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In the previous post I explained the difference between social media marketing and digital marketing.

Today let’s talk about the difference between social media marketing and online marketing.

Whereas we can say that online marketing and internet marketing are synonyms, the same statement won’t be true for social media marketing.

Social media marketing is an area of marketing dedicated to marketing products and services through social media in its entirety. It’s not limited to Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin or to the combination of those or any other social media sites for that matter. There are thousands of social media outlets, in every possible flavor and marketing vertical. Yet they only represent a part of social media marketing landscape.

We should not forget about social bookmarking or various wikis and “how to” web communities, such as Wikipedia and Yahoo! Answers.

And of course there is a huge layer of social interactivity known as a Blogosphere.

They all represent a variation of active two-way user communications, and as such all are components of social media.

Yet with the exception of mobile networks all social media properties are located online. (Mobile marketing can be arguably considered a part of social media marketing though I think it’s a more of digital marketing component). And since the majority of social media properties are online they fall within the online marketing limits.

Of course online marketing is not limited to social media marketing, far from it.

Email marketing, SEO, SEM, PPV, banner advertising, media buys -all those “tools of the trade” are very important and can increase online traffic, conversions, and ultimately boost company’s ROI.

In this regard a person with the job titled “Director of Online Marketing” can have much bigger impact on company’s revenue than the one with a title “Director of Social Media Marketing”.

Of course the job titles used in this and previous blog post were only used as an example. You can use “Digital Strategist” /”Internet Strategist”/”Social Media Marketing Strategist” instead. Or any other job title you want. That’s not the point.

The point is that with each job title come certain responsibilities, so it’s beneficial to know the differences between digital, social media and online marketing.

 

As always looking forward to hear your comments.

Opening image from Danard Vincente on Flickr, used under Creative Commons license.

Tagged as: Advertising Media, Banner Advertising, Blogosphere, digital marketing, digital strategistd, director social media marketing, facebook, Interactivity, Job Titles, linkedin, Marketing Products, Media Marketing, Media Outlets, mobile marketing, Mobile Networks, online marketing, online marketing director, social bookmarking, social media marketing, Title Director, twitter, User Communications, Web Communities, Wikipedia, Wikis, Yahoo Answers

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Social media marketing is a term reserved for a relatively young area of online marketing. Recently we see a lot of confusion between terms “social media marketing“, “online marketing” and “digital marketing“. The tendency to confuse those terms and use them as synonyms is clearly seen in the job postings.

It seems the majority of hiring companies and recruiters have yet to figure out the appropriate application for these terms and they continue to use them interchangeably.

While there are a lot of similarities, a job titled “Director of Social Media Marketing” (for example) is much less demanding expertise –wise than a job with a title “Director of Digital Marketing“. It has smaller responsibilities and requires narrower knowledge and experience.

Theoretically, it should require fewer skills. Practically employers throw in a description for any social media marketing job a lot of skills that are more relevant to either online marketing or digital marketing.

We’ll discuss the difference between social media marketing and online marketing in later posts.

For now let’s just concentrate on the exploration of the differences between digital and social marketing.

The Difference between Social Media Marketing and Digital Marketing

Social media marketing is one of sub- categories of marketing industry. It concentrates on marketing products and services through social media (social networks, blogosphere, wikis, video and audio sharing sites, social bookmarking, etc).

Very closely related to social media marketing is social media branding. It also utilizes social media, yet instead of dealing with products and services its main purpose is to grow awareness about the company, improve company’s brand and mitigate negative reactions and responses as much as possible. In a nutshell the “product” of a social media branding is increased brand recognition and positive buzz about the company.

Social media marketing is one of the components of digital marketing along with SEO, email marketing, PPV, PPC, banner advertising, mobile marketing and various forms of digital advertising – billboards, DTV (digital television), etc
The roots of confusion probably lie in the nature of media channels. Mobile networks are a mobile media in a sense that they provide the tools for information delivery and two-way communications. At the same time mobile gadgets could be used to connect to social media sites, and in this regards they serve as a medium for social marketing platforms.

