Seven Deadly Sins of Social Media Marketing

7/31/2019 Seven Deadly Sins of Social Media Marketing

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2/12

Warnings

At Argyle, we base a lot of our product development de-cisions on our ability to put ourselves in the clients shoes.

The better we can understand their problems, workow,

aspirations, etc., the better we can build a product that

suits their needs.

Through the course of these client interactions, we often

hear that its hard for social media marketers to nd time

to think strategically about social media marketing. The

typical reason cited is that theyre just so busy engaging!

We call this tetheringmarketers get so glued to the re-

al-time stream and never step away to look at the bigger

picture. Its hard to keep your eyes on your feet and the

horizon at the same time, after all. Altimeter

Group Analyst Jeremiah Owyang calls this

phenomenon the social media helpdesk,

which is a great way to describe the result.

If you get overwhelmed with customer in-

quires and become exclusively reactive, youre ocially

customer support.

Your job as a social media marketer is not to respond to

every tweet and comment you get. Your job is to drive

business outcomes Awareness, Trial, Churn, Hit Rate,

Customer Satisfaction, and Loyalty. If youre being swept

away by the stream but dont know how your eorts are

aecting your organizations bottom line, swim to the

nearest bank.

Repenting

Worry not! With a willing heart (and the right social me-dia tools), repentance is at hand. First, make sure youre

using an enterprise-class social media management sys-

tem with a social inbox. A good social inbox will save all

interactions from customers and prospects so that you

can return to your desk and slog through them on your

schedule. Throw in email notications for particularly

high-sensitivity keywords and youll be on top of things

but still able to take a step back.

Once you have the tools lined up, its all about breathing.

In... out... in... out. Now please, put down that TweetDeck.

Recommended Reading

The Two Career Paths of the Corporate Social Strategist

A groundbreaking report by The Altimeter Group out-

lining how to keep your career - and your companys

social presence - from becoming the social media

help desk.

Tethering 1

emiah Owyang:

at a dreamboat!
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2010/11/10/report-the-two-career-paths-of-the-corporate-social-strategist-be-proactive-or-become-social-media-help-desk/http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2010/11/10/report-the-two-career-paths-of-the-corporate-social-strategist-be-proactive-or-become-social-media-help-desk/


3/12

A Cautionary Madlib:

Oh snap!Kenneth Cole Nestle

Pizza Hut Your Company

...was D-U-M dumb when they...

published that tweet deleted that comment

pissed oa customer that thing you did...

with100k followers

It proved beyond all doubt that they...

dont understand social media.

ARE TOO BUSY ENGAGING!

dont like their customers.

dont eat their vegetables.

dont eat their customers.

Admit it - youve pointed and laughed just like the rest of

us, delighted with schadenfreude as an iconic brand gets

scorched by the social media judge and jury.

And having tempted fate just like the rest of us, what

have you done to make sure that your company isnt the

next laughing stock?

The marketers that work for these very large brands are,

for the most part, educated, smart professionals with

only the best intentions. Sometimes mistakes just hap-

pen, often as a function of systems. Someone makes an

honest mistake or a snap decision, there arent any busi-

ness controls or feedback loops to provide oversight or

corrective actions, and the simple mistake snowballs intoa PR-pocalypse-ageddon. Other times, companies suf-

fer foot-in-the-mouth encounters simply because the

expectations for employees werent set to begin with.

This is the same reason we teach children that burners

on stoves are hot. Without a little heads up, its easy to

get burned.

According to Jeremiah Owyangs recent study, Social

readiness: how advanced companies prepare, approxi-

mately 76% of social media crises over the past 10

years could have been lessened or completed avoided.

How, you might ask? Plan for success from the start.

