Category Archives: Social Marketing

A Global Petition: Round 2

If you are a SB reader, then you are familiar with this topic: the creation of a social marketing association. If you’re new, then I invite you to join the conversation as it continues to evolve.

No, this is no re-mix of Social Media Club, but it’s a potentially Global Social Marketing Association, speaking in terms of behavior change.

I was prompted to write about this topic when I received an email from Craig Lefebvre on the Social Marketing listserv announcing a new petition–a call for global engagement. Though I had created a humble petition of my own on iPetition over a year ago, I am very excited to see this one having momentum, both online and offline.

The petition has just almost 100 signatures and anyone is welcome to support it. The great (and strategic) piece of this petition is that is was launched with the buy-in of the Social Marketing Quarterly’s Editorial Review Board, which consists of many of the field’s thought leaders. The petition states:

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We, the undersigned, agree that the moment has arrived for the development of a social marketing organization. We will support, in words and actions, the creation of a global social marketing organization by July 2010. To work towards this end, we share the following core principles:

Social marketing starts from the personal perspectives of the people with whom we work.

Social marketing is a well-established professional discipline with a strong academic and practical foundation.

Social marketing is a systematic approach to large-scale behavior and social change.

Social marketing is a “community of practice” that is open to all disciplines and types of practitioners and can be applied to a range of environmental, public health, and social issues.

The development of a professional social marketing organization should be a widely participatory and transparent process.

A social marketing organization should represent the views of practitioners, organizations, academics, researchers, donors, policy-makers and others who advocate for, practice, and support the use of social marketing applications to address social problems.

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Other steps to move forward have been outlined and consist of:

Create an Ad Hoc Guidance Group of no more than 20 members.

Establish a date for convening a “Congress” for the social marketing organization prior to the 2010 National Conference on Social Marketing in Public Health.

In next four months, the Guidance Group will oversee a process that solicits Delegate nominations from the social marketing community.

We suggest that work groups be created from this group of delegates to achieve certain objectives.

The outcomes of this Congress will then be presented for discussion and affirmation to a larger group of the social marketing community attending the social marketing conference in Clearwater Beach, FL in June 2010. Officers should be elected at this time and the organization formally announced to colleagues, stakeholders and professional communities.

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I’ve signed it. And so has the legendary marketer himself: Philip Kotler! Won’t you join us? At the very least, I’m going to do my best to get to next June’s 20th Anniversary of the Social Marketing in Public Health Conference, where it’s hoped that the association will officially be launched. Go here to sign the petition directly.

flickr credit: Gataen Lee

3 Themes Social Media and Social Marketing Can Learn From

Social marketing and social marketing have something to learn from one another. Let me elaborate. (and no, that was not a typo.)

The fuel to my fire is social marketing. And, I’m not talking about any of that Web 2.0 or government 2.0 buzz-word crap (pardon). I’m talking about real behavior change. Thus, when I was asked to present at Yale University about social marketing, I knew I had to explain what social marketing is and what it is not in terms of the Web 2.0 “social marketing” often discussed. However, I’m also not a fan of black and white. In fact, my favorite color is gray. So instead of drawing boundaries or limits, I talked about what each can learn from the other.

I began with a slide that had social marketing on one side and social marketing on the other side, and asked: What’s the difference? A rhetorical question and maybe mean, but the truth is that when people say social marketing, they often mean two very different things. One means tools, the other means behavior, but both can enable and empower to reach that all-elusive real behavior change. Thus, I continued by outlining three themes that I find consistent between the two applications:

freedom vs. control
mission vs. mantra
voice vs. message

I feel these themes go beyond (just) social media and social marketing, but also dive into business, society and politics of today, and are relevant to a discussion when it comes to either social media or social marketing.

Social media thrives when freedom is given and control is released. In the field of social marketing, often times there is a battle over the message, the delivery, the pitch, etc. to remain controlled, yet if freedom was given, then sometimes reach could blossom. In addition, when it comes to the ethical framework of social marketing, some feel social marketing expands freedom, while other naysayers see it as control and manipulation. Thus, whether talking about either social media or social marketing, you need to discuss how you will or will not balance the two: freedom and control.

What is your organization’s mission? What is the campaign’s purpose? What problem are you solving? Who are you talking to? These are just some of the questions one needs to ask when wanting to communicate in social marketing or social media. In social media land, you have less room, less time and more clutter. You need to think mantra. You need to be understood. In social marketing, our audiences don’t always get “mission.” Sometime, we need to admit that we don’t even know what our mission is during a campaign or as an organization and regroup. If we could lean more mantra with both social media and social marketing, then perhaps we could connect more with the audiences we want to reach.

