Guest Post by Joe Errington

The late 2000s gave us a surge in companies using social media to generate leads. However, for every social media success story, there were numerous comedies of errors. Many early adopters saw the potential of social media, knew their audience and went about their business with clear aims and objectives. Then there were the masses of companies that seemed lost, had no idea how social media was relevant to them and, out of fear of looking uncool, jumped in just because everyone else was.

Between three and five years ago the business pages were awash with companies that had misused social media with disastrous consequences, and by browsing the web we could see plenty more potential calamities. These stories proved to be great conversation points that you could be forgiven for believing were a thing of the past. Today it would be safe to assume that, with the benefit of a few years of experience and more readily available information, everyone has a clear agenda with social media. However another browse of the internet can reveal that there are still many more potential clangers.

Social Media is Not Cheap Advertising

In 2008 it was very fashionable to say that advertising was a dying art form. Technology was giving birth to a generation of commercially aware consumers who made logical buying decisions based on recommendations and online reviews.  This lead many to believe that social media did the job of advertising at a fraction of the cost and that the future was all about ‘going viral’. The harsh truth is that we are still irrational and unpredictable beings, ‘going viral’ takes a lot of hard work and innovation and social media is not cheap.

A lot of resources go into an effective social media presence. Software developers, creatives, content writers and media all cost money. In 2008 many companies were not sure about what the return on this investment would be, or if they could accurately measure it at all. This caused many to stick their toe in the water with the idea that they could post a few tweets and see what effect they had.

Going viral takes more than creating something innovative and hitting enter. Social media does not have the same impact on consumer awareness as paid advertising but it does offer a far greater deal of engagement. As a result the two go hand in hand. Building the right audience for this engagement needs the right messages to be aimed at the right people, and most of the time this requires paid advertising.

A quick scan on Facebook will show that there are still many brands doing a lot of talking and not much listening, and further investigation will reveal evidence of brands buying existing fan pages with a set amount of likes. Social media means many things to different people but it is unrealistic to view it as a soapbox and megaphone.                                                                                                               

It Can’t Be Left to the Intern

Think about it. Would you leave your marketing, customer service and public relations departments all in the hands of one intern? When less was known about social media, many chose to get ‘a student who knows all about Facebook and Twitter’ to get them set up.

A search through listings of marketing jobs in 2008 yielded a wide range of ‘social media assistant’ positions. These tended to offer an intern’s wage while listing duties such as ‘monitoring social media platforms’ and ‘driving traffic’.  These adverts gave many of us the impression that the recruiter had little understanding of social media and were fishing for answers among the tech savvy graduates. Although much rarer, many similar adverts are still doing the rounds, some under the guise of ‘online communications assistant’.

A good social media marketer needs a unique set of expertise that you are unlikely to find in an intern, and many jobs need to be shared among a wide range of skill sets. A social media team needs to:

• Know the company inside out.
• Have a good grasp of marketing theory.
• Understand the technicalities of online marketing.

Only then can they can engage with the public in an effective way that stays true to the company’s marketing strategy.

Even the big players can still get this wrong, in the last two years, Netflix, Chrysler, Fox News, PayPal, McDonalds and GAP have all had PR disasters caused by social media negligence. Social media is not difficult but the above brands tell us that many have not learned the lessons of five years ago.

You can’t forget about the social media-centric world, so develop a strong strategy with Infusionsoft’s “How to Convert Fans and Followers into Customers” e-book for tips.

Joe Errington is a SEO and social media executive for MITIE. A strategic outsourcing company who look after the facilities management of companies in the UK and abroad.