What’s the difference between Social Change Marketing and social media marketing?
When I say the words ‘Social Change Marketing’ most people immediately think of the internet.
Ads popping up on your Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter feeds and drilling for your data. That’s not Social Change Marketing, it’s social media marketing, officially defined as “the use of social media websites and social networks to market a company’s products and services.”
Social Change Marketing is radically different. It is much more powerful than mere social media marketing.
Social Change Marketing changes societies. Social Change Marketing generates seismic shifts in attitudes and behaviors. Social Change Marketing creates positive, measurable, cost-effective change and combats and overwhelms negative social change. Social Change Marketing harnesses the power of market forces to change behavior for public good.
The differences between Social Change Marketing and social media marketing are stark.
Social media marketing increases revenue and profit for the companies who advertise and for the social media platforms hosting the ads.
Social Change Marketing changes behavior for public good.
Social media marketing mines your online data, buying and selling your interests to increase revenue and profit. There is little or no interest in your long-term well-being beyond how it contributes to someone else’s bottom line.
Social Change Marketing is all about changing attitudes and behaviors which will improve your health, your communities, your life, and your longevity.
Social media marketing targets you individually to convince you to follow their lead. They want you marching in the corporate parade.
Social Change Marketing informs and supports your individual choice while providing research-based information proven to improve the lives of many. They want you marching in the global good community parade.
Social media marketing is one tool.
If you are determined to create positive social change, to increase the impact of your organization, to move your field forward definitively, Social Change Marketing will accelerate the process.
This is not an anti-social media rant. The internet and social media have opened more minds than it has closed and has connected more people than it has divided. That said, I think the industry needs to grow up and take responsibility for their actions - fast. I feel like I’m in the passenger seat of a super car being driven by a group of cackling 7th grade boys as they push their boundaries. I don’t think we can wait until they mature before taking back the wheel and installing appropriate and sensible guard rails.
This is a rallying call to change how we create positive social change. We’ve been running behind for too long. Time to take the wheel and hit the accelerator.