Come out behind the firewall–but first know when and where it’s appropriate. More and more, the trend is transparency, openness, honestry. If you don’t know the answer, admit it. People want to connect and engage with you. Your brand, organization could potentially be so much more powerful if you give it a voice, a person, a story….and not necessarily push out your nicely crafted messages that every senior exec QCed five times. (Okay, I’m over-exaggerating, but it gets the point home). Whether social media or social marketing, think voice and the ideals that go with voice, rather than message. As I prefeced though, know when and where appropriate.

What are your thought? How can social media marketing and social marketing learn from each other? What else do they have in common? Where else do they differ (we know there’s lots in that department)? Or, better yet, how and why do you think these themes go beyond Just social media and/or social marketing.

(I like questions.) =P

Q & A on Social Marketing

Speaking of experts, I would deem Craig Lefebvre as one of them, and an amazing one. On his blog, he recently posted a set of questions terming it “An Environmental Scan of Social Marketing.” In a brave and humble (very humble) attempt, I am going to address my responses here in the form of a blog post.

I highly encourage discussion because as another expert I love, Chris Dorobek would say, “all of us are smarter together than each of us individually.”

1. When is it product marketing and when is it social marketing?

This conversation can roll into a number of conversations, but I feel the question is really getting to “What is social marketing and how to you define it?” WIkipedia has it’s answer, and I know Stephen Dann has developed a wonderful definition as well. In sum and in brief, I would say that social marketing begins with influencing behavior change for social good. And on that same note, I would strongly encourage diving into more research beginning with the Social Marketing Quarterly, Andreason’s Social Marketing in the 21st Century, and some of Stephen Dann’s research.

2. What is the size of the social marketing market?

Now, we don’t have an association. We don’t have full, formal degree programs (at least in the U.S.) yet. But, I would still argue that the social marketing market is quite larger than most realize. I propose that social marketing is a much wider umbrella than it has been characterized in the past. Social marketing encompasses public health, but also civil safety, social change, environmental issues, non-profit causes, and as I proposed in my master’s thesis, even has strong similarities when it comes to strategies, tools and ehical frameworks of journalism and advertising.

3. What are the 3 major issues in social marketing?

In terms of the field itself, I would say there are three persistent issues. These include the branding of the field, creating formal education programs, and providing avenues for collaboration and best practices such as an international or national association.

4. What are the red flags for who does, or does not, design and implement social marketing programs?

This list could be very in-depth, but I think the most common red flag given is when some confuse social marketing with social media marketing. Blogger Andre Blackman had a great post this week distinguishing between the two. Social media can be applied within the social marketing framework, but social marketing is a much bigger net than social media.

5. How many social programs (or what percentage of them) are evaluated?

This might depend on how you define “social programs,” whether government funded, community based or non-profit driven. I might have to call on some of our other social marketing people to respond to this question. As an educated guess, I would say most programs have some sort of benchmarks that they are evaluated on. I do not have an actual percentage on hand though. To what extent are they evaluated and/or should be evaluated may be other good questions.

6. What are some of the more sophisticated methods used in these evaluations?

Both this question and the next depend largely on what is actually measured and why. And thus, deserves a much larger conversation than these lines can provide. For example, as many communications leverage social and mobile technologies, data analytics will be critical. Once the new tools are so “new,” people will be wanting to show results and extract meaning. Thus, programs like Salesforce, Radian6, and others are largely being researched to bring programs full circle so that analytics drive strategy.

7. What types of methods are used in formative research?

Formative research may include both qualitative and quantitative research methods, or a triangulation strategy that calls for a mixture of both. Some different types of research formats include a needs assessment, developing audience profiles, media scans, environmental scans, surveys, in-depth interviews, focus group testing, usability studies, and more.

8. What percentage of social marketing program budgets are devoted to evaluation?

This is a good question whether social marketing or just marketing in general is being discussed. Often, I would say that evaluation is considered too late in the game or not stretched through as much as it could be. It is important to make measurable objectives from the beginning and think out those baselines before implementing. Also, it often depends on the client, project, task, and resources available that determines how much of the budget is devoted to evaluation. Thus, as a professor might say, it depends. Now, another good question might be: how much should be devoted?

