About the Survey

Bob Marshall, along with a slew of other social marketing thought leaders, have launched an open online survey asking others’ opinions about what a national strategic social marketing plan, including a professional organization, would look like in the United States.

The survey I’m very excited to say is designed for respondents at all levels of interest (students, new and career practitioners, experienced expert) across all related fields from social marketing, public health, environment, communication, social sector, education, and more. Basically, anyone interesed in using social marketing as a systematic approach to promoting behavior change and social change that benefits both individuals and society.

The survey is anonymous, and results will be shared on the new blog launched to support the project called the USSocialMarketingPlan in the next few weeks. Organizers are hoping to have enough participants to announce some results by the WSMC in Brighton. Craig Lefebrve also announced the survey on his blog for more information as well.

This is EXCITING news and in my opinion, definitely overdue. But, it’s a start. I had wanted to do this survey myself as part of my master’s thesis, but was advised to wait by others, so I’m happy it is now being conducted, and the collaborative approach will probably encourage more participants. =)

Participate in the survey here.

This post hopes to further clarify and define social marketing by highlighting the eight benchmarks that London’s National Social Marketing Centre developed. And, will be used to evaluate future social marketing campaigns in the future.

Background: Alan Andreasen, one of America’s social marketing thought leaders, originally developed 6 benchmarks for defining social marketing in 2001. The NSM Centre then embarked on further evaluating these benchmarks in 2006. Some may point out that other benchmarks should be used as defining criteria, so it is important to note the NSM Centre created these eight benchmark’s as the characteristics unique to social marketing.

How to Use: These benchmarks can be used as a tool when working to identify whether a certain approach or campaign is identifiable as social marketing. These benchmarks are not necessarily the approach to conducting social marketing. However, they can help inspire new ideas and be used as a resource.

These benchmarks may also be useful when: A) considering and/or developing social marketing strategy, B) conducting social marketing trainings, C) in academic research and for reference. If one can not find these benchmarks within the work, then that work could very well not be ‘official’ social marketing.

Who Should Use: Government agencies, consultants, changemakers, evaluators, researchers, professors, trainers, policy makers, non-profits, foundations, charities, Ad Agencies, Communications Firm, Environmentalists, International Development folks, and more.

The Eight Benchmarks:

1. Customer Orientation: Does the strategy develop a full understanding of the consumer? Is consumer research gathered from a variety of sources?
2. Behavior: Is there a clear focus on behavior? with specific behavior goals in mind?
3. Theory: Are the behavior goals theory-based and draw from an integrated theory-supported framework?
4. Insight: Does the strategy work to gain a deeper ‘insight’ approach? looking at what ‘moves’ and ‘motivates?’
5. Exchange: Does the strategy incorporate ‘exchange’ analysis? What must one give to get?
6. Competition: Does the strategy address the ‘competition?’ What behaviors compete for the time and attention of the audience?
7. Segmentation: Are you going beyond targeting and delving deep into various audience segments?
8. Methods Mix: Are you utilizing an appropriate ‘mix’ of methods?

Take Aways:

• The social marketing field is evolving. As the definition has continually been tweaked and expanded, it is helpful to decipher among what is and what is not, social marketing.

• Social marketing, as a field of study and practice, is increasing its professionalism. These benchmarks help to decipher social marketing from public service advertising, cause communications, health communications, education, corporate responsibility, nonprofit communications, advocacy, lobbying, and social advertising. These fields may overlap and share common factors within social marketing but they in and of themselves, are unique, but could be possible social marketing tools.

To Access: The full PDF outlining these social marketing benchmarks, along with other helpful social marketing materials, can be accessed on the NSM Centre’s Web site.

For many Gen-Yers and young professionals, Facebook started out as a social network. Then, high-schoolers were allowed in. Now, understandably, more and more people are joining that range in age – and in relationship to you. Point in case:

• My friend recently helped her mom create a Facebook account.
• Another commented that all her co-workers want her to become a Facebook friend.
• According to Quantcast, in July 208, 46% of Facebook users are 18-34.
• in July 2007, ComScore reported a 181% growth of users ages 25-34, and a 98% growth in users 35+.

Thus, with Facebook going from social status —> professional network, it begs the question, what are the new the rules of thumb for one’s Facebook account? So I asked followers on Twitter. The results:

1. All or nothing. One of the most popular answers was to go all access with everyone. This route shows to your co-workers and professional network that you own who you are. Nothing to hide. Some also responded that this helps increase the office culture and camaraderie.
2. Oil and water don’t mix. It gets murky. Best to keep Facebook separate. One person commented that you can come to know too much about someone and that can distract from business.
3. Go Half and Half. Others answered saying they prefer to keep professional work colleagues and co-workers at bay by using the ‘limited profile’ feature on Facebook. Or, setting privacy settings so only certain friends or groups can see certain applications, photos or the wall.
4. Work It. Lee Aase, on his blog, Social Media University, suggest a shortcut. While waiting for Facebook to devise a way to better differentiate relationships with a system more sophisticated than the limited profile graph, Aase suggest creating a group for your professional contacts and name it “FirstName LastName Professional Contacts.” Aase explains further on his blog. Or, use Facebook’s friend lists to differentiate Aase also suggests.

No matter what you prefer, it’s best to adopt a strategy early, be wise, cautious and careful. Even those that believed in full access agreed that in the past year, they’ve tweaked their their own personal guidelines. i.e. Adopting the self-policy that one must meet someone in their professional network in person before they cozy up on Facebook.

For me, currently, I adopt a mix between the full access and the limited profile. This is largely for one reasons:

• I want you to get to know me. I have nothing to hide. But, I’d prefer someone get to know me in person, before just reading my profile and making assumptions or place me into some category or description of who they think I might be. It’s one thing to know someone in the office, but it’s another to befriend a person.

Some other guidelines friends mentioned through my Twitter survey. Don’t post:

• Inappropriate pictures (nudity, over-drinking, kissing, dancing, etc.)
• Clean up those pictures from college frat days
• Represent who you are, but be keen to what information sparks controversy
• Don’t use foul language
• Review your privacy settings
• Understand what happens to your profile when you add an application
• When you ‘become a fan’ or join a group, understand some may not get your inner circle’s inside jokes or may think you are endorsing certain ideas/services/products
• If you wouldn’t show it to your mom, you probably don’t want your boss to see.
• Don’t make your profiles busy or hard to read if you want to use it for networking.

What’s your Facebook Professionalism Policy? or, what do you think of mine?

photo credit: Flickr, Amit Gupta (from Newsweek article)