Three Reasons the Marketing Department Will Give Up On Earned Media in 2014

Let’s start by giving credit where credit is due: Within many companies, there is no more consistently innovative organization than the Marketing Department. Fifteen years ago, while everyone else was deriding the information superhighway as some overhyped playground for nerds, it was the Marketing group in many companies that advocated for the World Wide Web and found the budget to create the first corporate websites. And six years ago, while most executives were chuckling over their kids’ obsession with MySpace and Facebook, it was likely the Marketing Department in your company that staked out the firms’ social profile on social networks.

But while Marketing Departments may have controlled the first iteration or two of their companies’ web sites, that time has now passed. Today, the Marketing Department has responsibility for driving traffic to the site and may control the corporate website’s look and feel, but it is very unlikely (if your company is of a certain size) to own the content, the business functionality or the underlying technologies such as web content management, search, hosting, web analytics and the like. In other words, today Marketing brings its traditional strengths and capabilities in reach, scale and acquisition to the web, while other parts of the organization bring their own strengths.

Today, it is common for the Marketing function to own companies’ social media accounts. In Spring, SmartBlog on Social Media asked “Who controls the social media efforts at your organization?” and over half the respondents noted their Marketing Department is responsible for social media. No other answer even came close–Public Relations was second with just 18% of the responses.

But in 2014, it is time for change. In the same way Marketing ceded control of corporate websites as the rest of the organization matured digitally, it is now time for Marketing to leave most aspects of social and earned media to others in the organization. That means that primary responsibility for social accounts, daily posting and organic content must shift out of marketing and to other departments, if this has not already occurred.

There are three reasons why this shift is occurring and will continue to do so in 2014:

REASON ONE: IT IS INCREASINGLY DIFFICULT FOR EARNED MEDIA TO FURNISH THE REACH MARKETING NEEDS 

Earned media, that golden promise of the social era, is dying. You don’t even need to examine data to know this–just look at the wave of whiny blog posts we have seen this year from marketers accusing Facebook of breaking promises. Apparently, marketers thought Facebook was going to be a place where basic consumer behavior changed: As more brands joined social media and increased their content marketing output, consumers who avoid ads in every other medium would suddenly welcome and engage with marketing content on Facebook.

Of course, that isn’t what happened–people sign into Facebook and other social networks to see what friends, family and peers are up to, not to get marketing content. On Facebook, as more brands paid for access to users’ news feeds, it was absolutely inevitable that brands would find it increasingly difficult to “earn” their way into fans’ news feeds organically. (And if you think I am demonstrating 20/20 hindsight, feel free to read my blog post from almost two years ago, “Did Facebook Just Kill Earned Media?”)

How difficult is it becoming to generate earned media on Facebook? Two recent studies demonstrate that engagement and penetration are sinking very quickly. Komfo found a 42% decrease in fan penetration from August to November, and an Ignite study revealed that in the week following Facebook’s December 2nd news feed tweak, brand page organic reach declined by 44% on average. Ignite notes, “Facebook once said that brand posts reach approximately 16% of their fans. That number is no longer achievable for many brands, and our analysis shows that roughly 2.5% is now more likely for standard posts on large pages.”

And if you think the earned media bloodletting is over, think again. The slow decline of earned media on Facebook will continue in 2014. Ad Age recently reported that Facebook is telling marketers, “We expect organic distribution of an individual page’s posts to gradually decline over time as we continually work to make sure people have a meaningful experience on the site.”

Make no mistake, the phenomenon of shrinking earned media is not just a Facebook issue. Facebook is on the cutting edge of social media because of its scale and longevity (not to mention investor expectations, with a market cap almost 50% greater than Twitter’s, LinkedIn’s and Yahoo’s combined), so it provides a peek into the future of all social media. As more brands pay for access and as social networks strive to monetize, brands’ earned media will get pushed aside.

Earned media is dead; long live paid media! Marketers should not mourn the loss of earned media but rejoice that their traditional skills and abilities are in ever higher demand. The need for paid media expertise in social media has never been higher and is going to continue growing. The Marketing Department is uniquely equipped to stay abreast of Facebook, Twitter and other social networks’ rapidly evolving ad programs, develop and test targets and creative, and measure advertising success. Marketing can focus on what it does best and leave the rest of social media to others.

