talk about your business, products, services, blogs, etc.? This is where you'll find the golden cookies.

Care for your tribe, nurture them, let them know how much they mean to you. When everyone begins to understand this - business as we know it today will jump to an entirely new level. True marketing will be done by the tribe - not the business.

The golden cookies are there - all we need to do is go get them.

To reference the analogy above, nurturing the tribe will increase market share. The caveat is, the only way anything nurtured can really grow is by loosening the reins.

The wall corporations bang their heads against time and again is control. To market effectively on the internet you have to be willing to let some of that go. Oh no – the message will be diluted, phhhhht.

Let the individuals within the corporation use the various social media channels thereby creating a real relationship with the consumer! They will no longer perceive themselves as being talked AT, but rather spoken to and more importantly listened to. Today’s marketing efforts must make a connection, create a relationship and generate trust.

Peter, IMO, your definition of Social Media Marketing above needs one small change “Interaction between an individual and individual.... ”

One of those individuals will be speaking on behalf of a corporation, becoming a reflection of its corporate culture. Finally something with personality to work with ;)

Hey Peter,

I found your blog through Technorati actually. I just started using twitter. I have done more traditional marketing with link building and social interaction through websites.

One of my main focuses right now is to find other blogs like mine at http://writetoright.com, which is a business blog. Do you think it would be smarter for me to find related blogs and introduce myself to them through twitter or to continue to use Technorati to find blogs and interact directly on the their site and through email.

I want to do what is going to allow for my time to be the most effective and productive. Please feel free to email me. Thanks for your time!

Second question: Which do you value more RSS followers or Twitter followers and why?

Thanks for this post Peter. You might think about transcribing it as a lens at squidoo.com as well.

I hope that you are convinced at this point that social media matters.

In fact, I think we are witnessing a sea change in the way that corporations can create and defend value.

I would be interested in your comment on my idea of developing a valuation method akin to brand valuation, that lets brands benchmark the risks to stable future earnings that they are exposed to as a result of social media.

Please check out my ChangeThis manifesto and ebook at www.socialcapitalvalueadd.com.

SCVA must replicate to exist. Here are few examples:

Canadian Marketing Association: http://www.canadianmarketingblog.com/archives/2008/09/social_capital_value_add_chang_1.html

ValueNetworks.com: http://valuenetworks.com/public/item/213118

Kim Kobza, CEO, Neighborhood America: http://web.mac.com/kpkobza/Inflection_Blocks:_3_minute_podcasts/Inflection_Blocks/Inflection_Blocks.html

Rochelle Grayson, COO, Donat Group, http://rochelle.ca/2008/10/13/beyond-brand-valuation-social-capital-valuation

Geoff Whitlock, President, Life Capture Interactive: http://www.lifecaptureinc.com/blog/social/2008/09/using-social-media-to-better-your-business

Tim Kitchin, Co-Founder, Glasshouse Partnership, London, England http://www.glasshousepartnership.com/blog/social-capital-value-add

Canada Blog Friends: http://www.canadablogfriends.ca/2008/09/social-capital-value-add

The Daily Grind: http://dailygrind.brandinfiltration.com/?p=235

John Dumbrille: http://jdumbrille.blogspot.com/2008/09/social-capital-value-add.html

Cheers,
Michael

P.S. I am blogging you list at www.memeticbrand.com and www.socialcapitalvalueadd.com.

I don't think there is a precise definitition. I also think that if you ask 10 people what they understand by social media marketing you'll get 10 different answers. Plus, the key difference about Social Media is User Generated Content.It's something traditional marketing doesn't have and can't really accommodate.

"I'd describe Social Media Marketing as simply this:

Any way in which you empower customers, clients, your audience, or your stakeholders to tell your brand's story by sharing their own opinions with others through text, images and video."

I was at a conference recently where the VP of Yahoo Canada spoke and this was his way of describing it. I think it summs it up pretty well.