Tempting Fate 2

http://www.ickr.com/photos/jeremiah_owyang/6098563294/
http://www.slideshare.net/jeremiah_owyang/social-readiness-how-advanced-companies-preparehttp://www.slideshare.net/jeremiah_owyang/social-readiness-how-advanced-companies-preparehttp://www.slideshare.net/jeremiah_owyang/social-readiness-how-advanced-companies-preparehttp://www.slideshare.net/jeremiah_owyang/social-readiness-how-advanced-companies-preparehttp://www.slideshare.net/jeremiah_owyang/social-readiness-how-advanced-companies-prepare


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Repenting

A social media marketing policy is an easy way to address

the tempting fate problem. A simple set of guidelines

will help prevent mistakes, ensure consistency across

your team, and set expectations for what needs to hap-

pen in the event of a mistake.

One of our clients Raleigh, NC-based digital market-

ing agency Capstrat has a pretty simple social media

policy: Dont be stupid. Other organizations set up very

detailed policies and build complex approval workows

for their social content. The right answer for your organi-

zation is probably somewhere in the middle.

An ideal social media marketing policy will clarify:

t Content guidelines

t Roles and responsibilities for your team

t Escalation paths for sales, support, legal, etc.

t Contingencies in the event of a snafu

Recommended Reading

Example Social Media Policies From Over 100

Organizations The largest online database of

social media policies from companies,

governments, non-prots.


5/12

Warning Signs

Rome wasnt built in a day. And it certainly wasnt builtby sharing a blog entry about what someone else had

built. Yet so many social media marketers seem content

to retweet other peoples content exclusively, day in and

day out.

Curating is incredibly important and a perfectly reason-

able strategy for building a follower base especially if

youre able to consistently unearth unique, helpful nug-

gets: the smart content reects on you and you earn a bit

of goodwill as the conduit. Some purists might make the

completely reasonable argument that curating is in fact

an act of creation.

Unfortunately, too many social media marketers spend

all their time curating content and never stop to create

their own. A recent study we conductednds that market-ers who fall into this trap are signicantly less successful

at driving revenue from their social posts than marketers

who have a more balanced posting strategy.

Which makes sense. When creating your own content

you have an opportunity to dierentiate your brand, and

youre creating a lasting asset that accrues value via in-

bound links and SEO. And, youre getting people to your

website! If you want readers to convert, they re going to

have to get to your website rst.

Repenting

Think about the time that you spend reading and sharing

other peoples stuevery day. Now cut that time in half

and spend the balance on creating new content for your

business every day.

Recommended Reading

New Research Finds the Curation versus Creation

Sweet SpotArgyle Social original research posted on

Jay Baers Convince & Convert that provides data to

help you determine your optimal content mix.

Content Creators In The Squared CircleMatt Ridings

makes an impassioned case for the value of the

content creator.

Over-Curating 3
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-measurement/new-research-finds-the-curation-vs-creation-sweet-spot/http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-measurement/new-research-finds-the-curation-vs-creation-sweet-spot/http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-measurement/new-research-finds-the-curation-vs-creation-sweet-spot/http://www.techguerilla.com/content-creators-in-the-squared-circlehttp://www.techguerilla.com/content-creators-in-the-squared-circlehttp://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-measurement/new-research-finds-the-curation-vs-creation-sweet-spot/http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-measurement/new-research-finds-the-curation-vs-creation-sweet-spot/http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-measurement/new-research-finds-the-curation-vs-creation-sweet-spot/


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Warning Signs

In God we trust, all others bring data.

You will often nd this quote attributed to

W. Edwards Deming, the great American

business philosopher. Ironically, there is no

data conrming Deming ever said this.

Many social media marketers believe that social media

the global, always-on cocktail party that we all know

and love is something utterly new. Something that

dees measurement. They arent entirely sure why this

is, but theyre pretty sure it has something to do with

all the kittens.

Well its not. And were not saying that because we dont

love kittens. (Were fairly sure its corporate suicide to de-

clare that you dont like kittens, so let us be very clear on

that point.)

