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Dear Joe:
Thank you for your informative article on social networks and marketing. Your analysis of the iProspect study was succinct and clear.
Did you know that the term "social marketing" actually refers to something quite different than marketing through social networks? In fact, there is a profession called "Social Marketing." We social marketers apply commercial marketing techniques; our approach is evidence-based, process oriented, audience-centric. But we do it for a very different purpose. We restrict our work to promoting goods, services, attitudes, and behaviors designed to benefit society (hence the term "Social" marketing.)
Leaders in this field include Philip Kotler, Alan Andreason, Craig LeFebvre, Bill Novelli, and Bill Smith. Even Everett Rogers , who popularized Diffusion of Innovations, practiced social marketing.
Since before the Internet, social marketers have helped communities to reduce their incidence of infectious diseases, increase treatment of potentially life threatening diseases, and eliminate risky behaviors such as smoking.
Since at least 1999, social marketers have been active on the Internet. That's when I began to work with the National Institutes of Health to apply social marketing online. We disseminated public health information about such key health issues as cholesterol and high blood pressure via email lists, discussion lists, bulletin boards, usenet groups, free Palm OS program downloads, search engine optimization, and link building campaigns. We freely distributed authoritative information, and encouraged others to share it to promote awareness, knowledge, and application of ways to detect, diagnose, and manage high blood cholesterol and high blood pressure. Through this new medium, we reached millions of at-risk individuals with life-saving information who otherwise might have been kept in the dark.
Again, thanks for the great information and writing. An would it be possible, writing in future (and this also applies to the headline editor you work with) to keep in mind that social marketing means more - much more - than simply marketing to online social networks? If you would, those of us who are struggling to keep socially beneficial information visible and accessible, will be grateful.
Regards,
Winthrop Morgan, MPH, CeM
Social Marketer
www.winthropmorgan.com
Social Networking: Examining User Behaviour
Dear Joe,
The more we read about Social Bookmarking sites the more we are crazy about exploring them all again and again. Surfing these sites is not an easy job, it consumes a lot of time,moreover they make the difficult thing more difficult by their own mysterious procedures ( until now I do not know the AOL screen name to sign-in with in Netscape).
Some of them recommend members to support other members through visiting their spots in these sites, commenting,rating...etc), and unless the surfer is an experienced and persistent one and knows how to exploit these sites for his favor easily, it ends with the normal surfers up to quiting these sites implementing the rule of "what is in it for me".
If people finds these sites are easy to surf, and are reflecting a sensible response to their efforts, they
would stick to them, and we can compare the number of visitors of both de.icio.us
and myspace, moreover I never heard any marketer saying more than he is looking for the hot trends at these sites.
My point here is that you, the opinion leaders through your widely read sites are asked to recommend them too, they should reconsider their sites and their surfing way. In a nutshell, Social Bookmarking sites are not easy to surf.