9. Who are the innovators in the field?

That can be YOU! In terms of organizations, the National Centre of Social Marketing in the U.K. is doing great work that many of us are excited about. In the United States, the CDC’s e-Health Marketing group tends to lead the way. I would also add that both AIDS.gov and the EPA are also making great strides with some of their case studies that apply new media to communications and behavior change.

10. Who are the premier thought leaders?

In no particular order: Bill Smith, Alan Andreasen, Stephen Dann, Michael Rothschild, Philip Kotler, Gerard Hastings, Mike Newton-Ward, Nancy Lee, Craig Lefebvre, Nedra Weinreich, Doug Mckenzie-Mohr, Jeff French, Clive Blair-Stevens, Francois Lagarde, Seynabou Mbengue, Tane Cassidy, Mike Kujawski, Katherine Lyon Daniel, you….you….and did you get, that the next one could be YOU? I know it said premier, but all of these people and others are great. Together, we can all help build the social marketing field.

11. What conferences and publications do you use to keep up with the field?

Social Marketing Quarterly, the C-Change e-newsletter, numerous blogs, numerous books, the Social Marketing Listserv, the Social Marketing Wiki, events in the U.K., events at the University of South-Florida, and others. Additionally though, I also look to non-profit organizations and publications, as well as international development, new media and others to review best practices in other fields and see how they may resonate within the practice of social marketing.

In sum, many of these questions focused around evaluation. In other words, how do we know that what we are doing is working? Now THAT’S a conversation worth having. Now it’s your turn. How do you answer some of these questions (especially 5-8)? And, what other questions do you also have?

Tagging: Spare Change, Pulse and Signal, Social Marketing Panorama, Stephan Dahl

Crossing the line or a Creative Cross? MySpace Research with “Dr. Meg”

Have you heard of Dr. Meg? Maybe not, but if you’re a teen on MySpace you may have. Interesting research that was first published in the January issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine showed that adult supervision of MySape can raise adolescents’ awareness of how accessible their profiles are online.

To come to this conclusion, Dr. Megan Moreno, a pediatrician and adolescent medicine specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and fellow researchers, embarked on two separate studies to explore this issue further. Both research studies are to 1) encourage increased parental and adult supervision by family and friends, and 2) to potentially encourage similiar outreach approaches.

Dilemma: To Cross or not to Cross the Ethical Line

The research is very interesting, however, I feel an ethical discussion must be had. I am not saying Moreno’s approach was wrong or right, but I think we should slow down and discuss it further to learn and develop best practices, as well as ethical guidelines, especially since others may adopt this practice towards younger youth.

Headlines have buzzed about “Busybody Dr. Meg,” concluding that this outreach and behavior-change may offer hope to future, similiar methods being implemented by others. To me, I feel there can be high-levels of concerns with a universal application of this approach unless the strategy and concept is stretched. Including, but not limited to – the age those being contacted, how people are being contacted, the language and type of approach involved, the privacy and the stalking-like component, among other items. Additionally, does it matter who, as in which type of organizations embark on this strategy? For example, I can foresee potential problems if adopted by government health agencies and citizens’ concerns over freedom of expression. Curious on others’ thoughts on this! 😉

Background About the Studies

Study 1. For the first, researchers located 190 MySpace public profiles in a single urban ZIP code, randomly selected from 10 U.S. Census areas with the lowest average income because researchers wanted to target adolescents who might have less access to doctors.

All the users involved revealed that they were 18 to 20 years old and their pages included three or more references to sex, drinking, drug use or smoking. Of the 190 profiles selected, half were sent “Dr. Meg” e-mails. After three months, 42% of those getting a “Dr. Meg” e-mail had either set their profiles to “private,” or they had removed both sexual or substance usage references. 29% of those not contacted made changes over the three-month period.

Study 2. In another study, Moreno and other researchers looked at 500 randomly selected MySpace profiles of 18-year-olds nationwide and found that more than half contained references to risky behavior such as sex, drinking and violence.

Your Turn: Crossing the line or a creative cross?

What do you think? I agree that there is a growing issue and concern for online safety and online identity of teens, youth, young adults and people in general, and this is an interesting new development to the field. How can you see this approach being adopted by your organization, or what would be your reaction if you were approached? Am I over-reacting?

photo credit: LoonSky

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The BBC: More Social Marketing Please

Our brothers and sisters across the pond are onto something – and it’s called social marketing. Though the practice has been around since the late 1960s, the U.S. and other nations have been slow to adopt its methodology.

