Knowing the difference illustrates social media literacy (or lack of).

A few years ago I created the above graphic for a client to explain why social media is not social networking (full blog post). Three years later and the new frustration is the growing use of the term social media when in fact folk mean social media marketing.

A few months ago I met the social media manager for a high-profile telecommunications brand here in NZ who literally couldn’t tell me what else they were utilising social media for other than marketing:

They weren’t exploring saving time and money through collaboration platforms…

They weren’t using it to monitor and track latest news and developments in the industry…

They weren’t using it to cut print and other associated costs in their operations…

They weren’t using it to augment their professional development of the staff…

They weren’t using it to celebrate and reward their customers / clients / audience…

Marketing through social media is not bad / evil / wrong, it’s just a part of the social media pie and should be described appropriately—this also goes for the increasing growth in social media events who only talk about marketing (call them social media marketing events!).

For everyone who has ‘social media’ in your title please consider if you have that right. And the next time you hear someone talking about this subject, ask them if they actually mean social media marketing (or send them this graphic):

Grrrr!