Exception to the rule: While it is ever more difficult to gain access to consumers via earned media, this is not a universal problem for all categories. Entertainment, news and style brands continue to have opportunities to increase reach and engagement both in traditional social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as the newer breed of visual platforms such as Vine, Instagram, Pinterest and perhaps, if they can prove themselves to marketers, Snapchat and Whatsapp. Most other categories simply do not have the luxury of innate consumer interest, and trying to manufacture it where little exists only pushes brands to, well, let’s move on to reason number two…

REASON TWO: THE HARDER MARKETERS TRY TO WIN EARNED MEDIA, THE GREATER THE RISKS

As earning organic social media becomes more difficult, marketers get more desperate to break through, which elevates the risk for brands. No consumer hopes for a daily dialog with their brand of canned pasta, as evidenced by the fact Spaghettios has just 2,600 people “talking about the brand” despite having amassed 518,000 “fans.” Since no national brand can succeed with a marketing effort that has a reach of just 2,600 consumers (and since some Social Media Marketing Manager’s job depends on it), Spaghettios’ Marketing Department has to churn out daily content that struggles to get more attention than other brands. The more they produce and the harder they try, the greater the risks, so it is of little surprise that Spaghettios stumbled instead of soared. The brand’s recent Pearl Harbor Day post of a smiling brand logo waving the American flag was widely criticized and embarrassed the brand.

Spaghettios apologized and said its intent was to pay respect, but you and I both know that is not true. This was marketing content, and the goal in posting it was to achieve what marketers always want to achieve in social media–likes, comments and shares. The intent of the smiling cartoon Spaghettio was not to pay respect but to create brand engagement (and in that, at least, the brand succeeded).

Of course, I should not pick on the Campbell Soup brand when there is an almost limitless number of examples of social marketing missteps to choose from in 2013: The #AskJPM, #AskBG and #AskRKelly hashtag dustups; endless look-alike newsjacking after the royal baby’s birth; embarrassing campaigns to extort retweets in exchange for charitable dollars; failure to control social accounts from dismissed employees; pathetic fake account hacks to jack up follower counts; branded hashtags inserted into tweets about tragedies; accidentally racist posts; misguided humor about fatal airport crashes. Was that enough, or should I go on?

Okay, I will! Epicurious insensitively exploiting the Boston Marathon tragedy for social content. Kenneth Cole joking about war to sell footwear. Taco Bell turning fans into detractors by mistakenly sending thousands to restaurants that were not yet carrying a promised new product. Nokia failing to put a language filter in place, permitting someone to post “F### you” on its corporate account. (Yes, that “F” word!) The Onion calling a nine-year-old girl a c###. (Yes, that “C” word!)

In 2014, we will see still more brand blunders in social media, but there is a simple solution: Stop trying so hard! With shrinking opportunities to reach the kind of mass scale marketers want and need, consider the risks versus the potential modest rewards. If you do, many of you will shut off the lights on those special-event real-time marketing newsrooms–your brand is more likely to be criticized for spamming consumers’ conversations than be next year’s Oreo Blackout. Put an end to those tweet-this-or-we-won’t-save-a-starving-child campaigns, which consumers increasingly see as mercenary attempts to boost brand reach. Stop desperately asking people to “like this if you love Fridays.” Tactics like those may deliver some bumps in your social media analytics, but they are more likely to create negative sentiment than to boost consideration, purchase intent or loyalty at any reasonable scale.

Note that I said to stop trying so hard, not stop trying altogether. Brands certainly have a place in social media, but the time has come to focus not on what your marketing department wants but on what your customers want: Deals, information, education, customer service, co-creation and social functionality. In this list, the Marketing Department is best aligned to furnish just one type of content–promotions. The remainder of the content and services are better left to Public Relations, Customer Care, Product Management and Development and Channel Management.

The Marketing Department is an important provider of content for social channels, but that does not mean those social channels should be run by Marketing with the goal of producing marketing results. In the coming year, I anticipate we will see more Public Relations and Customer Care departments take over companies’ social accounts. This will decrease the chances for the kind of social missteps that embarrass brands. No PR or customer service department will ever post an image of a smiling Spaghettio waving a flag, newsjack a national event or fake an account hack. Those departments do not need to win a battle for hundreds of thousands of eyeballs in order to succeed, and they will not push the envelope until, inevitably, the envelope tears and creates a social PR mess.
Exception to the rule: If your brand does not offer the kind of customer experience that earns advocates, then attempting to earn organic attention at scale is difficult and risky. If, however, your company creates advocates with a great product or service experience, that bestows opportunities for social media marketing that is safer and more prone to success. Coca-Cola, USAA, Apple, Trader Joe’s and other successful brands don’t succeed in the real world because they have great social media; they succeed in social media because they offer a great experience in the real world.