The truth is, social media is measurable. There is data out

there that can show you whether your programs are real-

ly moving the needle for your business. It can be tricky to

make sense of it, however: the core diculty is that social

media marketing is actually one discipline that combinesaspects of three tried-and-true marketing techniques:

t Brand Marketing

Some marketing is purely to raise awareness of a

brand, product, or topic. Ads in this category dont

contain a strong call to action and are measured

based on their impact on consumer awareness. This

is very common within TV, radio, print, and some

forms of online display advertising.

t Direct Marketing

The goal of direct marketing is to cause as many

potential customers possible to take a certain direct

action, which is always mapped directly onto the

sales funnel. Ads have a strong call-to-action and/

or oer. Direct marketing is measured based on its

ability to drive sales, and its commonly practiced

using snail mail, paid search, & display re-marketing.

t Market Research / Customer Service

Unlike the other two functions above, the goal

of market research isnt to push information on a

potential consumer. Rather, the goal is to extract

data from potential consumers to make use of it

within an organization. This data is used either to

better serve an existing customer (customer service)

or learn more about consumer preferences for use

in product development (market research).

Expert marketers know how to do all three of the above

things. Brand marketing has been around since the

dawn of time and modern measurement techniques

originated alongside television in the 1950s. Direct mar-

keting was pioneered in the 1970s alongside the rise ofbusiness computing. And so on.

Social media marketing is marketing. And thus social

media marketing isnt something to believe but instead

something that marketers can prove.

Believing 4

W. Edwards

Deming: almost

as dreamy as

emiah Owyang
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming#Quotations_and_conceptshttp://twitter.com/#!/search/kittenshttp://twitter.com/#!/search/kittenshttp://twitter.com/#!/search/kittenshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming#Quotations_and_concepts


7/12

Repenting

Being an analytics ninja is hard when you have to mea-

sure a single type of data. It can be overwhelming if

youre staring the full complexity of social media in the

face. But dont despair: there are resources, tools, and ex-

perts aplenty to get you where you need to go.

Start by dening your social strategy. What are the busi-

ness outcomes you want to drive with your social pres-

ence? What metrics will you use to evaluate your prog-

ress? If you dont start with these fundamental building

blocks, all roads lead nowhere.

Social media listening platforms are excellent at measur-

ing brand mentions and share-of-voice critical mea-

surements in brand advertising. Use a social conversion-

tracking tool to measure your social conversion funnel.

And use social CRM to integrate your social presence to

your customer base.

Required Reading

Argyle Social ROI White PaperArgyles white paper on

social ROI is the gold standard for social media market-

ers that are serious about social as a direct marketing

channel and driving real sales.

The Limits of Online InuenceThis wonderful piece by

Tom Webster talks about how only measuring the top

of the funnel can get you in trouble in social the

conversion rates from awareness to retweet to pur-

chase can be innitesimal.
http://argylesocial.com/landing/social-media-attribution-whitepaperhttp://brandsavant.com/the-limits-of-online-influence/http://brandsavant.com/the-limits-of-online-influence/http://brandsavant.com/the-limits-of-online-influence/http://brandsavant.com/the-limits-of-online-influence/http://argylesocial.com/landing/social-media-attribution-whitepaper


8/12

Warning Signs

Simple metrics never lie. A click is a click(is a click). Follow-ers, retweets, replies, fans, likes, comments you know

exactly what each of these metrics mean. You know what

it means when your follower count goes from 13,700 to

15,400 in a month, and you certainly know what it means

when your replies goes from 150 on Thursday to 900 on

Friday (a long weekend!).

But what is a Klout score? How do you calculate it? What

is a reach of 75 or engagement of 30? If your reach is

down 15% month-on-month, what should you do?

The social media world has fallen in love with composite

metrics. Calculated by smart people with big computers,

they lend your social dashboard a sense of weightiness.

And, as long as the trend line points up and to the right,

no one ever seems too interested in actually digging into

the details.1

However, this is not good marketing practice, and it

wont drive long-term value for your company. Tom Web-

ster says it best in his post on the topic:

a given metric is meaningless until you canprove that it isnt. Just because you can mea-

sure something doesnt mean it has any ties to

the metrics that matter for your organization:

Awareness, Trial, Churn, Hit Rate, Customer

Satisfaction, Loyalty.

