Social Media for Business

Foreword

Marketing is a ‘state of mind’ that must exist in any organisation — public service or private sector — if that organisation is to identify and serve the needs of its various stakeholder groups, in any truly meaningful or effective way.

It is a common paradigm that marketing is a commercial tool designed simply to sell as many products or services as possible. One not uncommon definition is that ‘marketing is the art of arresting the human intelligence for long enough to extract money from it’. It’s not that. That’s mugging.

Period.

As I’ve often talked about, a business or organisation — public, private, profit or not-for-profit — is a ‘marketing organism’ that requires a marketing state of mind in everything that it does to meet its customers’ needs.

Period.

And that means that marketing is about so much more than advertising or promotion. It’s about understanding the needs and wants of existing and potential customers, and then making meaningful connections and developing relationships with each of those groups, time after time after time.

Marketing is the entire business of doing business looked at from the stakeholders’ point of view (all stakeholders, including staff, customers, shareholders, suppliers, communities, etc.). In this environment, marketers should bring a dynamic, powerful and effective approach to the development and implementation of marketing and/or communication strategies.

So how do we do this? Once upon a time it was by advertising, PR and ...