Social Media vs. Social Networking
by Peter Schram
Reprint
OK folks. Let’s finally get this one straight: social media and social networking are not interchangeable terms.
‘Social media’ refers to the tools and vehicles that enable the ‘socialisation’ or ‘democratisation’ of publishing and media. To qualify for this category, the format needs to be relatively inexpensive to publish and easily accessible by the masses. Popular forms of social media include websites, blogs, wikis, e-newsletters, podcasts and other online videos.
The term ‘social networks’, on the other hand, commonly refers to tools that enable interaction between like-minded groups or individuals. Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter all qualify in this regard, as do specialist sites such as Classmates.com and popular dating sites.
For professional communicators, this isn’t just another boring exercise in nomenclature. Both social media and social networks offer huge advantages to savvy communicators, but each require a unique strategy and provide very different benefits.
Most organizations are already involved in some form of social media. Knowledge-based industries in particular have found blogs and podcasts to be a valuable and effective communications tool. Along with websites and e-newsletters, they are comparatively low-risk endeavours, as the message, tone and verbiage can all be carefully controlled and managed.
Social networks, however, are still finding their proper place in the communicator’s toolkit. Rapidly adopted by consumer industries and the not-for-profit sector, social networks have the advantage of delivering large and engaged audiences who have already self-identified their interests, demographics and occupations. As a primarily peer-to-peer driven environment, social networking carries a higher level of risk to businesses, who could find their messages taken out of context or misquoted to serve competitors’ – or special interest groups’ – own causes.
Of course, the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Many professional communicators who publish social media tools tend to publicise them using social networks. Each week, for example, this blog (an example of social media) is distributed to more than 1,000 subscribers through email and RSS feeds. To enhance circulation and solicit feedback on our ideas, we also post our articles on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, which represent the most appropriate social networks to reach an audience of professional communicators.
Separating the concepts of social media and social networking will also help create support for these strategies from C-suite executives, who – on the whole – tend to dismissively lump anything labelled ‘social’ into the MySpace category. Many professional communicators will find that being clear about the advantages, risk profiles and uses of each of these tools will go a long way to creating acceptance – and maybe even increased budgets – for both social media and social networking strategies.
