Image by HubSpot via Flickr

In plain English: if you set out to achieve social media/marketing success, without focusing on the value of Word of Mouth (WOM) marketing, all you're doing is advertising.

Ignoring the research and the stats, I couldn't help but wonder why they didn't consider that very conversation between the three of us to be social media.

Every conversation is social.  Every referral is social.  Something as simple as seeing every mother in BJs (a big box retailer) buying Pampers is a social marketing success.  And while you're at it, ask any of those mothers why they only buy Pampers, and you will get the same answer: because it doesn't leak.  That is powerful.  That is social.

Capturing this message in a traditional media like TV, can be social.  A social call to action can present in print, on the radio, or even in packaging.  Social media is not a digital practice.  It is a marketing discipline.  It just so happens, that digital is often the most easily scaled and measured environment for Word of Mouth, and this is where the social confusion kicks off.

Sure, many of us work at digital agencies, but we don't market to blogs, twitter or to Facebook.  We market to people.  And people talk.  And we trust people.  So we market accordingly.