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If you are starting a now Online Ecommerce Business, do you think it’s important to run media on TV, Billboard and other offline media channels? Or would you only run media via Online channels?

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Home / Social Media / Difference Between Digital Marketing and Social Media

by ALEX CHRIS29 COMMENTS

Difference Between Digital Marketing and Social Media

The difference between digital marketing and social media is that social media is just one of the available channels of digital marketing. Many people believe that by engaging on social media they are doing digital marketing but this is not 100% true, as there are many more components that make up a digital marketing campaign.

What is Digital Marketing?

My definition of Digital marketing is: Building awareness and promoting a brand or product online using all available digital channels.

The major components of digital marketing are:

Internet Marketing – Website, SEM (search engine marketing – includes SEO and Pay per click advertising), smartphones, mobile markets (i.e. Google Play, Apple Store), email marketing, online banner advertising and Social Media.

Non-Internet digital channels – Television, Radio, SMS, digital billboards (indoor and outdoor)

The diagram below shows exactly the relationship of the different components that make up digital marketing.

Digital Marketing Channels

What is social media?

Social media is the latest buzz word in Internet Marketing the last couple of years. The success of the new generation of social media platforms, mainly Facebook and Twitter, changed the way we socialize, interact and shop. This also brought new channels to digital marketing as well.

Social media is the term we use to describe platforms that bring people together for the exchange of information. The most popular social media platforms are: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and YouTube.

Some interesting statistics about social media:

To get a better idea of the impact social media has on marketing, have a look at these interesting statistics:

Active Social Media Users Per Platform

What are the advantages of using social media in your marketing campaigns?

There are many advantages of utilizing social media for promoting both your online or offline products and services.

• It’s a fast way to spread the word – If you have a big fan base, you can tweet or post on Facebook and your message can instantly go to thousands of users around the World. In fact, social media is the fastest way (even from TV and Radio) to make an announcement or spread a message.
• It’s good for SEO – There are more and more signs that social signals are used for ranking purposes by both Google and Bing.
• It’s a trend – Social media is a trend you cannot ignore if you want to stay close to your customers and in synch with the latest developments in marketing.
• It’s one of the ways to interact with your customers and find out what they want – With social media your customers can show that they like a product or piece of content by voting (Like, Tweet, +1) , commenting and sharing. As a marketer you can analyze these statistics, talk with your customers and find out how to make your products, content or services better.

Digital marketing VS Social media

It should be clear after reading the above definitions that social media is a major component of Internet Marketing which is part of Digital marketing.

If we compare the two side by side we will find that:

• Digital marketing goes beyond the Internet and tries to reach people in the off-line world using digital means while social media is limited to the boundaries of the Internet.
• A Digital marketing campaign may include one or more components (Internet Advertising, Mobile ads, TV, SMS etc.) while a social media strategy may include one or more social media platforms (Facebook, twitter etc.)
• Social media is strongly associated with a content strategy i.e. you create content and use social media to promote it while a digital marketing can concentrate entirely on banners (either on the Internet, TV or billboards) for promotion.

Internet Marketing – Website, SEM (search engine marketing – includes SEO and Pay per click advertising), smartphones, mobile markets (i.e. Google Play, Apple Store), email marketing, online banner advertising and Social Media.

Non-Internet digital channels – Television, Radio, SMS, digital billboards (indoor and outdoor)

The diagram below shows exactly the relationship of the different components that make up digital marketing.

Digital Marketing Channels

What is social media?

Social media is the latest buzz word in Internet Marketing the last couple of years. The success of the new generation of social media platforms, mainly Facebook and Twitter, changed the way we socialize, interact and shop. This also brought new channels to digital marketing as well.

Digital Marketing is an umbrella term that covers many different activities. A good digital marketing strategy will include multiple different channels to engage with your audience, including Social Media, SEO activity and others. In your question you're not comparing like for like.

Stepping back, I believe what you are saying is, should I be looking for one vendor who can handle all my digital marketing or am I better dealing with separate specialist agencies?

It's dependent on your needs.

If you are happy to create and manage your own digital strategy, you might want to work with a set of specialist agencies, each responsible for a part of that strategy. The pros of this approach are that you may find more in-depth experience in some channels. The cons are in the additional overhead costs of dealing with multiple vendors.

However, if you want someone to handle all aspects of the strategy for you, select a good digital agency. They'll be able to create an integrated approach to your digital marketing and identify the effective channels for your business to use from the plethora available. This would certainly be my preferred approach.