REASON THREE: THERE IS LITTLE EVIDENCE THAT SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING SUCCESS DRIVES BUSINESS SUCCESS

No matter what your corporate social media scorecard may imply, all engagement is not created equal. Getting consumers to engage with your jokey posts or videos is not the same as making a brand impression, building purchase intent or driving sales. Too many brands continue to chase social media metrics while failing to measure how and if social media efforts drive business results. For every Dove “Real Beauty” or Secret “Let Her Jump” that delivers measurable marketing results, there are dozens of other social campaigns that fall far short.

It is easy to see the gap between social media success and business success by looking at Kmart’s 2013 efforts. Few brands were as talkable as Kmart this year. Thousands of blog posts and tweets trumpeted the brands’ success with funny viral videos like “Ship My Pants” (20 million views!), “Big Gas Savings” (6 million views!), “Show Your Joe” (16 million views!) and the new “Ship My Trowsers” (3 million views in a week!) Even though Kmart, which is owned by Sears, amassed twice as many views as top-rated primetime program NCIS has viewers, the retailer has continued its slow decline, with same-store sales falling 2.1% in the second quarter and an equal amount in the third quarter. As Mashable’s Todd Wasserman notes, “It’s hard to make a case that the ads did much for owner Sears’s bottom line.”

In the article on Mashable, Sears chief digital marketing officer says he judges success by “the amount of engagements in social media surrounding the brand.” It is long past time for digital and social media leaders to stop this kind of idiotic babble. Marketing that entertains or engages without driving measurable brand or business benefits is failed marketing. Television ad buyers don’t claim success based on gross rating points, and neither should digital and social marketers claim success can be counted in “likes” rather than dollars, new customers or brand equity (such as awareness and purchase intent).

Kmart is not the only brand we can study to see the tenuous relationship between social media success and business success. Late last year, Red Bull launched an amazing social campaign around Felix Baumgartner’s record-setting skydive. The YouTube video earned 35 million views and got everyone talking. Two months ago, uberVU evaluated Red Bull’s and Monster’s social media presence and declared Red Bull the winner. But while Red Bull may be winning the social media battle, it is losing the market share war. In recent years, Red Bull has been slowly bleeding market share to Monster, and the trend continued in 2013. In Monster’s third quarter earnings call, CEO Rodney Sacks announced that Monster’s year-over-year growth was greater than Red Bull’s and that Monster was close to overtaking Red Bull in US market share.

Two of the biggest social media marketing successes of the past fourteen months seem to be driving no demonstrable brand success. Maybe my Kmart and Red Bull examples seem unfair since, of course, social media is but one small factor in overall brand success or failure. After all, customers disappointed with past Kmart experiences won’t be enticed into stores with a funny video, and Red Bull may be leaking market share because competitors have better product innovation. If you buy this line of reasoning, then you are acknowledging my point–entertaining consumers with funny videos and knee-slapping posts do little to impact the bottom line when consumer perception of the brand is shaped by more powerful experiences with the product or service.

I see little evidence that entertaining consumers with social content imparts benefits to brands. Consumers are awash in entertainment options, and your brand cannot compete with the likes of Beyonce, PewDiePie, Cinema Sins, Rihanna or Reddit. Those channels and pages, and thousands of entertainment options like them, are unencumbered by the limitations faced by your brand, such as reputation considerations, brand fit, legal and regulatory concerns and, most of all, the need to drive purchase of goods and services. (Yes, Rihanna and Beyonce want you to buy their music, but in that case their entertainment is their product, while your brand is left producing diverting videos in the wild hope they will drive folks to purchase pistachios or bottled water.)

Exception to the rule: While big, established brands show little sign of being able to alter brand behavior with tweets and YouTube videos, small and unknown brands and individuals still have opportunities to leverage earned media to gain attention and achieve success. From Blendtec to Justin Bieber to GoldieBlox, upstart brands have demonstrated that the right content can build awareness and change minds.

WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE MARKETING AND EARNED MEDIA? 

There remain several ways marketers can succeed in social media, including paid media and using social networks to distribute promotions. In addition, brands that create advocates through superior customer experience can work to increase Word of Mouth. For many marketers, however, 2014 will be the year they must contend with the diminishing reach, increased risk and dubious business results of organic content and earned media. The earned media equation is changing, and marketers must ensure they don’t make the mistake of committing to a strategy that cannot deliver the audience, opportunities and results necessary.

The time is right for a reassessment of your brands’ cost-benefit equation with respect to marketing content in social media. If you are achieving significant organic scale and positive outcomes for a reasonable cost, keep up the good work. But if you are employing writers, videographers, photographers, illustrators and other creatives to develop social media content that is reaching too few customers and fails to deliver measureable results, then a change is in order.

There is no shame in acknowledging that earned media does not offer the marketing opportunities that we hoped for years ago as social media was developing. There is, however, shame in continuing to invest if the strategy is not producing results or in striving so hard for marketing success that the company is embarrassed with a social media misfire.

In 2014, I believe the time has come for a normalization of roles in social media. Your organization has professionals with decades of experience creating earned media, and they are not in Marketing but PR. Your organization also has professionals able to scale one-to-one relationships, answer customer questions and engage consumers individually, and they are found in Customer Care. These are the departments that can better manage corporate social accounts. More importantly, they can measure success on their own terms, with metrics based on responsiveness, reputation and satisfaction rather than on acquisition and sales.

The shift has already happened at many companies, but if the Marketing Department at your firm still “owns” the corporate social media accounts, it may be time for them to hand over the keys. Moreover, if your marketing function is ramping up a content marketing program at the same time earned media opportunities are vanishing, caution and careful consideration of costs and goals is advised. Marketing will always have a role on social networks, but the time has come to recognize that social media is not primarily a marketing channel but is better aligned to the longstanding responsibilities and capabilities of others throughout the organization.

Four Recent Studies on the Rapid Adoption of Social Media by Financial Advisors and Investors

In the Financial Services vertical, you can still find some who think that social media is not that important–that wealthy investors and licensed financial professionals are too busy and too serious to pay attention to (much less create) tweets and posts. The time has come to look at the data and discard groundless and dangerous beliefs about social media. Here are four recent studies that demonstrate social media has a key place in FinServ strategies:

Forrester Finds a Strong Correlation Between Social Communications and Financial Advisor Payments

In his July 2012 report, “Collaborative Advice: Using Digital Touchpoints To Enhance Advisor-Client Relationships,” Forrester Vice President Bill Doyle shared data about affluent investors’ digital interactions with advisors. The study demonstrated a strong correlation between the number of times these investors interact with financial advisors in social networks and the investors’ payments for advisors’ services. The correlation between advisor payments and the number of social media interactions (0.461) was almost twice as strong as the correlation with the number of interactions in person (0.234) or by phone (0.246).

It is important to point out that correlation is not causation. Doyle’s data does not suggest that social media interactions are twice as powerful as in-person or phone interactions but that frequent interactions between affluent investors and advisors in social media are associated with greater revenue for advisors. While an advisor can interact with just one client at a time on the phone or in person, social media provides a way for advisors to reach and interact with many clients simultaneously. This study demonstrates the power of social media scale and social network relationships to financial professionals.

Accenture Finds Social Media Helps Financial Advisors Retain Clients and Increase Assets Under Management

Last Fall, Accenture surveyed 400 U.S. Financial Advisors and published “Closing the Gap: How Tech-Savvy Advisors Can Regain Investor Trust.” The research found that digital and social tools “offer Financial Advisors unprecedented opportunities for more frequent interactions with their clients, helping them forge deeper, stronger relationships.”

Among the Financial Advisors surveyed:

  • 60% have daily contact with clients through social media
  • 77% affirm that social media helps with client retention
  • 74% agree that social media helps them increase assets under management 
  • 73% say it has led to an overall increase in client interactions
  • 40% indicate they have gotten new clients through Facebook
  • 25% have developed new clients through LinkedIn
  • 21% have earned new clients through Twitter

Brunswick Group Finds Social Media Drives Investment Recommendations and Research

In its 2012 survey of 476 investment professionals (including both buy-side investors and sell-side analysts), Brunswick Group found considerable adoption of social media compared to its earlier 2010 survey. More importantly, the study found that investors are using social media to drive investment recommendations and research.