Social media channels could be used to deliver digital advertising in various formats. In this case they serve as a medium for display advertising. And of course social media delivers information and facilitates social connections. In this case social media plays its main role and serve, well, as a media

Conclusion: All above mentioned forms of advertising and marketing are closely related, tightly interwoven and should be used together to achieve the best possible results. Yet they have some distinctive boundaries that place them either within a bigger digital marketing circle or smaller circle dedicated specifically to social media marketing.

Tagged as: digital marketing, director digital marketing, display advertising, mobile marketing, online marketing, social media branding, social media marketing

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Building your personal online reputation is a non-stop process. Each time you do something online –post a comment, write a blog post, submit a social bookmark or update your status in social networks, you either strengthen or weaken your reputation.

As mentioned in earlier article “Online Reputation and Personal Brand“, you need to be very careful about your behavior in social media outlets. Hasty responses are not recommended. People often freely express their feelings in social media without giving a second thought to a possible aftermath of hyper-emotional ramblings.

There is no such thing as a private social network. Even if your account on a social outlet is private, it doesn’t mean that your message won’t be spread by your social friends.

When you are participating in social conversations of any kind, think about your responses as if you’re in front of a camera. If you want to say things that you wouldn’t say during TV interview, don’t do it.

Today you might think that swearing and bulling people in a social space is acceptable but I promise you’ll be sorry tomorrow.

Tomorrow your message can be seen by your boss, and you’ll get fired.

Tomorrow you might want to apply for a new job, and your social profile will be checked by HR or an employment agency. There won’t be any chance for you to get that job no matter how good are your professional skills.

Tomorrow you might find a prospect customer who is interested in your business proposal. Bad news is, after checking your social profile he won’t return your call.

Bottom line: when you do something in social space, you are “in front of TV camera” all the time. So think about your reputation, and act accordingly.

As John Davies noted in his YouTube video “The Social Contract and Building Your Brand Organically“, opinions in social world are made instantly and can be destroyed in a brief moments. In the past decade a drastical shift has occurred in how we consume the information. For branding purposes the unique substance of the social message is no longer as important as the quickly formed image derived through the distribution of such message.

There are certain exceptions to this rule. There seems to be a double-standard on the social behavior accepted for businesses /business-related personal brands and the behavior allowed for celebrity actors/musicians and other well-known representatives of “free-spirited” professions.

Sadly, alcohol and drug abuse is almost a norm today for many celebrities. Their abrupt behavior is perceived as part of extravagant image, and is easily forgiven by a crowd. Unless you’re a celebrity, don’t think you could behave the same way. The outcome of your thoughtless actions could be much more severe than you expect.

Tagged as: online reputation, personal branding, social authority, social conduct, social integrity

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Why did I choose the name Web Feed for this blog? After all, we’re exploring cutting edge social media marketing and SEO tools and techniques on this site. And the domain name web-feed.com doesn’t seem to properly reflect main topics of discussion, right?

I’ve been asked this question thousand times in many variations, so I decided to write a blog post explaining the reasoning behind this decision.

There is a lot of confusion on the web about RSS/Atom:

• How, where and why to use one format instead of another?
• What’s the difference between web feed and RSS feed?
• Are live feeds and news feeds the same as web feeds or they are some kind of a different feed?
• Is RSS related to XML feed or HTML feed? (This is technically not a correct question.)

This list goes on and on. Hopefully in this post I’ll provide enough information to shed the light on the concept of dynamic content distribution and clarify the confusion.

First of all, web feed syndication (mostly known as RSS 2.0) is an underlying technology for social media platforms and almost anything else you can find in current socially-friendly web environment. When we talk about live feeds, news feeds, podcasts or videocasts, bookmarks or numerous content sharing tools, we essentially refer to different types and formats and uses of web feeds.

So in essence, when we discuss social networks or social media marketing or reputation management via social media channels, what we really discuss are new or improved ways to publish, distribute, share or otherwise slice and dice various web feeds.

Now that I briefly answered why I chose web-feed to cover social media-related news, let’s look at different ways to categorize web feeds according to their versions, formats, purpose, functionality, flexibility and standardization.