On Monday, the BBC published an article that highlighted findings from a study, Kicking Bad Habits, conducted by the King’s Fund that calls for new ways of thinking when it comes for public health – specifically, more social marketing. In short, the King’s Fund study enforced what many of us in both the U.K and increasingly so in the U.S. is that what we have been doing to address health isn’t working, and that more social marketing may be the answer. Quote:

“Social marketing techniques and data analysis tools like geodemographics should be used to identify, target and communicate messages designed to motivate people to change how they live.”

“And public health programmes should not rely on just one approach…as the evidence shows the most effective interventions employ a variety of tactics.”

“The methods used to promote public health need to be more modern, using the most advanced techniques and technologies.”

“We need social marketing techniques to target messages and understand what will make changes worthwhile for people but also we need to make sure the healthy choices are the easy choices.”

You can download the full results from the study here. This article further re-enforces why the U.K. created the National Social Marketing Centre. Once I got beyond my own excitement that 1) social marketing was being covered by mainstreams media and 2) that the use of the term “social marketing” was applied correctly (i.e. –> NOT confused with social media), I started to analyze what this means.

I wasn’t alone. Social marketing great Alan Andreasen brought the article to the attention of the social marketing list serv. A member of the King’s Fund responded to the article on the list serv backing the application of social marketing. Social marketer Craig Lefebvre blogged his response to the post as well. Hallelujah!

So, SB, what does this mean? It means the time is now. If a similiar study was conducted in the U.S., I agree with Lefebvre that we’d probably find similiar results. What we are doing isn’t working. Taking a serious look at social marketing and fully integrating it into our activities, I think, would bring about much of the ‘change’ that is a-buzz this year.

As I shared on Craig’s blog, I feel social marketing truly can and does provide an umbrella for people with various expertise across a range of fields to approach public health and well-being. Won’t you join us?

To those on board in the U.K, know we are all watching, here to support and hope a similiar initiative develops here in the U.S. Perhaps an international social marketing association would help? (Hey, it’s at least worth another plug right?)

(digg the BBC’s original article here)

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The Bulletin: Updates in the Social Marketing Field

New Resources and Communities Abound…

1. Two Social Marketing Blogs join the movement! Mike Newton-Ward, a social marketer based in North Carolina launched Social Marketing Panorama earlier this fall. Bob Marshall also launched USSOCIALMARKETINGPLAN to highlight the need of a larger social marketing movement that attaches itself to a body of professionals in the United States.

2. C-Change, a new peer-reviewed and research-based e-newsletter developed by USAID and AED is now available and…is free! According to the web site, “C-Change works with global, regional and local partners to use communication to change behaviors and social norms, supported by evidence-based strategies, state-of-the-art training and capacity building, and cutting-edge research. The ultimate goal is the improved health and well-being of people in the developing world.” The e-newsletters focus on four main areas:

Family Planning and Reproductive Health
HIV/AIDS
Malaria
Communication for Behavior and Social Change

3. GovLoop, the “premiere social network for the government community,” including agencies, contractors and consultants has grown to over 1700 members! I invite you to join me and the main other amazing professionals on this robust community created through NING, especially SB readers who are keen to the government 2.0 movement! For those in DC, join the DC Social Media Club this upcoming week Oct. 22 for a seminar panel on all items Government 2.0, moderated by John Bell of Ogilvy PR.

4. As I’ve shared, the full presentations from all the keynotes during the World Social Marketing Conference are available to view and download. I shared my own recap, as well as a picture recap. Good news is that I wasn’t alone as we had a ‘team’ of bloggers covering the event: Stephen Dann, Craig Lefebvre, Andy Jaeger, and Cheryl Brown.

5. Edelman recently launched their Health Engagement Blog to stress the concept of ‘health engagement.’ The blog corresponds to Edelman’s whitepaper, available for free, called Health Engagement Barometer Study.

6. Mike Kujawski, a social marketer based in Canada, created a Government 2.0 Best Practices Wiki for Canadian, U.S. and International Governments. In its first week of launch, the wiki got over 5000 visitors!

7. The CDC is now offering a web-based course called Social Marketing for Nutrition and Physical Activity. This is good. Though, I still echo Nancy Lee’s call for social marketing curricula integrating into formal education. And more courses would be a great start, but a formal graduate degree in social marketing would be even better.

Photo Credit: Flickr, pbrigitte
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Have social marketing (or social marketing-related) news you’d like to have featured in the Bulletin? Send job posts, new workshops, events, research resources and tools to socialbutterfly@gmail.com with Bulletin in the subject line. =)

World Social Marketing Conference Recap 2: Picture This

Finally…a picture-based recap on the events from the World Social Marketing Conference, which took place in Brighton, England on September 29-30.