Among the findings:

  • 52% read business information postings on blogs (up from 47% in 2010) and 24% have made an investment decision or recommendation after initially sourcing information from blogs.
      
  • 30% read business information postings on micro-blog services (up from 11% in 2010); 12% of investors have made an investment decision or recommendation after sourcing information from micro-blog services (an increase of 200% since 2010).
      
  • 24% read business information postings on social networks (up from 17% in 2010), and 9% have made an investment decision or recommendation after initially sourcing info from a social network.
      
  • Investment professionals are increasingly posting and not just consuming information in social channels. In 2012, 11% said they post investment information to blogs (more than doubling since 2009), 8% post investment info to microblogs (up 50% since 2010) and 10% post investment information to social networks (doubling since 2010).
      
  • Overall, 56% of investment professionals say the role of digital and social media in the investment decision process is increasing compared to 6% who felt it was decreasing.

2012 Brunswick Investor Use of Digital and Social Media Survey from Brunswick Group

Cogent Research Finds Many Wealthy Investors Use Social Media for Finance and Investing 

In a survey of 4,000 US investors with more than $100,000 in investable assets, Cogent Research found that a growing number of affluent investors use social media specifically to help inform their personal finance and investment decisions. Among the findings:

  • About 34% of affluent investors specifically use social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and company blogs for personal finance and actual investing
     
  • Another 41% said they use social media and sometimes come across investment information even though that wasn’t the specific reason they went to those sites
      
  • About 36% said social-media research has caused them to reach out to their advisers to ask questions
      
  • Seven out of ten wealthy investors who use social media for investment research (which is 24% of all investors) have either have changed their relationship with an investment provider or reallocated actual investments because of something they read on social media
      
  • Even for high net worth individuals with more than $1 million in investable assets, 25% seek investment advice from social media.

While many firms are proceeding slowly and cautiously into social media, it seems many of our licensed financial professionals and our wealthy customers are adopting social media with more haste. In fact, the Accenture report notes that so many financial advisors are using social media that many are “likely flouting their firms’ current policies against this type of activity.”

Forget keeping up with the competition. Financial Service firms ought to worry more about keeping up with their own sales networks, employees and customers.

Three Steps to Improve Ethics in Social Media Marketing

In my last blog post, “The Rapidly Diminishing Authenticity of Social Media Marketing,” I explored how social media professionals have turned to tactics that undermine some of the core tenets promised by social media. We set larger fan counts as a goal above authentic advocacy, and when meaningful engagement became difficult to achieve, we settled for anything that would earn a like, reply or retweet rather than striving for content that fostered relationships and created value.

I will not rehash how I think these poor priorities and tactics undermined brand success in social media. (You can read my last blog post for that.) Instead, I want to explore a more sensitive question: Have social media marketers acted ethically or not?

For example, if we accept that a basic principle of social media is that “likes” represented something important–authentic brand affinity that others would see and rely upon–then what are we to think of those marketers and brands that took shortcuts to accumulate new fans who had no established relationship with the brand? Was it ethical to launch sweepstakes, contests and giveaways that motivated “likes” from people who otherwise were not inclined to express affinity for our brands?

And if we further agree that engagement such as replies, retweets and shares ought to be authentic signals of interest in what brands have to say, then are we acting ethically when we solicit engagement merely to elevate our brands’ EdgeRank? Is asking Facebook users to “like” a post if they are on “team peanut butter” an ethical way to collect signals of affinity between consumer and brand, or is this a dishonest way to get our content into more users’ news feeds?

Social Media Ethics on Display (or Not) During Week of Boston Marathon Tragedy

Instead of considering this in the abstract, let’s examine two brands’ actions last week, during the frightening events in Boston. NBC Bay Area posted a photo of a young bombing victim and implored people to “‘Like’ this to wish him a continued speedy recovery.”  This desperate attempt to trade on people’s feelings for a young victim of the bombing in order to receive a bit of EdgeRank-building engagement is horrifyingly unethical, in my book. (And if you do not agree, then please tell me how “liking” an NBC post lends support to or otherwise helps this poor hospitalized child.)

