Marketing is NOT Social Media-Social Media is NOT Marketing

@joefowler3 Joe I think you are looking at Chris's post a little too narrowly. And I also think you may not see the marketing behind social media news sites like Mixx. Many of the top submitters are marketers. They play by the rules, assimilate with the community, submit a variety of articles and content and participate accordingly. But they do so in order to take a strategically designed piece of information and promote it through social media sites to drive traffic to their clients.

That said, the community must support the content ... it's not like the marketers are duping us. But Digg, Mixx, Reddit, StumbleUpon ... all of them are forums where the top content is often not as innocently floating to the top as you might think.

One of the best Digg examples of all time was a post headlined "19 Things You Don't Know About Death". It was a fun article, written in a whimsicle way and posted on the blog of a life insurance company.

Social media can be a marketing tool, but the only marketers who can successfully use it are those who assimilate into the community and play by the community rules.

And I'd love to hear Chris McGill's thoughts on this. I'm sure he sure doesn't object to people posting Diggs about Mixx. Maybe he even helped engineer them himself.

Thanks for the comment!

@JasonFalls
I applaud your remark Jason. I also respect the fact that you professionally and respectfully responded to me.
Here is the problem we are facing.
1. Top submitters on Digg or Mixx are not marketers. Some of them may be marketers but there is a mass marketing, SEO voting ring on Mixx that sickens me.
2. If a potential new user comes to Mixx and sees nothing but marketing and SEO they will probably not hang out long.
3. Because of this Mixx has about 60% Marketing and SEO junk and 40% entertainment or news media.
4. I know Chris DOES NOT appreciate it. However, it is up to the community to either vote up or down submissions. Chris set up the site to be democratic and the man is sticking to his word.
5. Digg submissions about Mixx were automatically buried by the Digg moderators and users who were posting them were banned. You would know this if you ran with top Diggers or Top Mixxers.

I am just tired of the Spam and MASSIVE self submissions. I don't mean to sound like a jerk and I respect your opinion, However I do not share it.

- DerivativeRe
An interesting read. I think that your point of view has merit, and should be explored further.
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- JasonFalls
DerivativeRe -- agreed. Chris is actually in the midst of 100 posts aimed at helping his audience understand and use social media more effectively. I strongly recommend adding his feed and reading his stuff. He's very good. Thanks for commenting!
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- SilentJay74
OK I started reading this and had to totally disagree. He struck a nerve when he said Social Media is a marketing tool. Vote me off the island, I don't care, but Social Media sites like Mixx is not a forum for marketing. You want to market? Buy adwords on Google. Or contact Chris McGill and ask him if you can use his site for marketing purposes. I am sure he will not appreciate it!
VOTED DOWN!
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- JasonFalls
@joefowler3 Joe I think you are looking at Chris's post a little too narrowly. And I also think you may not see the marketing behind social media news sites like Mixx. Many of the top submitters are marketers. They play by the rules, assimilate with the community, submit a variety of articles and content and participate accordingly. But they do so in order to take a strategically designed piece of information and promote it through social media sites to drive traffic to their clients.

That said, the community must support the content ... it's not like the marketers are duping us. But Digg, Mixx, Reddit, StumbleUpon ... all of them are forums where the top content is often not as innocently floating to the top as you might think.

One of the best Digg examples of all time was a post headlined "19 Things You Don't Know About Death". It was a fun article, written in a whimsicle way and posted on the blog of a life insurance company.

Social media can be a marketing tool, but the only marketers who can successfully use it are those who assimilate into the community and play by the community rules.

And I'd love to hear Chris McGill's thoughts on this. I'm sure he sure doesn't object to people posting Diggs about Mixx. Maybe he even helped engineer them himself.

Thanks for the comment!
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- SilentJay74
@JasonFalls
I applaud your remark Jason. I also respect the fact that you professionally and respectfully responded to me.
Here is the problem we are facing.
1. Top submitters on Digg or Mixx are not marketers. Some of them may be marketers but there is a mass marketing, SEO voting ring on Mixx that sickens me.
2. If a potential new user comes to Mixx and sees nothing but marketing and SEO they will probably not hang out long.
3. Because of this Mixx has about 60% Marketing and SEO junk and 40% entertainment or news media.
4. I know Chris DOES NOT appreciate it. However, it is up to the community to either vote up or down submissions. Chris set up the site to be democratic and the man is sticking to his word.
5. Digg submissions about Mixx were automatically buried by the Digg moderators and users who were posting them were banned. You would know this if you ran with top Diggers or Top Mixxers.

I am just tired of the Spam and MASSIVE self submissions. I don't mean to sound like a jerk and I respect your opinion, However I do not share it.
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- DerivativeRe
@joefowler3

You have an interesting perspective on things. There is nothing in human endeavor that is not free of bias, however. I can respect your opinion, but I think that transparency is extremely important. It's those things that are hidden, that are potentially explosive. Like the Subprime mortgage meltdown. We didn't even hear about it a year ago.
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- jansie
@joefowler3

it's like you say, if you don't like it, you have the right to vote it down. but not everyone sees everything the same way, so if someone uses mixx for a slightly different purpose than you, does it make them wrong? i wonder...

i think if you generally stick to the rules, you're fine. mixx doesn't have a strict 'this is the only way you're allowed to use this site' rulebook. just don't annoy anybody with spam. that's why i add some things to mixx that i don't share with my friends, else i'd be losing a lot of them. so now, the door is open for them to browse my stuff and vote democratically as they wish, without it being forced down their throats.
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- jansie
brilliant article. loved it. can agree with him on the most of it.
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- JasonFalls
Thanks for the perspective jansie. I'll be continuing this discussion on socialmediaexplorer.com on Monday! Come join us!
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- chrisbrogan
Just to clarify, social media isn't a MARKETING tool, in my perspective. It's a toolset (plus a mindset) that can be used by marketers and many others for many different things. My point, and the point of view of the post, is that social media is not just another form of marketing.
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- KatFrench
@chrisbrogan: I tend to agree with you that social media is a toolset (and I commented similarly on Jason's blog). For some people, the value of that toolset is strictly personal, for some it's a mix of personal and professional, and for some (and I think these are the folks that are ticking off our good friend Mr. Fowler), it's strictly another media outlet to spam--no different than email, old school forums, or the internet at large.
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- SilentJay74
@chrisbrogan
Hey Chris,
I have to tip my hat that your article was well put together and I respect you as a journalist. Lords knows I am nooo journalist. I just have issues with the people that KatFrench pointed out. Blatant spammers, people whose every submissions is their own blog, and of course as Jason pointed out the Greedy user. This submission spurred forth a great discussion as I comment to Jason on his blog.
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- chrisbrogan
@joefowler3 - Oh, I'm definitely not a journalist. I even have a graphic somewhere that says it. : ) But I'm definitely a noodler who likes to write about things that I'm passionate about, and I'm grateful for the chance to talk about social media.

Greedy user is the coolest term ever.
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