Tag Archives: Social media marketing

December 2, 2015 · 11:43 am

The Checklist

Do you make lists?  I do, and as a manager I used to insist that there be protocols – checklists – for most of the departmental activities.  I always found them to be an excellent was to assure a repeatable, high-quality product.  They also make it relatively easy to work new hires into a routine with minimal disruption.  Checklists have a big problem, however, and that’s our topic today.

The problem is tunnel vision.  Think of a pilot landing a plane.  Every pilot, no matter how many hundreds of hours of flying they have, uses checklists as they go through landing.  It prevents little problems like forgetting to put the landing gear down.  The thing that they do as well, which is not on the checklist, is to look out the window as they near the ground.

Now think of the marketing team that is going through its protocol.  Part of it may be to work on the brand’s social media. In many cases, the brand continues to schedule a post every 3 hours on one platform, and every 2 hours on another.  They’ll drop posts into a tool like Buffer or Hootsuite, feeling good that they’ve checked something off the list.  The problem is that they don’t look out the window.  They’re not paying attention to what is actually happening on their social presence.  Comments go unanswered.  Spam comments aren’t deleted.  There is no engagement.  Social media?  It doesn’t sound so social to me.

More importantly, I’m always surprised that the nature of many brands’ posts continues to be “Me! Me! Me!”.  That sort of antisocial, broadcast thinking has been dead for some time now and yet, zombie-like, it walks the social media earth.  What we need to be doing is measuring how often our social fans are engaging via likes, comments, and amplification (how often they share), and we need to ascertain the nature of those interactions (spam comments don’t count).

The checklist is a valuable thing.  A checklist that is enhanced by looking at the world beyond the things on the list is more valuable.  A staff trained to use the checklist as a guide of the minimum requirements, and that is encouraged (strongly) to enhance those minimums with their best work is invaluable.  Which do you have?

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November 12, 2015 · 10:47 am

Ignored For The Holidays

As we turn the corner on Veteran’s Day, the next big holiday on the horizon is Thanksgiving.  For those of us in the US, Thanksgiving used to be the kickoff to the holiday season – Christmas, Hanukah, and other major holidays for most of us.   That, of course, is no long true, since as of September 2015, a staggering 59% of US and UK retailers had kicked off their annual holiday ad blitz.  More ads lead, hopefully, to more customers, and more customers means more inbound customer service messaging,  

The folks at Sprout Social looked into how well retailers are dealing with these messages, and the answer, unfortunately, is not very well:

Given that people are taking to Facebook and Twitter in droves to get answers about products and services, one might assume that retailers would allocate more resources to social customer care. In reality, retailers are choosing to ignore customers’ questions—answering only 1 in 6 messages promptly—while making the lucky few people who do get their attention wait an average of 12 hours for a response (up from 11 hours in 2014). This delay provides little relief during what is already a stressful time for many.

In other words, 83% of the time, the customer is ignored.  So if, as the study found, the typical retailer can expect 1,500 inbound messages from consumers, fewer than 300 of them receive a reply. What’s worse is that it’s not as if the retailers are ignoring the social channel.  Not at all.  Instead of replying to the customer complaints, what are they doing?  Why, sending out more messages about themselves, of course. Rather than focusing on people’s concerns, retail brands send out 3 times as many promotional messages, (deals, coupons and product merchandising,) as they do helpful responses.

There are so many things wrong here, and if you’ve been here on the screed before it will all sound too familiar.  Ignoring customer outreach  83% of the time is only the tip of the error iceberg.  Using a social channel – they’re made for conversation, folks – to send broadcast messages is bad.  Sending those messages more than 3 times as often as you actually deal with what is on a consumer’s mind is much worse.

If this is how retailers wish their customers a happy holiday, I’m thinking Scrooge is running their business.  Who is running yours?

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November 3, 2015 · 9:29 am

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A riddle to start us off today. What do the NYC Police Department, Jeb Bush, McDonald’s, Walgreens, and Qantas all have in common? They’ve all had their hashtags hijacked. The Bush campaign is just the latest organization or company to have a hashtag used for a purpose far different from what was intended by the originator. I think the folks at Wired git it exactly right in their write up:  

This slogan-jacking shows just how difficult it has become for political campaigns to control their own message in the digital age. It’s no longer just up to the campaigns to steer the conversation and their opponents to counter it. Now we can all play a role in spinning the new narrative, which dramatically changes the power structure in campaigns.

Except that you’d be a fool if you are reading that solely in the context of politics, since it’s true for any form of marketing.  The consumer is in control, and they are very much paying attention, but maybe not for the reasons we’d prefer as marketers.  It’s imperative, therefore, that brands think long and hard about how messaging – and social media messaging in particular – can be twisted and hijacked.  If you’re trying to stir virality using a “tell me how much you love me” message, you’re probably going to go viral for the wrong reasons.

It’s not just consumers who are trying to take over the meaning of the message. Some brands have been just as guilty, and inevitably their stupidity has caught up with them.  DiGiorno’s Pizza tying a pizza sales message to a hashtag about domestic violence is just one example.  A 2013 post on the phenomenon summed it up:

The bigger the business or the more well-known the person or organization, the bigger the target on its back. And what typically happens is the hijacked hashtag becomes viral and far more visible, as a result of the sarcasm and negative uses of it.  Not only does hijacking have a negative effect, but the negative aspects are magnified.  It becomes a train wreck, where public relations are concerned.

The tags here might be #playingwithfire and #campaignfail if you’re not careful.  I’m not sure it’s worth the trouble.  You?

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