subject: The Difference between Digital Marketing and Social Media Marketing [print this page] The Difference between Digital Marketing and Social Media Marketing
When working with social media marketing so much it's kind of easy to forget that there are other more established categories that the general population are more apt to recognize. You see Digital Marketing is the more commonly recognized brother of Social Media Marketing. The easiest way to define them both in a quick, recognizable way is by comparing the execution styles of the two. So that's exactly what I'll do.
Digital marketing is much more like traditional media marketing. The steps are pretty simple. You find an audience, you determine what they access, you place the buy, you review the results, and, depending on the outcome you repeat step 3-5. Pretty easy. Pretty simple. Pretty well defined.
Social media marketing on the other hand, is a bit different. It's kinda something like sending out a hand-written letter campaign, but with quite a bit faster feedback cycles. To get it going you need a lotta steps, that go something like this: Survey what the public is talking about, Find where they are having these discussions, in the words of Captain Jean Luc Picard- ENGAGE, throw your own content into the conversation, Encourage feedback(follows, reposts, retweets, reblogs, blah blah blah you know what I'm talking about), the most important step is to ramp up your influence and credibility with these people- that's what this is all about, don't buy- only converse, Review the numbers- but also ANALYZE them. Just because everyone retweets you doesn't mean they believe in your brand. It could be because you just made a horrible spelling mistake, or said something outrageously stupid. Context is key.
Now, this isn't all I want to talk about, but now you know the difference. I'll talk more about the different factors that go into maintaining Social Media Marketing in a future post.
