Social Marketing Framework – Part 1 of 5

There are many aspects of social marketing, social media, social tools, social EVERYTHING that we have been working hard to, shall I say, crystallize. After much time and diligence, we finally have something that we are calling our social marketing framework (for lack of a more creative name at this time).

Our social marketing framework attempts to answer the question: “What can I really do with social media?” There are many different approaches and tactics but what am I really doing with social media? And, based on the things I can do, well, do they make sense for my company? Will they work?

You might think there are countless things you can do in social marketing but I would argue that you can only do four. In fact, any social media tool or tactic touches one or all of these four areas. When we did our training with Microsoft last year we showed them these four parts. We then took a number of different social media tools and tactics and tried to see if we could find one that fell outside of the four. We could not.

For this blog post, we are going to list the four things you can do with social media. The only four things. Our Social Marketing Framework blog series will span the next 45 days; we will explore each one of the parts and try to break the model.

Here are the four things (drum roll):

1. You can use social media to reach an already existing community.
2. You can use social media to create your own community.
3. You can use social media to accelerate message distribution.
4. You can use social media for market research.

As an example on how the model works let’s take a few social marketing tactics and see how they work within the model:

- FaceBook ads – Applies to 1 above.
- Blogging – Applies to 2, 3, and 4 above.
- Widgets – Applies to 3 above and maybe 1, if placed in an existing community.

Take any social marketing tactic or tool and see if there is something other than the four things above; if you uncover something, let us know. It is going to be challenging to find one.

Don’t miss our next blog; we will examine each of the four areas in greater detail.