NOTE: PDFs and audio of all keynote presentations are available here.

<– Prof. Stephen Dann was the conference’s Twitter King, providing live coverage of the conference through @WSMC08, and #WSMC08.

Prof. Alan Andreasen gave a closing and optimistic keynote address about the future of social marketing. –>

<– Bill Smith, of AED, discusses the journal Social Marketing Quarterly, calling for more concentration towards social marketing products and services.

This quote was presented by England’s National Social Marketing Centre’s director, Jeff French, who calls all social marketers to unite together and learn from each other in moving the field forward. –>

<– Philip Kotler opened the conference with a keynote about poverty, and how we can apply social marketing to poverty to increase effectiveness and positive change.

Jeff Jordan, M.A., President and Founder of Rescue Social Change, presented his research about Social Branding (which he trademarked), along with 2 case studies about how to use social norming to influence behavior for high-risk adolescents. –>

<– The Purpose Driven Campaign – my master’s thesis that I presented during the poster session! (I also created SocialButterfly, Fly4Change.com pens that were quite popular. =)

Craig Lefebvre, presented an exciting presentation where he “dropped the gauntlet,” and presented the challenge for social marketers to walk the walk, as well as talk the talk when it comes to creating an international social marketing association. Lefebvre announced that he alone has raised a quarter of a million dollars for the project! –>

Other Highlights included:

NIOSH presented add some ‘flavoring’ to the conference by presenting their case study on a social marketing program to improve the safety of butter flavoring employees.
Ogilvy PR presented their fascinating Pandemic Flu case study.
Porter Novelli and CDC presented their case study on HIV testing.
Nancy Lee outlined 4 examples of how social marketing can offer products and services.
RT Hon. Alan Milbourne, MP, discussed how the world of social marketing and public policy relate.
Bob Marshall presented findings from studying the NSMC and from his recent survey about creating a new social marketing association for the States. This is part of an on-going discussion that can be followed here, USSocialMarketingPlan.
Ronne Ostby-Malling of AED presented her preliminary research about the behavior of online social network behavior among adolescents versus their behavior in real-life.

The Purpose Driven Campaign: Social Marketing as the Possible Link Between Journalism and Advertising

After reflecting from the World Social Marketing Conference (which I promise updates eventually) and reading Craig Lefebvre’s recent post “Social Marketing: Hard Power and Soft Power in Social Change,” I want to finally share some tidbits from my thesis paper that I presented as a poster session at the conference. As, I think it rounds out and puts a lot of themes together as I studied: the elusive concept of influence.

Abstract: This research project looks at the concept of influence within social marketing as compared to journalism and advertising. This includes examining these professions’ definitions, ethics, standards, and agenda-setting capabilities. Through in-depth interviews, a further understanding of how these three practices relate within the gray matter of the media landscape is pioneered, as well as better defining the role and influence of social marketing.

Excerpt:

The Question of Influence

While the Information Age leaps into the Connected Age, the power of a free press is offered daily to start-up bloggers. Newspapers are downsizing. Amateurism is becoming the new professionalism. Online media producers replace today’s broadcast directors; all making the gray shades of influence between the information and its consumers a thunderstorm waiting to happen. Social marketing is in the business of change, whether it is behavioral change or attitude change, social marketing can also be described as the field for social change. But, how? In today’s world, who holds more influence to create these changes, a journalist, advertiser or a social marketer? How can one tell the difference? Is there a difference? And, do the professions work together? Could they? Should they? This research hopes to add to the discussion on the evolving definition and role of social marketing, using agenda-setting relationships to examine its influence and attempt to determine its position between advertising and journalism in the media landscape.

Literature Review

It is 1961. A time when questions were raised and hope diminishing as borders became gray and a rise of an international community emerged. Two Portuguese students were imprisoned for declaring a public toast towards their dream, rooted in an idea – freedom. Having their freedom stolen from them for displaying a human right of expression, a newspaper article was written, and with it, a movement spurred. This movement would form Amnesty International (www.amnesty.org). Social change is possible, and it begins with an idea. Social marketing is an increasing movement currently being expanded because of its foundation in ideas about positive change for the welfare of the public.

Though specific definitions differ, social marketing achieves social change objectives by applying the marketing mix of product, place, promotion and price. Currently, social marketing is used mostly in public health communications and is expanding in the realms of environmentalism, civil rights, urban renewal, public service and raising awareness of international issues.

