Sins
I followed a link that said “26 social media marketing sins,” and as I clicked through, I was thinking “yet another bogus list.” However the blog post that I found, “We Have Sinned” by David Berkowitz, is quite good, very clueful. I’m feeling a bit holier than thou because I haven’t committed many of these sins, mainly because I’m not coming to social media from a marketing background, but as an Internet maven/web developer/online community proponent who was jazzed about “social media” before the marketing world gave it that name. I was part of the brew club that was cooking up the next generation web in the early 90s and 2000s, and most of us weren’t thinking about marketing applications at the time. We were thinking about virtual communities and online social networks and social software – various labels we used for the social web that we were weaving.
But as our business is more and more about marketing, and our clients tend to be marketing groups, I’m getting how easy it can be to make these mistakes. Social media marketing – and marketing in general – isn’t easy to do well and do right. Berkowitz’ list is valuable. Some examples:
We have failed to monitor social channels for discussions of our brands and competitors.
We have guessed at our target audience’s interests and activities rather than conducting research that could have provided real answers.
We have lost consumers by organizing social architectures that were impossible to navigate coherently.
We have repurposed creative and messaging from other channels when we should have adapted or created it for these social spaces.
We have shortchanged social marketing by planning campaigns instead of ongoing programs.
You get the idea. Read the whole post, it’s insightful.
