Avoiding the Dark Side of Social Media
An unfavorable negative comment on your blog. Reports of service disruption by your customers on Twitter. Too aggressive of a demand creation positioning in a community. All of these missteps can cost you big-time in the social media environment if you are ill-prepared to handle them. In this post, I will discuss four potential pitfalls that face organizations using social media and how to avoid them.
1. Adherence to company policies and procedures. As more people engage in sites such as Twitter and Facebook, an organization’s reputation grows increasingly distributed; a general first impression of a particular company may be connected to a specific employee’s interactions on a social site. Add to this the time and productivity that can be lost by employees spending time on these sites and the benefits of social media begin to dim in the eyes of some. It’s becoming increasingly unrealistic to simply block access to these sites; however, you can build policies for how employees represent themselves as a company agent or expand the scope of existing media guidelines. These guidelines should be part of the employee handbook and clearly outline the areas that are off-limits online, including financial information, competitors and specific customers.
2. Outsourcing content development. The point of using social media is to engage with a market rather than to broadcast to it. This engagement typically comes at a high cost, not necessarily in dollars but in the time and resources it takes to write blogs, monitor and deal with issues that arise in online communities, or respond to posts from users and other participants. Faced with these daunting tasks, a growing number of organizations have looked to outsource some of their social media efforts to either a public relations agency or a boutique firm specifically in the business of driving social media participation. This is a strategy we believe is both risky and unsustainable. If you pay someone to write positive comments in response to blog posts or engage in discussions on your behalf, strict oversight will be required to make sure these participants stay on message and don’t engage in spamming community sites. Realize also that by outsourcing these activities you not only can paint a false picture of the company, but run the risk of alienating at least a portion of your community if they discover your social media efforts have been underwritten or ghostwritten.
3. Dealing with negative content. It’s as inevitable as taxes; create any social media presence and rest assured that some of the first comments directed at your organization will be negative in nature. In some ways this is to be expected as dissatisfied customers are often the most vocal and now have another outlet to express their views, particularly if they have issues that have not been resolved through other mechanisms. As a result, before making any social media splash, check with your support organization to make sure you understand the extent to which technical issues are an issue with customers. Use negative responses and issues as an opportunity to publicly engage with your stakeholders; the lengths you go to solve individual issues and the time it takes to resolve them will go a long way in demonstrating how you deal with (and feel about) your customers. At the same time, there will be detractors that often use these social media channels to attack you for no discernible reason. The best advice we can give is that if warranted, respond to criticisms once, then let them lie; if you have an engaged user base your best defenders against such negativity will be your own customers.
4. Demand creation comes last. An effective social media strategy targets customer engagement and loyalty first, awareness second and demand creation third. While high-profile brands understand this approach, many organizations will not embark on using social media if they can’t prove it generates more leads. The same rules that apply for outbound marketing regarding the ability to opt in or out of your communications are even more important in the social media world. Over time, once your organization has become a trusted member of a community, the tolerance level for soft selling grows, specifically the ability to point out solutions and success stories when appropriate. As long as you do an effective job in the loyalty and awareness departments when engaging in social media, demand creation opportunities have the best potential to follow.
The potential benefits of social media are significant, but all too often these advantages can be undermined by reactionary missteps. While outside expertise can be beneficial in implementing a sound social strategy, external execution has pitfalls that may be hard to overcome. The most effective way to avoid the dark side of social media is to have a holistic strategy built on three principles: frequency, consistency and transparency. This strategy offers an approach for not only leveraging social media but also participating regularly on a consistent and open basis with your customers, prospects and partners.