Another one:
British Airways: Social Network http://www.metrotwin.com developed by Many By Many and Agency.com

This ours opinion about foundamentals of SMM.
http://webassociati.com/?p=52

I would say interaction between a company and its target communities....

By the way, one of the pb I see ( and we solve) is that the way company do social media today, it is more interaction between "individuals in the company" with individuals in communities.

Take any product marketing team in corp, they should really think at engagement strategies, sharing the workload, the knowledge, having experts on topic A participate on conversation on topic A, aso...

It doesn't mean "over marketing" its product but just being productive and effective in the relationship to communities.

@Nicky - what about the UGC ad contests from the past two American Football Super Bowls? Isn't that traditional marketing accommodating UGC?

@Melissa - agree completely. An earlier draft of this post had a golf analogy and loosening one's grip.

@Ed - tell me more about what these "golden cookies" look like. I don't think I've ever seen them for sale at the local grocery store, just Oreos and the like.

@Todd - "in public"...a key differentiator to existing contacts, e.g. customer service. Now we're on to something.

@DaveMurr - the commenters citing AMA would argue that marketing can create value. I think in practice, one company's value is one consumer's spam. Is it just marketing that's broken?

@Angela - as Kelvin said, if you can measure it, you can manage it. Lots of people trying to crack this nut for social media marketing. (And marketing in general, too.)

@Helge - But why does Fiat do that? In order to sell more cars. I don't think every action has to result in a sale - different industries have different sales cycles, as you point out. For FMCG, it might be weekly. For auto, it might be 1.5 years. For real estate, it might be 10 years. But the fact remains - marketing and branding intend to SELL, whether directly or indirectly.

@Graham - I agree with you and believe the problem lies within the pursuit of short term results. So marketing often becomes a question of "what have you done for me lately?" rather than "what can I do for you today?"

Hi Ari - hmm....I'll do my best!

@Cade - Good to hear from you. I think you should do both. The cadence and content blogs and Twitter are different. But the best thing you can do it produce good content, participate in the ecosystem, and growth will follow.

@Google SEO Blog - you know that Google doesn't index comments, right?

I like thinking about measuring social media in the same way that you keep score in a game.

I think the important shift in measurement that is taking place is that instead of measuring media, we are beginning to understand media as artifacts of actions. What is important is that we measure the resources or results that the social connections represented by the media deliver.

I think we are pointing in similar directions. You are suggesting a new scoreboard. In Social Capital Value Add, I am suggesting that we use an established scoreboard that already has meaning in the boardroom, i.e., a new school of value based management that is designed for the networked age.

Your approach is rooted in game mechanics and I have build SCVA upon the established approaches of social capital and social network analysis academics.

I hope that you will check it out and help develop the ideas.

A few thoughts to add to the many excellent points already made here:

@Stefan, starting with the message and then looking for ways to distribute it assumes a monolithic meme that can then be "pushed," and I think that changing that assumption lies at the heart of figuring out how to "market" in all forms of participatory media, not just SM. To be more precise, consumers bring different mindsets and expectations to different types of interactions with media. Marketers need to figure out just what kind of role their brand can play in particular contexts -- there is no one role for each brand that is relevant across all media. Role intersects with brand position, but each is a distinct concept that needs definition.

On another point, consumers report they are less likely to mind brands playing a role in SM then theory leads us to believe - see latest from Opinion Research Corp via eMarketer here: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1006622

Peter Kim:

By "golden cookie" I mean a very special solution to a particularly challenging problem using an unusual problem solving method. For instance, think radical. Einstein found a lot of golden cookies.

You're not satisfied with the current definition of "social media marketng" - nor am I. There's a reason for this - like myself - you sense major changes in the air - you see it happening before your eyes - we read about it every day. Yet, for some reason, nobody is offering a complete picture - too many holes in the story. You're looking to fill in some of those holes - otherwise you wouldn't have made this blog post to begin with. People are afraid of change, afraid to look foolish and be criticized.