Conclusion: The conclusion of course I can’t share here, but it involves what I found consistent between journalism and advertising, but interestingly, the field of public policy was drawn into the mix through the research as well.

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Live from the World Social Marketing Conference: Recap 1

Awestruck, inspred, and amazed, I am reporting live from the World Social Marketing Conference here in Brighton, England. There are so many great and brillant minds present here with over 700+ delegates from across the globe.

We have journalists, policy makers, psychologists, gurus, non-profiteers, communication firms, academics, new media techs, international developers, champions for the environment, public health professionals, humanity, researchers, consultants, publishers and many more from across sectors.

Delegates represent South Africa, India, the U.S., England, Portugal, China, Australia, Bangladesh, Slovenia, New Zealand, Senegal in West Africa, Wales, Scotland and many more!

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To follow conference updates, Dr. Stephen Dann is commanding the Twittering front @WSMC, and you can following using Twitter Search #WSMC08. Also, presentations and pictures may be gathering on Flickr and Slideshare down the line. I look forward to a posting full of pictures later myself, but here are some great recaps thus far (though, literally, I could post on each one individually!)

Craig Lefebvre: In his keynote, Lefebvre (who I finally got the wonderful opportunity to connect with), brought us social marketers into the danger zone and challenged us, as a global community to form a social marketing global platform. I won’t do Lefebvre’s vision for the field justice in this space, but Lefebvre is laboring tirelessly to rally support for an international professional network, that would be inclusive of those in social marketing, environment issues, public health, business thought leaders, psychologists, economists, marketers, social entreprenuers and more! It could/would involve a case study database, a journal, educational development and shared experiences for all: thus highlighting the variety of roles us social marketers, can, do and should have in the social change sector. Currently, Lefebvre has raised a quarter of a million dollars to support this organization and asks: What will you do?

Philip Kotler: A guru favorite for many conference delegates, Kotler laid out his most recent work on the subject of poverty. Kotler and colleague Nancy Lee, in their next book, apply social marketing to the problem of poverty. Within the presentation, Kotler identified four main methods currently being used to reduce poverty:

Economic Growth Strategy
Redistribution Strategy
Massive Foreign Aide
Population Control

In this book, Kotler and Lee lay out a 10-step process for demystifying the poverty problem while providing resaons why it is all of ours problem. Looking at the World Bank and The U.N.’s Millenium goals, and the approachng deadline for results, this application is most needed.

Nancy Lee: In a wonderfully graceful way, Lee provided four clear examples on how social marketing utilizing all four of the 4Ps – product, price, place, promotion. Lee concluded that her state, Washington, hopes to become a role-model to gain the attention of those in Washington D.C. and further establish social marketing as a working strategy and field. My favorite part of her presentation was her exclamation that social marketing must become a required course. I highly agree, and ask: What is one way, us in the trenches, can make social marketing a required course? My answer: ask for it. Students, and those interested in social and behavior change: investigate social marketing. Ask about it. Reach out. Demand it.

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These are my first three updates, and the computer area is closing, so thus, I must close. More to come in following days!

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The Social Marketing Blogosphere Continues to Expand: Welcome Mike Newton-Ward

I am excited to announce the addition of a great social marketing voice to the blogosphere, Mike Newton-Ward at Social Marketing Panorama, where he hopes to offer a 360-view of social marketing.

My first encounter with Mike was when he graciously helped me with my graduate project this past Spring. Though we’ve only ‘met’ through phone, email and now blogging, he is a very knowledge, helpful and passionate voice for the social marketing field.

Mike outlines a few reasons why he entered the blogosphere:

Exchange ideas about social marketing
Extend the discussions from Georgetown’s social marketing list serv
Create community
Share resources, as well as his personal observations in the field

Mike’s addition to the blogosphere is a special treat for all of us as he invites us to:

“to observe the world around you, listen to what people are saying, reflect on your experiences, and share them.”

Social marketing’s presence in the blogosphere continues to expand and gain traction. Join the metamorphosis. Come fly with us in this growing movement called social marketing.

Spare Change, Nedra Weinreich
On Social Marketing and Social Change, Craig Lefebvre (**Did you check out Lefebvre’s recent post about medical and health bloggers? I suggest you check it out for a link to the free research report!)
Subject to Change, Vanessa Mason
Health Marketing Musings, Jay Bernhardt
Social Marketing Panorama, Mike Newton-Ward
SocialButterfly, Yours Truly 😉

For more social marketing-related blogs, my links page offers many more resources and listings!

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