The Marketing Book Podcast · Douglas Burdett

477 Social Media Strategy by Julie Atherton

·1 hr 30 min

Douglas Burdett opens with his usual broad welcome and sets the table for a show aimed at helping listeners keep up with modern marketing. He introduces Julie Atherton and the second edition of Social Media Strategy: A Practical Guide to Social Media Marketing and Customer Engagement. The conversation follows the show’s familiar rhythm of setup, close reading, and practical value. Burdett moves into the center of social strategy by asking what audience understanding really means. Atherton keeps bringing the focus back to the people a strategy is meant to reach. The episode treats segmentation as more than a planning exercise. It presents the audience as something to understand in detail, not reduce to a vague target market. A key thread is the distinction between consumers, customers, and followers. Burdett uses a dog-food example to make that difference concrete. Atherton explains that the customer is the person who actually uses the product or service at the end point, while the consumer is the person making the buying decision. That distinction becomes a useful way to think about how different audiences behave and respond. The discussion stays grounded in real marketing situations instead of drifting into abstraction. Burdett keeps pulling the ideas back to what a business can actually do with them. The tone stays warm and conversational, with enough banter to keep it from feeling stiff. Near the end, the book’s emphasis broadens into a two-pronged approach to social media. Atherton argues that organic and paid social both matter and work best together. The episode connects that combination to stronger relationships with customers, employees, and partners. It also ties social strategy to empathy, suggesting that marketers need to understand behaviors, needs, wants, joys, and diversions. The close settles on competitive edge rather than vanity metrics. Burdett ends by reinforcing that the book offers a practical template for organizing social strategy. Atherton closes by restating that the real goal is to integrate social media into business strategy, not treat it as a side activity.

As heard by us

A practical discussion of social strategy that returns to audience clarity and the balance between organic and paid social.

Julie Atherton's second edition of Social Media Strategy, A Practical Guide to Social Media Marketing and Customer Engagement is handled as a practical guide to the basics.

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Why you'd press play

Press play for a plainspoken reset on who your social audience actually is.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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