Top Five Social Media Marketing Mistakes

You know about all the won­der­ful things the blo­gos­phere can do for your busi­ness. But how can you pre­vent the not-so-wonderful stuff?

By Mike Proulx From Bloomberg Businessweek

Social media ini­tia­tives have become stan­dard com­po­nents of com­pa­nies’ mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions strate­gies. Large or small—from the local bak­ery to Gen­eral Motors (GM)—busi­nesses see the value of engag­ing in online con­ver­sa­tions already tak­ing place about their brands. While social media best prac­tices have emerged, brands still strug­gle with how best to engage with their con­sumers. Here are five com­mon mistakes:

1. Not (or Barely) Monitoring:

Com­pa­nies that do not first “lis­ten” and observe how their evan­ge­lists and detrac­tors talk about their brand risk jump­ing into a cyclone of unan­tic­i­pated activ­ity. Con­stant mon­i­tor­ing is a must.

Even a well-liked Inter­net brand can fall vic­tim to lack of social media mon­i­tor­ing. In 2009, hack­ers exploited a vul­ner­a­bil­ity in online retailer Amazon.com’s (AMZN) site, caus­ing all books by GLBT (Gay, Les­bian, Bisex­ual, and Trans­gen­der) authors to dis­ap­pear. Over the course of a week­end, thou­sands of con­sumers on Twitter, Facebook, and forums voiced their con­cern, sus­pect­ing that Ama­zon had made the authors unavail­able delib­er­ately. Two days later, when Ama­zon made an attempt to explain the glitch, peo­ple on Twit­ter already had cre­ated a hash­tag fur­ther­ridi­cul­ing the company’s ineptitude.

2. “Down-sourcing” to Interns or Junior Staff:

The fresh, young dig­i­tal natives at your com­pany embody a cru­cial resource in help­ing to nav­i­gate the emerg­ing media waters. In some cases, how­ever, their lack of busi­ness expe­ri­ence could imperil your brand’s “social voice.”

Recently, Nestlé’s (NESN) Face­book page erupted in a flame war when Green­peace staged a protest of the choco­late maker’s alleged use of palm oil from defor­ested areas in Indone­sia. The “offi­cial” posts in response to com­ments were overly flip­pant and defen­sive, which only fueled the firestorm.

3. Fast Beats Perfect:

In the dig­i­tal world, con­tent can spread like wild­fire. Imme­di­ate, authen­tic, and hum­ble acknowl­edge­ments of your brand’s social media ker­fuf­fles are not only nec­es­sary but also expected. Tak­ing the time to craft a per­fect cor­po­rate response with lay­ers of bureau­cratic approvals will only cause more dam­age to your brand’s social reputation.

In a mat­ter of days, the now infa­mous Domino’s YouTube video, in which employ­ees did some highly unap­pe­tiz­ing things to the chain’s food, erupted into a full-fledged cri­sis. Although the chief exec­u­tive offi­cer pro­vided a video statement/response, some felt the company’s reply took far too long. (The com­pany has since redeemed itself with its highly suc­cess­ful Pizza Turn­around campaign.)

4. Fak­ing It:

If you’ve failed to fos­ter and ener­gize a legit­i­mate set of brand evan­ge­lists, don’t attempt to dis­guise false engage­ment by hav­ing employ­ees pre­tend to be cus­tomers (known as “astro­turf­ing”). It will most cer­tainly be found out.

Ear­lier this year, spec­u­la­tion was that Wal-Mart’s (WMT) local Chicago PR agency was behind a fake com­mu­nity sup­port group com­ment­ing on blogs in favor of the retail store com­ing to town.

5. Hav­ing an “Off” Switch:

Your brand’s involve­ment in social media should never have an end date, since at its core, that involve­ment is about nur­tur­ing cus­tomer rela­tion­ships. While cam­paigns that have a social media exten­sion may come and go, you must main­tain an “always on” approach and outlook.

TGI Friday’s Sep­tem­ber 2009 cross-channel cam­paign reached its goal of win­ning 500,000 fans of fic­tional char­ac­ter “Woody” on Face­book. In fact, it got close to 1 mil­lion fans. TGI Friday’s ended the cam­paign and deleted the Face­book page with­out those fans con­vert­ing to TGI Friday’s offi­cial Face­book page, los­ing all the social cap­i­tal built up over the course of the campaign.

As we’re still in some­what of a nascent period in social media mar­ket­ing, brands will inevitably make mis­takes and learn from them along the way. This learn­ing process is excit­ing and offers mar­keters some unique oppor­tu­ni­ties to con­nect directly with consumers.

At the end of the day, brands must earn their “social cur­rency.” There are no short­cuts or sub­sti­tutes to authen­tic engage­ment in the realm of social media.