TAG | engagement
Buzz in a Vacuum: Transparency in Social Media Marketing
3 Comments | Posted by mdorman on January 18, 2010
No one likes being lied to. It’s a simple truth we all take for granted, but it’s one marketers sometimes forget when promoting products. This can be especially true in social media marketing, which is rife with opportunities for misrepresenting oneself online.
Fake user accounts can be created and added to fan pages. Message boards and blogs can be populated with phony praise for a brand from “product plants” masquerading as real enthusiasts. It’s easy to see why lying can be so tempting, with its minimal effort and immediate results.
To keep from going astray, marketers should adopt a code of conduct that governs their online interactions. Luckily, the industry leader on all things word-of-mouth marketing, WOMMA, has created such a code. From WOMMA’s website:
It’s all about the Honesty ROI. Ethical word of mouth marketers always strive for transparency and honesty in all communications with consumers, with advocates, and with those people who advocates speak to on behalf of a product.
* Honesty of Relationship – you say who you’re speaking for
* Honesty of Opinion – you say what you truly believe; you never shill
* Honesty of Identity – you say who you are; you never falsify your identity
Media Needle knows there are no shortcuts to building brand loyalty and awareness. We follow our own strict code of conduct that closely mirrors WOMMA’s, which means our brand ambassadors never lie about who they are or whom they are representing. We simply care too much about our clients to allow that to happen. And, as fellow consumers, we wouldn’t want to be lied to either.
Plus, the consequences are too great. Not only does lying ensure bad karma that can follow you into future lifetimes, once a consumer/fan discovers the dishonesty — which is inevitable — the breakdown of trust between the consumer/fan and client will reverberate well into this lifetime as people let their friends and family know, which means negative word-of-mouth that results in diminished trust of your brand. That’s the exact opposite of what needs to happen when promoting a product, service or event.
There’s also the pesky fact that dishonest marketing simply doesn’t work. A million fake user accounts will never translate into increased traffic, sales or referrals, because buzz in a vacuum can never be a substitute for genuine consumer/fan engagement. Granted, this engagement is hard work — it’s time-consuming and costly. It requires dedication and patience, and actually listening to both the client and the consumer/fan.
But it’s the only road to results.
When someone else talks about your stuff, it's earned media
What exactly is earned media? I’m glad you asked. But first, let’s define paid media (sorry, it’s the best that Wikipedia had to offer). Paid media is just that. Exposure that you pay for whether it be television, print, radio, outdoor or online. If you paid someone to put your message there, it’s paid media. Don’t get me wrong, paid media is absolutely necessary and crucial to an integrated marketing mix. And, with the controls available today, you can reach a very targeted audience exactly where you want them for smaller investments than ever before. But, nevertheless, it’s still paid.
Earned media is the result of coverage, comments and conversation produced by press releases, chat threads, Facebook posts, Twitter tweets, blogging, commenting, reviewing, rating, social bookmarking like Digging, StumblingUponing (I made that verb up so don’t hate), Deliciousing (see previous parenthetical note), and video posting (I still love “Will It Blend?” and applaud Blendtec for doing it the right way) among other user-generated and brand-owner content development. Earned media is not completely free. You will most likely pay an agency like ours or an employee of your company to create, craft, post and manage earned media. If you are bootstrapping and doing it yourself, it still costs in terms of time and effort that could have been spent elsewhere. But let’s face it, you’d be paying to create the ads or media for your paid media on top of the actual media costs anyway. So, earned media still costs less.
Even better than costing less, earned media is more valid, engaging and connecting than paid media in a myriad of ways. It can come via a trusted third party – a friend, a media source, a blogger or a community you respect. It, by its very nature, sparks a dialogue that can open the doors for deeper connection. And, it engenders credibility (when done right, mind you) by offering information and conversation versus a come-on or enticement.
Word-of-mouth can be sparked by great paid media, but it’s the following earned media that makes it viral. Keep that in mind when you are planning and the word “viral” pops up.