We couldnt have said it better ourselves.

Repenting

Start from the bottom: what are the metrics that matter?If youre focusing on quickly breaking into a large market

and snapping up customers with a low-end price-point,

the metrics that matter to you are Awareness and Trial. If

youre in a mature market with entrenched competitors,

your metrics are Satisfaction and Loyalty.

Once youve identied these metrics, build upwards.

Is your vendors measure of reach a reliable proxy for

Awareness? Is engagement a reliable proxy for Loyalty?

The only way to answer these questions is via good old-

fashioned market research.

Fortunately, its more fun than it sounds, especially when

you include free-response questions on your surveys.

Consumers say the darndest things.

Required Reading

On InuenceTom Webster recounting a per fect ex-

ample of why oft-measured social media metrics dont

translate into the bottom-line results youre looking to

achieve with your campaign.

Derivative Measures in Social Media Tom Webster

delivers the foundational wisdom on composite

metrics and encourages marketers to do the work to

determine what matters for their brand.

Abusing Composite

Metrics

5

1. 83% of social media marketers will believe any graph that goes up and to the right, up from 79% last month!
http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/digital-marketing/on-influence/http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/digital-marketing/on-influence/http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/digital-marketing/on-influence/http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/digital-marketing/on-influence/


9/12

Warning Signs

Often the rst step of bringing a brand onto the socialscene is by creating branded social media properties.

And thats good. Whats downright sinful is that this is of-

ten where the account creation process stops. Posting all

social content from branded social properties is what we

call hiding behind your brand, and its all too common.

Heres the problem. Trust is a hard-wired aspect of hu-

man brains. We subconsciously assign levels of trust to

every source of information we ever receive, whether its

from a person, news source, ad, or alien invasion reports

on AM radio. And it shouldnt surprise you to learn that

people dont trust brands people trust people.

If you pause and think about it for a second, that makes

complete sense. Brands have a very clear ulterior motive:

they want something from you. A purchase, a trial, a posi-

tive mention - always something. As such, information

coming from branded social properties has a very dier-

ent trust prole than non-branded personal accounts.

If your brands only voices are @brandname and face-

book.com/brandname, every one of your posts is getting

a trust haircut the equivalent of a subconscious eye-

roll. Dont let that happen.

Repenting

Uhsohow the heck am I supposed to x that? Dontworry there are straightforward, above-board ways to

combat the trust haircut. Before you go down that path,

however, evaluate the content that youre publishing on

your branded social properties. Is cultivating trust one of

your main goals? Are you honest about your products

limitations? Do you link to reviews that arent always

100% positive? Do you deal with criticism honestly?

These are characteristics of a trustworthy brand.

Once you make sure that youre doing what you need to

do to cultivate trust on your branded properties, youre

ready to move on to step #2: establishing non-branded

properties. What exactly does this mean? Amber Naslund

(@AmberCadabra), the VP of Social Strategy for Radian6,

is a great example.

Amber has a signicant following on Twitter, and while

she doesnt use this following to actively promote her

product, her public presence and employment at Ra-

dian6 clearly promotes trust in the brand. While you ob-

viously wont become Amber overnight, make sure that

youre investing time and attention at developing non-

branded social accounts to build trust.

Hiding behind

your brand

6
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(radio_drama)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(radio_drama)http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/friending-the-social-consumer/http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/friending-the-social-consumer/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(radio_drama)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(radio_drama)


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Taking this approach to the next level, Zappos is about associally open as you can get. Take a look at some of the

required reading links below to learn more. Complete

openness has serious customer perception benets, but

beware: this level of openness isnt for every company.

Think hard before opening the oodgates.

