You note that people are beginning to use the term “social marketing” to mean “marketing using social methods, which would encompass everything from street teams to viral marketing…anything where interaction, conversation, and other social elements are at work.” Then, I think you said you prefer to define “social marketing” as “conversation-based marketing” … which seems to come full circle back to your point that “social marketing” is being used more and more to mean “anything where interaction, conversation, and other social elements are at work” (e.g., in-person conversations that happen during “event marketing”).

To me, it seems that the people who have coined the term “social media marketing” may know what they’re talking about … it best describes the distribution strategy and it can be used to promote products as well as causes. That still leaves room for a broader category of “social marketing” (under which “social media marketing” would be one distribution strategy), but the confusion between the terms will inevitably get worse as younger people move into the field.

I’ll be sad to see the term “social marketing” go the way of the dodo bird, but it may be a good thing, because to many people (including my former boss, who didn’t want us to use the term social marketing) it carries the negative connotation of social engineering (manipulation).

I agree, none of us have any control over how these terms evolve, no matter how many people we “correct.” It will be interesting to see how the definitions of these terms change over the years in Wikipedia, Webster’s, etc.

Thanks again for getting me to think about new ideas.

Kathy Daniel
Air Quality Specialist
Office of Planning, Environment, and Realty
Federal Highway Administration
1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE (HEPN-10)
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