You have no idea what I am capable of doing
MarketingProfs Marketing “Addictionary” defines a badvocate as: (noun): People who passionately criticize or detract from companies, brands, or products.
What the heck did you do to piss someone off so much that they now want to PASSIONATELY criticize you?
First off, let’s eliminate political and religious zealots from this discussion, as well as those operating with nefarious intentions. Even by removing those folk, there are still hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of people who get so angry with a company or brand that they take to the internet with a fervent desire to destroy the offender and salt the earth where they were so that nothing else will issue forth from it again. Again I ask, “what the heck did you do?”
If you did do something to raise the battle flag (Motrin, etc…), there’s hope. We’ll get to that in a moment.
Unfortunately, sometimes you didn’t do anything wrong at all. Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed, had a bad experience with your brand (or salesperson or CSR or ad campaign, etc.) and unloaded with a fury equal to a Quentin Tarantino movie on Facebook, Twitter and a dozen forums – Ripoff Report, Scam.com, Complaint.com – dedicated to giving those who’ve been wronged a voice. The CEO of a prominent DRTV advertiser once share with me that a woman had been lambasting him in an online forum. He sent her an email to find out why he had offended her so. She replied – I’m paraphrasing here – that she’d had a bad day, saw him in a commercial and took out her frustrations by complaining about him. We’ll get to the outcome in a second.
What can you do when a badvocate strikes? Hopefully you have a perception management program in place in order to avoid these situations. Don’t have one? Send us an email and we’ll take care of it before the next disgruntled consumer types YOUR COMPANY SUCKS. Nevertheless, there are two things you can do to protect yourself from badvocates. First, be aware of what’s being said in the complaint or flame. Is there any truth to the matter? If so, fix it and share your solution in the forum it’s being discussed. If it’s irrational, address it in the community – transparently and calmly, please. Brands and companies are easy targets because they rarely engage with their consumers unless they are trying to sell them something. When you become part of the community, you create engagement.
The lady who bashed the CEO was so tickled to get an email from him expressing concern that she converted from badvocate to advocate and apologized to him and her forum mates for unnecessarily flaming him.
Second, if you can’t (or don’t want to) address the individual or the community (shame on you…), you need to counteract the effect of that negative post or discussion with a greater amount of positive postings and/or content. You see, those posts and discussions are factored into your search results. Do you really want YOUR COMPANY SUCKS to be the first result when a new customer searches for your company?
As I mentioned earlier, we can help you with that. Give us a shout at www. medianeedle.com.
What a powerful question. It’s the first step in creating engagement – you’ll hear us preach on engagement a lot here – and, asked properly, initiates a new dynamic. If you agree, we are now intertwined in an exchange of expectations. If you don’t, we separate and move on. Such as it is in life, so it goes in social media.
If a brand establishes a fan page on Facebook and promises information, offers or an “experience,” they expect that if you become a fan, you will actively participate as long as they continue to deliver their promised obligation. Sounds fair enough. As a matter of fact, it sounds like any social relationship you may enter into – lovers, friends, etc… The primary difference is that the onus is upon the brand to continually invigorate the relationship with new and exciting “stuff” lest boredom creep in and breed disinterest. Again, given the particular nature of the relationship, we say fair enough.
So, how do we as social media marketers maintain this lopsided relationship while ensuring that rewards are being reaped for our efforts? You got it – engagement. Make that “will you” question an active part of your social media marketing program. Don’t be afraid to ask people to do, try, ponder, consider, debate, refute, celebrate… things. If your audience is truly engaged, they will. If your request falls flat, then maybe you need to reconsider how you built your following (buying fans is questionable, and probably wont produce sustainable results) or what you are doing to keep them engaged (too much? too little? too fluffy? to pedantic?).
Plan ahead, ask the question and prepare for the discussion. Not only in social media, but in your real life as well.