Two main formats for web feeds are RSS and Atom. When people refer to RSS, they most often think about RSS 2.0. While there are 9 different versions of RSS, for the practical purposes let’s concentrate on two versions which are used the most.

RSS 2.0 versus RSS 1.0

If you ask what RSS stands for, you most likely will get an answer that this is an abbreviation for “Real Simple Syndication”. Yet this explanation is only partially true. RSS also stands for “RDF Site Summary” where RDF is a metadata web standard. Former abbreviation is true for RSS 2.0 and the latter one is relevant to RSS 1.0.

Why is this important? It may not be important to you if your RSS feeds are generated automatically, for example through your CRM (such as WordPress).

In this case you most likely deal with RSS 2.0 which is sufficient for simple feeds.

RSS 2.0 is a most popular and simple version of RSS, but not the most flexible one. If you want to add some extra flavor and customization, you might need to create the feed yourself.
In this case you should go with either Atom or RSS 1.0. We’ll explore Atom a little later.

For now let’s look at RSS 1.0. It is similar in syntax to RSS 2.0, both are XML-based lists. Yet RSS 1.0 provides the ability not only to utilize existing RSS modules, but also to create your own. Add the compatibility with RDF, and you get an extended functionality of the feed which could be useful for inclusion of custom elements. RSS2.0 on another hand is still pretty rigid, though you can find flexibility within extensions defined with XML Namespaces.

Web Feed Formats – RSS and Atom

Format-wise there are currently two types of web feeds –RSS and Atom. We already talked about RSS. Now let’s look at Atom.

• Atom is published by IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force, a body of standards on the Internet) which assures its stability
•  Atom utilizes IANA-registered MIME type and enables auto-subscription in readers
• Atom allows encoded binary. XML Encryption or XML Digital Signature could be used in addition to standard web encryption techniques. (This combination provides a more secure environment for fee-based feed services.)
• Atom provides substantial flexibility since its elements could be used in external structures (RSS can only be used as is).

Web Feed Parsing and Publishing -HTML Feeds, RSS Readers and Feed Aggregators

Now let’s get back to the question “Is RSS related to XML feed or HTML feed?” As you recall I mentioned earlier that this question is not technically correct. RSS is an XML-based list format but It could be viewed both in XML and HTML, in this regard RSS is “related” to both XML and HTML.

Though RSS feed could be read in XML format, this format is not considered human-friendly. It’s usually parsed by various desktop and web software programs known as RSS readers and is displayed in a human-friendly user interface such as the one provided by web aggregators and desktop readers.

Feed aggregators, web aggregators and desktop readers are basically different names for different programs providing the same functionality – they help people to consume web feeds.

Web Feed Utilization – Live Feeds and Digests

Web feeds could be used to distribute any information presented in a list form.

Event schedules, news, summary of activity for a certain period of time, data updates, such as blog updates or updates through RSS readers, audio and video updates known as podcasts, product inventory updates through categorized product feeds – there are so many possible uses for web feeds that it’s impossible to mention them all.

Based on time delay feeds could be categorized as feed digests and live feeds.

Live feeds display information that is happening live, at this very moment. Here are a few examples of live feeds:

• Newest Tweets within your Twitterfeed,
• Live Facebook updates,
• Real-time plurks,
• Real-time forum posts
• Blog posts that are just published,
• New Youtube videos that are just uploaded
• Social bookmarks that were just made
• Likes, shares, thumbs, stumbles, diggs that were just done
• Information about anything else that is happening right now

Feed digest is usually a summary of activity that happened within certain social community during a defined period of time (within one day, one week, one month, etc). Hence, there are daily digests, weekly digest, monthly digests, and any other sort of digest you could think of.

Time frame is not important, what important is that in a digest there is always a certain time delay between the time information appears first and the time it is published in a digest along with other content.

So here you have it – a quick overview of web feeds of different types, formats, purpose and functionality.

As always, I am looking forward to read your comments. Don’t forget to tweet, like, bookmark or otherwise share this post

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Tagged as: atom feed, data feed, live feed, product feed, rss aggregators, rss distribution, rss feed, rss feed creator, rss submission, rss widgets, Web Feed, web feeds, xml feed

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