If we're truly looking to define social media marketing in a way that will provide a useful foundation to work from for the next 10 years - we need to throw out some traditional assumptions and evolve some ideas.

First, I don't like the way many businesses view marketing today. Simply because they're using yesterdays ideas in today's world - won't work. Also, the definition of marketing in general is probably in need of an overhaul. It doesn't match the reality of changes in the way our world is working. People are watching less TV, more YouTube, tribalizing on Twitter and many other places. Clutter is increasingly higher and attention is harder to command - more and more each day.

Why would we want to mold "social media marketing" into a black box that will conveniently fit into the mindset of a business? It won't work. Why try?

Instead, why don't we allow social media to blossom and become what we know it will become anyway? The truth isn't what many want to hear - organizations will need to change significantly in order to take full advantage of what social media has to offer over the next 10 years.

Marketing can no longer be viewed solely as an "activity" or a strategy. Marketing needs to be viewed as an attitude (or mindset) to be acted out by every employee - from the janitor to the CEO. Businesses can no longer hide - marketing conversations can no longer be controlled - only participated in. Today, more than ever, businesses need allies in their tribes of customers and employees.

Those businesses that choose to accept these new realities will prosper and those that don't will eventually fail. If you think I'm full of hot air - make a note of this response and refer to it in 10 years.

The best way to understand the next 10 years of social media marketing is to understand modern tribal behavior. The internet, and many social media tools such as Twitter have enabled people to become tribal again.

This is a topic near and dear to my heart and one I'll be researching and writing about for some time to come.

I think I'll continue this in a blog post. If you're interested in reading it let me know and I'll alert you to it.

Thanks,

Ed

Peter,

Thanks for starting this discussion.

You're forgetting that social media marketing requires a different touch than traditional marketing. There's an expectation that companies act more authentically in social networks than in other media and with other marketing tools.

I am not suggesting that it's acceptable to be opaque or deceptive in tv, radio, print or direct mail. However, in these medium customers don't talk back to you in the same way they can and do in social media.

There are also different ways to measure value in social media, especially as it pertains to attention. If a company produces helpful or interesting content, their customers subscribe--and if they don't, their customers ignore them. The ability for a customer to "vote" with their attention is different than traditional marketing.

Traditional marketing uses frequency and clarity of message to encourage customers to take an action, whereas in social media marketing, for example, a company might share a single compelling tweet and earn a follower instantly--without having to drill the message in the same way that traditional strategies do.

Hi Ed. I'm in total agreement with you, even if I don't know what a golden cookie is. You might find some of the thinking I've done on reinventing marketing helpful: http://www.beingpeterkim.com/2007/02/resources_on_re.html

Did anyone say M20? ;)

Of course it can be an echo chamber ... but I still think there is enormous value in some of these lists - especially for new players.

Oops Gavin - I totally forgot. It was in my head when I was writing the "other influencers" sentence and I was debating whether including a link would be disclosure or ego boosting...will add it in now.

( For anyone unfamiliar with the M20 reference, visit http://marketer20.com/ )

Hi Peter

Here's a thought.

If Vargo & Lusch's thinking on Service-Dominant Logic is correct, marketing is gradually changing from something that believes 'value' is delivered at the point of sale, to something that believes value is created when the product sold gets used by customers. It is pretty obvious which of these perspectives customers believe. The customer perspective is well supported by academic research.

The implications for marketing are many, including that customers become co-creators of value as they use the products they have bought. And thus, that marketers need to maintain a dialogue with customers long after the point of sale. In the case of automobiles, anything up to five or more years afterwards.

Social media marketing, call it what you will, was almost tailor-made to fulfil this role. If marketers are willing to put down their megaphones and start listening to customers that is. Marketers actually talking to customers, and after they have already bought the product. Now there's a novelty.

