Nice … good capture of ideas, thoughts, and strategy.

I see social media marketing as the “macro” having continuous “micro” campaigns. I total agree that “Social media is on-going and self-perpetuating” … you can not just drop it. It is the equivalent of dropping a relationship (or multiple relationships) and no one wants that. But social media is a set of integrated campaigns that continue to reinforce the message of the brand, subject matter expertise, and/or delivery of valuable information/data to a target audience. The campaigns have a limited life (as in the example of Trust Agents by John in a comment above), but as one campaign ends, a new one should surface to maintain conversations and relationships and reinforce value of entity driving the social media endeavor. For that matter, multiple campaigns can overlap, so long as the conversations are continuous.

Thanks for serving up a great topic,
Social Steve

In general, I would agree, but there are specific cases in which a specific product was promoted via social media channels. Latest successful one I can think of is Chris Brogan’s “Trust Agents” book release. Granted, this “campaign” leveraged Chris Brogan’s existing reputation and social media reach, but there were specific events, webinars, and blog posts targeted at selling the book. So, I think there are cases where the “C” word is appropriate.