Why is this an important distinction? For one thing, in most cases, a social marketing campaign on Facebook or Twitter does not necessarily have anything to do with media. Forget about many of the regular advertising planning tools such as an editorial calender. Facebook's Louise Clements gave the marketers at the conference the advice to avoid thinking about campaigns and flights all together when using these platforms. Instead you should develop a CONVERSATIONAL CALENDAR. And how do you do that?  It starts by listening. Find out what topics that your customers and potential customers care about and already talking about on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Then interject yourself in these conversations in an authentic and useful way. Remember, conversation is two-way. As most forms of marketing, this is as much art as science. Sometimes it makes sense to start a conversation with your customers through a traditional media product such as a video spot, other times it may be just enough to address a complaint about your product/service and provide a useful solution.

Another interesting takeaway was the new term BRANDED FUNCTIONALITY, used by web marketing wiz kid Brian Wong, Co-Founder of Aermarketing, in a presentation about his Twitter-tool FollowFormation.  By that he means marketing by building good-will towards your brand by providing, for example, iPhone-users with an application that solves a problem for them. One good example I know of is that HP has an iPhone application called iPrint that lets you print pictures and documents seamlessly directly from your phone to any network HP printer. In this sense, HP solves a problem for iPhone users who want to print on the go.

A final takeaway is that new technology is bringing a level of science and accuracy to marketing never seen before. Google and other search-marketing companies ultimately seeks to eliminate human beings (media agencies) from the tactical decisions when it comes to where to place marketing messages and decide budgets, so that they can focus on more strategic decisions instead. It might sound scary, but think about it, isn't it more scary to just hand over a bag of money to a couple of Mad Men and hope that they spend it wisely?

Jay Baage

Digital Media Wire