Graham Hill
Independent CRM Consultant
Interim CRM Manager

Further Reading:

Vargo & Lusch, 'Competing through service: Insights from service-dominant logic'
http://www.sdlogic.net/LuschVargoObrien2007.pdf

Hi Peter

Good post.

I think we should all treat these lists with a big pinch of salt, especially the longer lists. Having appeared on a Top 20 list myself, I made an effort to look at all the other bloggers listed and was somewhat disappointed by what I found. There was much too repetitive posting and far too little original thinking.

I generally find great undiscovered blogging talent through adhoc recommendations on other people's posts. I would say that 75% of the 90 or so blogs I follow daily came this way. Yours did. I rarely find new talent by looking at lists or even at blogroles. There is just too much 'me-too' linking to be useful.

Hopefully, the days when it is cool to link to the great and the good (and often the mediocre) will soon be over.

Graham Hill
Independent CRM Consultant
Interim CRM Manager

"Self-promotion lies at the root of ego traps, usually inclusive of helping and promoting others."...

If a long term trend is often fueled in the short term by specific kinds of ego centric motivation, then when the socially supportive ego energy is withdrawn, what will be left is the higher purpose evident in the evolution of that trend. In media's case it is Sharing Knowledge. Beyond the ego is a collective mindset that always exists in markets and can easily be ignored or denied with simple temptations. Without this higher order of organization markets would be very different or not exist at all. This is what makes the long view always valuable. Sooner or later every gas tank of ego runs dry, and when fads end, only the real trend is left. The dot com boom spent most of the IPO money on ego traps but look at its legacy. The blogosphere is also full of ego right now but its legacy will be the underlying trend allowing for social media and one aspect of the evolution of media in general...building more effective groups and environments that support those groups.

Behind every fad is a trend. It's just not always easy to monetize.

and let's just be aware of what criteria are used to create said "influencer lists." Often the motivation lies in the definition and formula itself. Having studied these lists and attempting to create an algorithm for influence myself, I noticed some were more transparently self-promoting than others. There's no gold standard of influence, and it's a multidimensional construct, so variation is acceptable, but mindlessly adding variables that measure the same 'aspect' of influence several times over also makes for an easily discernible ego trap.
PS- turning the M20 into a wiki was a commendable effort to open up the methodology. Did any interesting changes occur?

Great, candid post Peter. I always enjoy reading your thoughts on the ego-side of social media. Too few top influencers are willing to take it on as you do.

To Graham's point, I too see many influencers who are doing nothing in particular to raise their online popularity. They seem to be more than content to influence a smaller sphere, people they know offline as well as online. This includes a number of industry analysts and consultants.

We are nowhere near the point of accepting that online popularity does not necessarily equate to meaningful influence.

Peter:

Thanks for the link. I'll certainly add those resources to my research.

Best,

Ed

Thanks a lot for this useful compilation.
I'm hunger for more posts.

Thanks again,

Rodrigo Reyes Restrepo.

Hi Barbara

Great point. Popular people are not necessarily good influencers. And influencers are not necessarily popular. There is much more to it than that.

I believe that many marketers have become fixated on influencer-driven marketing as their saviour in a world where marketing has become devalued, if not downright disreputable. But as Duncan Watts has shown, being an influencer is no guarantee that the market conditions are right for an influencer to be, well, influential. And as Kumar and others have shown, being influenced by an influencer is no guarantee that you will go out and buy, or that you will be a profitable customer.

Watts, Kumar and others are some of the first to study how influencers work and under what circumstances they work best. I feel that we are still a long from understanding either sufficiently well to be able to spend marketing budgets wisely. Sadly, that won't stop marketers from spending their budgets anyway which they please.

Graham Hill
Independent CRM Consultant
Interim CRM Manager

Further Reading:

Duncan Watts, 'Viral Marketing for the Real World'
http://cdg.columbia.edu/uploads/papers/watts2007_viralMarketing.pdf

Kumar et al, 'How Valuable is Word of Mouth?'
http://www.womanz.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/hbr-oct-2007-value-of-wom.pdf

Couldn't agree more. I was really irritated by the Top 50 Tweeples silliness the other day and wrote about the same thing here: http://snurl.com/4e1jm .

