There is a major difference between social media marketing and marketing in social media. Both are interesting (maybe critical as social media reach has now surpassed TV) and I’d like to illustrate the difference using the consumer as the starting point.

So let’s start with the consumer. In the current online world , there are two ways people get exposure to brands and products:

a- Google scenario

A consumer launches Google and types let’s say “zune bug”.  This is not new, it’s been the case since 2000.  What is new is that most of the sites making the top of the list now are blogs or sites with consumer generated content.

So, if as a brand you’re not on these blogs, you’re not on Google, and you’re not on the web. Therefore you want to have your brand on the blogs that make the top of the list either with  a comment to a relevant post, an article written by the blogger or (more traditional) a text or banner ad.   You can of course also pay to have your brand show up against this search query and many others.

This is what I call marketing in social media.

The best blogs for brands are the ones with the highest chance to get on top of a Google page and this is where Social Media meets SEO. (more to come on this ).

b- Social scenario.

A Consumer  is spending a  significant amount of his time in social media. He gets a Facebook wall message  about the “zune bug” . Her  friend has found this information on one of her favorite gadget blog.

An hour later the same person got the same link from Twitter. This time the link  is re-tweeted by a friend of a friend…  He clicks on it and read some more posts, one including a review of other MP3′s, and Bingo,  decides to buy a Creative.  Often, the content that triggered the decision can be traced back from an influential blogger, one that’s trustable and relevant in an MP3 community.

This is not marginal . A new article from Marketing Vox  shows that  Facebook overtake Google referrals on some sites.It follows another report from TubeMogul showing that blogs provide 80% of referred traffic to online videos.

To win the social game, brand have to get exposure and coverage from the influential bloggers in the community they target.

These scenarios are not exclusive as consumer do both. When I use Google, I will go down a couple of results to click on a link from a blogger I know. Similarly one can tweet the result of a search. (reframeit is very convenient for doing this).

Depending on what product you sell, what audience you target and whether you want to grow awareness, generate leads  or get conversion, you may focus on one approach or the other. .. or both.