Ford, a brand I praised for authenticity in my last blog post, waded into dubious water with a Facebook status update following the capture of the second bombing suspect. The brand said, “To the first responders of Boston: Thank you. You are true American heroes.” Nothing wrong with that–in fact, I love that a brand like Ford feels it can express sincere appreciation for the sacrifices of those who serve. The problem was that Ford didn’t post that as text but included it within a beauty shot of their products, complete with the Ford logo and tagline.

Not everyone will agree, but I feel that Ford’s use of brand imagery not only reduced the sincerity of the message but demonstrated questionable ethics. Before you disagree, I would ask you to view the two status updates below–one Ford could have posted and the other it actually did–and consider three questions:

  1. Which is a more authentic expression of appreciation to people who sacrificed their safety to protect us?
  2. What does the product and brand imagery of the post on the right add (if anything) to the sincerity of the gratitude compared to the simple text version?
  3. Which version more clearly puts the focus on the heroes in Boston? 

Issues of ethics are difficult to discuss. They often are not clear cut, and while it is easy to see when a company crosses the line with both feet (as did NBC Bay Area), it can tough to discern as brands toe the gray line (as did Ford, in my opinion).

It is even tougher to see when you yourself cross ethical lines. If your boss wants to know why your brand has half a million customers but only 25,000 fans on Facebook, a sweepstakes to accumulate fans may not seem unethical. Your perspective may change, however, if you put yourself on the other side of this equation; if you do not want to see your friends becoming shills for brands in return for freebies and giveaways, then your brand should not follow this path. It is unethical to treat your own customers in a way you would not appreciate from the brands you buy or the people you know. (Fifty years ago, David Ogilvy, the father of modern advertising, expressed the same sentiment when he said, “Never write an advertisement which you wouldn’t want your family to read. You wouldn’t tell lies to your own wife. Don’t tell them to mine.”)

We are roughly five years into the social media era, and I think perhaps it is time to reset our moral compasses, not to save our souls but to improve business results. Study after study demonstrate that consumers want something more from brands than silly images and memes; they want ethical behaviors and communications. The 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer Study found that customers increasingly expect brands to “place customers ahead of profits and have ethical business practices,” and Interbrand’s 2012 brand study noted that “Consumers… want to feel that the brands they love are, in fact, worthy of that love.”

I’d like to believe this is always the case in every business situation, but when it comes to social media marketing, the ethical path also happens to be the best one for enhancing brands and business results. How can we improve both the ethics of social media marketing and our brands? Here are three steps:

STEP ONE: Understand Long-Standing Marketing Ethics, Advertising Rules and Regulation

“Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it”. 
– Winston Churchill

I am frequently disappointed to find social media professionals who do not understand the basics of ethics and regulation in the advertising industry. Marketing has a long and well established history of recognizing and enforcing ethical practices, and government regulation of advertising is over one hundred years old. The issues we struggle with today in social media marketing are not new, nor are the core beliefs of ethical marketing. The latter can inform the former for those who care to learn history.

In 1911, the Associated Advertising Clubs issued the Ten Commandments of ethical advertising, and the first Commandment was unequivocal: “Thou shalt have no other gods in advertising but truth.” (The italics are theirs, not mine.) Shortly thereafter, the Postal Act of 1912 required that advertising content be differentiated from editorial content. Together, these two actions established one of the most basic tenets of advertising ethics: That consumers must know when they are seeing advertising and not mistake it for editorial content. This is as true in the pages of newspapers as in the tweets and posts of your customers.

Although the core principles of ethical advertising have not changed in one hundred years, the regulatory language has evolved with technology. In 2009, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This document established that “When there exists a connection between the endorser and the seller of the advertised product that might materially affect the weight or credibility of the endorsement, such connection must be fully disclosed.” In other words, if it would impact a person’s perception of a friend’s post about a brand to know that the individual was posting in exchange for a contest entry or a giveaway, that creates a material connection that must be disclosed.

Just last month, the FTC updated disclosure guidelines, providing quite detailed guidance. For example, the FTC notes that “#spon” is not a sufficient disclosure of a sponsored tweet since, “Consumers might not understand that ‘#spon’ means that the message was sponsored by an advertiser.” And to those who might protest that Twitter’s 140-character limit does not provide sufficient room for a clear and conspicuous disclosure, the FTC says, “Tough luck.” (Really, what the agency says is, “If a particular platform does not provide an opportunity to make clear and conspicuous disclosures, then that platform should not be used to disseminate advertisements that require disclosures.”)

