Social Media Marketing: Chasing Likes and Other Ad Agency Mistakes

With 1 of every 5 online minutes being spent on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, ad agencies and marketers are scrambling to get their brands into the social party. While some of us are pushing our way in by employing the same 1-way mass tactics used in TV and print, others have swung too far the other way, blindly chasing likes and fan counts. Both approaches miss out on social media's true potential and they most often point to 3 all-too-common mistakes in thinking.

Believing Content is Still King
Sure, great content delivered in the proper context still delivers reach and frequency in whatever mass channels we pursue, including digital. Smart online ad spends and compelling sites and videos can drive big metrics. But this carry-over mentality from the GRP days of TV falls short in social media. Generating views, likes and comments on our brand's social pages and profiles aren't lofty enough goals.

Chasing Views, Likes, and Comments
A Facebook fan simply watching our video or reading a brand post is a lost opportunity. Even comments, likes, and app engagements aren't enough since propagation is limited to fleeting, mostly unseen blips in a few friends' tickers. Most Facebook time is spent on personal profiles and news feeds--not on brand Pages as we'd like to believe. True social media success lies in an agency's ability to get brand content into those streams, and this happens best when fans talk directly to their friends on our brands' behalf. Facebook is actively educating agencies in how to think "Social By Design", making a fan's friend network an integral part of the experience. Put another way, if a fan has zero friends and the app or campaign still works then it doesn't belong on Facebook. The real goal is to get people to include brand content in their own conversations with their friends, which leads us to mistake #3...

Thinking We're Part of the Conversation
People chat socially with their friends. Not with brands. They may write the occasional response to a brand post or start a thread on their favorite brand's wall but it's still all about them. As agencies the best we can hope for is to inject ourselves at the right time to provide value and let people know we're there. Like a parent in a big crowd of kids, we want them to know we support them but we know we'll never really be a part of their conversation. Throw in a timely comment or respond when they ask something -- be properly engaged -- but understand it's their time with their friends. It isn't about us or our brands.

Look to campaigns like Huggies Hong Kong (sharing baby photos with friends) and 1-800-FLOWERS (telling your friends which flowers you like the best) for some recent effective examples. Getting our clients' brands into news feeds doesn't have to be a complex or expensive investment. But if done right it can lead to unprecedented reach and advertising success in an increasingly social online world.

 

Follow Andrew Cherwenka on Twitter: www.twitter.com/cherwenka

Comments

[JenniferGeisler]

03:11 PM on 02/08/2012

Andrew, thanks for the insightful article and great read. It is incredible that one out of every five minutes online is spent on social networking sites. That statistic reinforces the fact that social media is a very cost-effective method to reach a large target audience. While we all know social media has become an enormous part of society today, do many people know that incorporating digital and social media marketing with other aspects of business can prove to be very beneficial? Social and digital media can be used as an interactive and fun way to engage customers/partners/followers/etc. I believe harnessing digital marketing to the fullest requires true marketing ingenuity. As the Marketing Director of the Cisco Government Practice, I have found that deploying a digital marketing campaign in conjunction with conferences and events truly enhances the user experience. One example is I have used digital media, such as live streaming and incorporated it with social media sites such as Facebook; this way users can interact and engage with an event even if they are outside its walls. This prompts discussions and creates a sense of an interactive community surrounding the conference/event before, during and even after. And this is what a business is looking for! Thanks for the great article, Andrew, I hope to see businesses take advantage of the "social media buzz" and incorporate it into other means of their business as well.

[OnQMarketing]

03:35 PM on 02/06/2012

Good post and some great thoughts. No doubt agencies will mature in their thinking of social media and particularly in how they measure return in time. Unfortunately at this stage, so few clients will understand or wish to understand the intangibles. I would certainly take a Facebook following of 100 engaged 'likes' than 1,000 that don't engage.