What's important to remember is that just because a blogger or Tweeter is popular, doesn't necessarily mean they will be the right target for influencer marketing. As social media becomes more popular outside the Echo Chamber, influencer marketing will, I believe, become more difficult and diluted unless there are better categorization agents created.

I agree with Graham that good content is coming from more places that influencers. Its one of the key reasons I don't have a blogroll on my blog. Or maybe its because I rebel against the concept of popularity.

Peter,

Those lists of hundreds of people are completely useless and nothing more than linkbait. That is why I started a series on social media influencers and doing only a few people in each series.

How useless is a list of 200 people? Why bother, no one can read all of that. I'm documenting influencers slower and in more details, so we can actually learn from them and get value from them.

Peter, very nice post, we have tried to build on your work here: http://howto.commetrics.com/?page_id=14

Very helpful! I have checked out several of the blogs to get ideas for Queensboro's blog. I find that the best way to see what works or doesn't is to see what others are doing.

Visit us at http://queensboro.wordpress.com

Oh dear. I’m afraid, Peter, that you’ve been sucked in by these usually pointless lists by the ‘Influencer’ tag. They are, as many of the previous commenters have mentioned, not lists of influencers at all, but lists of people that have some degree of overt profile. CEOs, high-frequency bloggers, etc.

A couple of pointers in regarding such lists:

- ask “Influential on whom?” Influence is context-sensitive, so it’s insufficient to claim influence on “Twitter”, for example. Twitter is a platform, upon which numerous discussions occur. Some of these may indeed be influential. Most are (I suggest) not.
- Anyone promoting their inclusion on a list is probably not an influencer but, as you say, a self-promoter. Many influencers operate under the radar of social media and PR. They influence real decisions, not conversations.
- What’s the point of the list anyway? Is it just interesting background information? Or are we being encouraged to call these people – and if so what would we say? Engaging with influencers is a skilled discipline, incorporating high risk because if it goes wrong the influencers will influence against you.
- What criteria are being used to create the list? Popularity is the worst criteria to measure, because it’s the easiest to fake. 500 connections on LinkedIn doesn’t make you influential – it means you’re a connection gatherer.

There is an increasing interest in true influencers, from the likes of SAP. Check out WOMMA’s recently published handbook on Influencers. It’ll give a much more rounded view of what influence is really about rather than pointless lists of well-known people.

Regards,

Duncan Brown
MD Influencer50 Europe

Deloitte has built an internal social network to enable personal and professional branding, increase collaboration, and make a really large organization feel smaller.

Hi Peter,

Impressive list! Thank you for including us. Additionally, Delta can be found in the following media channels:

YouTube account (You forgot Deltalina's million views!)
http://www.youtube.com/deltaairlines

Flickr Group (official)
http://flickr.com/groups/flydelta/

Facebook Page (official)
http://www.new.facebook.com/pages/Deltas-Force-for-Global-Good/35548488237?ref=mf

Thanks again!
The Delta Team

"we defected from marketing and joined markets" - Doc Searls

Hi Peter,

Great meeting you yesterday! I loved your talk and now know never to eat black pudding, along with some other, more important social media takeaways. :o)

Pamela (@pamelump)

Graham - yes! Accountability is key. I think Pete Blackshaw has been taking the world down this path.

Ted - great quote.

I can't wait for the next #SMB. Keep up the great work.

Craig Huffstetler (@xarquid)

Like Pam, I also enjoyed meeting you yesterday. Here's to future meetups!

Heads-up I'll be quoting you in my own roundup tomorrow.

Hey there Peter. Enjoyed sharing the stage with you yesterday and great preso btw. I'm definitely adding a Scottish food item to my next Powerpoint. :) Anxiously awaiting your big launch.