Fools Rush in to Social Media Campaigns

Where Angels Fear to Tread

By Steven Phenix

Meet Linda, a PR account director for several large companies. One day, one of her clients called her in for a meeting and said his company wanted to delve into social media. "You know," said the client, "we want some of that Web 2.0 stuff. How fast can you launch a campaign?"

Poor Linda had never published her own blog and couldn't even tell the difference between a wiki and forum.  But she had read a recent white paper from the Council of PR Firms that said in the next five years, "social media must become part of the way public relations practitioners do business or they will become obsolete." (From "Relating to the Public: The Evolving Role of Public Relations in the Age of Social Media," available as a PDF here.) So fearing obsolescence, Linda and her team jumped in to this brave new world. Their intent was to "join the conversation" but instead it quickly turned into a street brawl.

Writes B.L. Ochman in What Kills a Social Media Campaign:

"Increasingly, Fortune 500 companies like Ford, Wal-Mart, Sony and Dell are embarking on social media marketing campaigns and blundering, big time.

"At best, they wasted a lot of money on ill-conceived campaigns involving blogs, video-sharing sites like YouTube, social networks like MySpace and other new media where users (horrors!) can actually create content.

"At worst, their futile attempts at old-style message control (masquerading as new media) did permanent damage to their brands in the very markets that will determine their future fortunes."

When your client calls you into a meeting and asks you to help move the company in a Web 2.0 direction, don’t panic. Melvin Yuan has put together a PR 2.0 University with a great list of required reading. He’s included all the classics like The Cluetrain Manifesto, Naked Conversations, The Long Tail, The Wisdom of Crowds, Wikinomics, plus various articles, ebooks and PDFs.

If your client expects you to have a program in place immediately — before you have time to digest all this course work — well, it might be time to panic if you haven’t been a long-time student of social media in your spare time. And if you’re just beginning to dip your toes into all this Web 2.0 goodness, would you be comfortable putting your client’s reputation on the line while you learn on the job?

My advice: As tempting as new channels like blogs and massively-multiplayer environments may be for marketing, you should make sure you understand the needs, opinions and language of the audience before throwing your messages at them. If you don’t know this new world as well as your Rolodex of reporters, it’s best to hire a consultant.

Our Digital PR Service is a turnkey solution that gives traditional public relations firms the ability to open an online channel of communication with their client's targeted universe of customers, influencers and prospects. With our help, you can effectively communicate messaging without journalists standing between the message and consumers.

Anchored by a business blog, our campaigns use a variety of Web 2.0 and social media tools to create extraordinarily effective marketing strategies. Also, out team will take responsibility for as much, or as little of the online content development and infrastructure as you require.

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Comments

[Peter Gold]

Good Digg!