I admit I have deceived you.

See, I’ve told you that this is a marketing blog. I’ve told you that I was going to talk about the insights that people are sharing about business and careerism, specifically as they pertain to the wonderful art of marketing. And to my credit, I think I’ve done that.

But here’s the thing. Despite what I might have called myself up until recently, I am not a marketer. So really, I don’t have much of a leg to stand on – in the traditional sense – when it comes to writing a blog about marketing theory.

Okay, I’ll back up.

There are Two Kinds of Business People

First, there are those who believe that everything is marketing. That’s because a business is a reflection of each of its working parts, and a well-oiled business should take pride in those parts. You only hire the best people for every position you have open. Why keep them behind a curtain? Let them talk about the work they’re doing in public. Only good things can come of it.

To people who think this way, I have very little to say. Other than that I wish there were more of you.

The other kind of person likes to put his business in silos. Marketing creates the messages that drive sales. Sales makes the money that’s handled by finance. Finance determines how much to spend on R&D, and so on. Everyone has a job to do, and every individual is responsible for getting that job done. Full stop.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with silos. Most businesses in the world use them. Silos help businesses stay organized. They make payroll a breeze. But I want to make one thing very clear. And I’m going to put it in big font so I’m not mistaken.

Social Media is NOT Marketing.

Which, by association, means that I’m not a marketer. Got it so far? Good.

Social =! Marketing

So if social media isn’t marketing, what the heck is it? That, friend, is a very good question, and one worthy of exploration. Let’s start with an analogy.

In 1979, there was a floor in a skyscraper in Chicago dedicated to the sales department of a particular insurance firm. It was the job of the salesmen on this floor to call leads, set up meetings, build relationships, ask for referrals, and so on. Everyone on this floor spent a lot of time on the phone, building and leveraging their networks for the explicit purpose of gaining revenue.

In 1979, there were lots of other people using phones, too. In that very skyscraper, almost every office had one. Everyone knew how to use the phone. They had them in their houses. They taught their children how to use them, and how to use them responsibly. There were phone chains and phone books and phone booths. The phone was all over the place. A worldwide sensation. But within that insurance company, was the telephone “that silly thing that the salespeople use?” No, of course not. It was just the phone.

(Am I telegraphing this punch a bit? Ah well.)

(Excuse the pun, by the way.)

Like the telephone, social media is simply a means by which people communicate. It’s not a means by which marketers communicate to prospects. It’s a tool to do that, of course, just like any number of other tools available (the telephone, e.g.). Sure, there are people who use it particularly well, and there are those who do not. But the people who use social media well could just as easily be in IT or legal (or – gasp! – sales) as marketing. So what is social media?

Social Media is Communication

But not in the MarComm sense of the word. (You know what I mean – the sentiment that makes IT roll its eyes and creative wring its delicate hands.) It’s communication in the way that telephones are communication, the way that email is communication. The way that physically sitting down and talking to people is communication. You wouldn’t put marketing in charge of having conversations, would you? Of course not. So why is social media any different?

If social media is just communication, who should be in charge of it? Oh, well that’s really easy. Ask someone what the most recent article posted on socialmediaexplorer.com is about. If she can answer correctly, she’s a good candidate.

See, here’s the thing about social media. In order for it to work, you have to be passionate about the art of communicating. Apart from that, there’s really no other qualification that you need. You don’t have to write particularly well. You don’t have to be a big-picture thinker. All you need to be able to do is be interesting and talk to people.

People who are passionate about communication live in all kinds of silos. And chances are that if you do a decent enough job of looking around, you’ll find a developer or an analyst or a kid in the stock room who does a better job of communicating than someone who’s getting paid to communicate. Put that person in charge of social media.

So I’m Not a Marketer

I used to be. I used to be in the business of SEO and SEM, of designing landing pages and emails. All of those things fall pretty squarely in the marketing silo. The kid in the stock room probably couldn’t do those things.

Today, my job is to figure out how businesses communicate with large groups of individuals. Granted, the strategy part of the job probably isn’t something the kid in the stock room could do, either. But three years ago, I was a kid in a stock room who knew how to communicate. I put my nose into a handful of books, started reading a couple of blogs, and with some hard work, I made it out of the stock room and into a really cool gig.

It’s just not a marketing gig. Get it?