The need for a visible, established community within which social marketing practitioners can interact is becoming urgent as well as important.  This is due both to the emerging number of people practicing social marketing worldwide, and the misuse of the term “social marketing” and “social marketer” to describe commercial marketing conducted via online social media.

The current situation requires social marketers to create and maintain their own community of practitioners, using a combination of journals, conferences, e-mail discussion lists, blogs and generic social networking sites. The effort required to manage their network infrastructure detracts from their ability to be active and productive participants.  It is becoming increasingly difficult to locate social marketing practitioners online because of the misuse of the terms associated with its practice (see above.)

The purpose of this project is to create an easily locatable common gathering place online for social marketers (as defined below) worldwide where they can share news, ideas, resources, and opinions related to the practice of social marketing.

The intended audience is professionals who systematically apply marketing, along with other concepts and techniques, to achieve specific behavioral goals for a social good.  This includes policy makers, program managers, implementers, funders, and social scientists.

The objectivesof the project are to:

• Increase awareness of social marketing as a profession and social marketers as its practitioners.
• Increase knowledge about social marketing through the accumulation of the collective contributions of its current practitioners.
• Increase visibility of social marketers worldwide, through directory listings, a professional social network devoted to social marketers, and online profiles for social marketers.
• Facilitate the development of a professional community of practice for social marketers through providing online tools for communication, connection, and collaboration.

The results to date include the development of the Social Marketers Global Network (www.socialmarketers.net), an online place for program managers, implementers, and organizations involved in the practice of social marketing.  Through this network, members can access and exchange information about what, when, and where social marketing is happening throughout the world, directly from the people who are doing it. It is also a place to discuss the whys and wherefore's of social marketing.  Features include:

• SOCIAL NETWORKING which allows members to connect with each other, and automatically be informed of each others' activities, discussions, and contributions via the network.
• BLOGGING function which allows members to post articles, announcements, and items of interest to the social marketing community.  Unlike many listservs, the blogging on the network features automatic archiving and indexing by keywords, tags, and authors. Blogs are posted to a community blog and a personal blog. 
• SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS (SIGS) which can be created and maintained by members, either as open or private groups within the network.  These groups include the ability to post announcements, hold discussions, and share documents and media within the group.
• MEDIA SHARING which allows members to share documents, publications, videos, photos, and more within the network.
• DIRECTORY of social marketing professionals worldwide.
• PUBLICATIONS from open source journals and key journals subscribed to by the network.
• COMMUNITY POLLING tools that allow members to “take the pulse” of the community directly, without intervention by an administrator.
• SURVEYING TOOL which allows the development, deployment, and collection of surveys on topics of interest to social marketers worldwide.
• PROJECT MANAGEMENT ONLINE tools which allow members to plan and manage their own social marketing projects in full view of the social marketing community, or within a limited segment selected by them. The tool also allows experts to create templates for social marketing programs which can be copied and adapted by members.
• LINKS TO SOCIAL MARKETING RESOURCES

Special features of the project include its being developed on an Open Source platform, meaning that the underlying coding is free for others to see and adapt to their own work. Also, the project is following a natural system evolution, which means the members are given the power and responsibility to shape the community of practice to their needs and preferences, as opposed to having the organizational structure being externally imposed.

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