Required Reading

Zappos Shows How Social Media Is DoneZappos has

had an inclusive social policy longer than anyone in

the business. This case study is from 2008!

twitter.zappos.comEvery tweet from every Zapponian,

located on the zappos.com domain. Is your company

ready to take that step?
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/zappos_twitter.phphttp://twitter.zappos.com/employee_tweetshttp://twitter.zappos.com/employee_tweetshttp://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/zappos_twitter.php


11/12

Warning Signs

If your organization is breaking into a new marketingchannel, it makes sense to assign this initiative to a per-

son or small team. New to search engine marketing? Pull

a team together, have them build a plan, review it with

the group, and have them go o and execute the plan.

Simple, right?

Unfortunately, social just doesnt work like that. Social

works best when integrated throughout your organiza-

tion. As Warren Whitlock says, Asking who should be do-

ing social media is like asking who should have a phone

on their desk. Assume everyone is on social media.

Why? The answer relates directly to Sin #6 above. People

want to connect with people, not companies. And they

want to connect with someone who can directly address

their message, not to someone with a long list of planned

auto-responses designed to pacify, rather than solve.

If your social media team is tasked with replying to all

inbound messages, your messaging will not achieve this

goal. While you may know your product, you dont know

it like your product managers do. And while you may

recognize a good PR opportunity, you cant pull the ap-

propriate resources together as eectively as the PR folks.

You dont have all the recruiting answers for job-seekers,

or customer support answers for troubleshooters.

No small team can be experts in all functions of the en-

terprise. So dont try to be. Social media shouldnt be the

purview of a select few. It should be an integral part of

the entire company.

Repenting

Eectively integrating social into your organization re-quires planning, buy-in, and technology. Start out by list-

ing all of the types of interactions that you get on your

social properties, as well as all of those that you could po-

tentially get moving forwards. Create a response strategy

for each. In each response strategy, focus on who within

your organization is best suited to respond customer

support, HR, product, etc.

Make sure you have tools in place to route messages ac-

cordingly. Your listening platform should have the option

to route posts and create queues so that the social me-

dia team can function as a switchboard rather than a call

center.

And make sure that the social roadmap gets both execu-

tive and sta buy-in. Without broad-based support, ex-

ecutives wont prioritize social and sta wont become

public advocates.

Required Reading

The Five Ways Companies Organize for Social Business

This piece by the Altimeter Group is the most oft-citedthinking on the topic of crafting the social organiza-

tion. Owyang proposes several possible models of

integration and discusses the pros and cons of each.

Social Media Management 101 Cardinal Roles, Man-

agement Roles, and basic Social Business organiza-

tional structureOlivier Blanchard outlines why social is

a cross-functional competency and not ultimately the

purview of a single department in this canonical post.

Going Solo 7
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2010/04/15/framework-and-matrix-the-five-ways-companies-organize-for-social-business/http://thebrandbuilder.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/social-media-management-101-%E2%80%93-cardinal-roles-management-roles-and-basic-social-business-organizational-structure-%E2%80%93-part-2/http://thebrandbuilder.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/social-media-management-101-%E2%80%93-cardinal-roles-management-roles-and-basic-social-business-organizational-structure-%E2%80%93-part-2/http://thebrandbuilder.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/social-media-management-101-%E2%80%93-cardinal-roles-management-roles-and-basic-social-business-organizational-structure-%E2%80%93-part-2/http://thebrandbuilder.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/social-media-management-101-%E2%80%93-cardinal-roles-management-roles-and-basic-social-business-organizational-structure-%E2%80%93-part-2/http://thebrandbuilder.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/social-media-management-101-%E2%80%93-cardinal-roles-management-roles-and-basic-social-business-organizational-structure-%E2%80%93-part-2/http://thebrandbuilder.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/social-media-management-101-%E2%80%93-cardinal-roles-management-roles-and-basic-social-business-organizational-structure-%E2%80%93-part-2/http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2010/04/15/framework-and-matrix-the-five-ways-companies-organize-for-social-business/


12/12
http://argylesocial.com/

Seven Deadly Sins of Social Media Marketing

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