An understanding of the history of advertising ethics and FTC regulations is only the start. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has issued several decisions pertaining to social media that brands’ must consider for their social media guidelines, monitoring policies and employment practices. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has oversight into how and when social media may be used to share information pertinent to investors. Different states have enacted laws with varied requirements for consumer and employee privacy in social media. And then there are the terms and conditions of the social networks themselves, which define what is and is not permissible. (It is shocking how often pages violate Facebook’s Promotions rules as defined in the Facebook Pages Terms.)

In the relatively brief period since social media’s birth, brands have been tripped up by a variety of unethical and unlawful behavior including meddling with competitors Wikipedia entries, fake community groups, fake endorsements, fake blogs, fake accounts, and other questionable activities. It is vital social media professionals know the laws, rules and ethical standards that have stood the test of time, and it is necessary for marketing leaders to ensure their social media teams are adequately trained and supervised.

STEP TWO: Improve Social Media Metrics

“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts”
– Albert Einstein

Bad metrics lead to bad strategies. More than that, bad metrics can lead to unethical behaviors.

The Great Recession of 2009 was caused by many factors, but President Obama laid blame on the way executives were measured and compensated. He noted in a June 2009 speech that a “culture of irresponsibility” was an important cause of the crisis, and he criticized executive compensation that “rewarded recklessness rather than responsibility.”

In some ways, many social media professionals are today being rewarded for recklessness rather than responsibility. Fans and engagement are not business metrics, but these are common line items on many social media scorecards and are used by social media agencies and vendors to validate performance. Any brand can count new fans, but how many are measuring the value delivered to the brand via social media? Instead of turning to the metrics that are easiest to collect, social media marketers must determine the metrics that best validate that their social media investments deliver upon the objectives (and if one of your goals is merely to collect fans, then the problem is not the metric but the goal).

This is the point in the blog post when I am supposed to furnish an easy answer for how to measure social media success; unfortunately, I cannot. The ways to measure success are as diverse as brands, audiences and corporate objectives. If you want to better educate your customers on your products, measure that. If you need to raise awareness, measure that. If increasing inbound traffic to your site is desired, measure it. If your brand is challenged to improve a particular perception attribute, then that is what you should measure. Start with your corporate goals and challenges; pick the metrics that align to those; determine the social media strategies that best deliver on those metrics; and execute!

As our investments in social media increase, so must the science and insightfulness of our metrics. Too many brands are merely counting things–fans, retweets, comments and likes–while ignoring the deeper and more meaningful measures of brand awareness, recall, consideration, association, preference and advocacy.  Smart social media professionals do not settle for ineffective metrics but work to educate peers and leaders on the social media metrics that matter for their brands.

STEP THREE: Be Honest

“Of all feats of skill, the most difficult is that of being honest.”
– Comtesse Diane

Honesty sounds easy, but complete honesty can be surprisingly tricky. Honesty is not merely the absence of falsehoods; telling no lies in your social networks is only the starting point. Thorough honesty requires something more–more self-reflection, more care and more vigilance. It requires integrity and sometimes even courage.

Honesty requires a tenacious commitment to complete transparency. If you encourage people to tweet a photo of your product in return for a chance to win a prize, complete transparency demands those tweets be accompanied with a disclosure. It is one thing for consumers to choose to tweet their brand love with no expectation of reward (even if the brand solicits those recommendations), but if your brand creates the conditions where someone is motivated to promote your brand in order to win something, you must ensure transparency. It is deceptive to look the other way and allow consumers to be exposed to sponsored advertising communications without disclosure.

Honesty necessitates assertive vigilance to ensure that your employees, vendors and agencies are doing the right thing. It is not sufficient to assume your employees and partners know how to act with integrity, nor is satisfactory to set expectations and assume adherence. Honesty requires a commitment to education and engagement around ethics, and it demands that your brand supervises and monitors activities to ensure policies and regulations are followed.

Honesty demands sincerity in the intent of your communications. In paid media, brands communicate to persuade and sell, but in social media consumers expect something different from brands–it is a medium where consumers can choose to follow, comment and share, or they can choose to unfollow, block and ignore. Engagement should be earned with content that actually engages, not with tricks. For example, if you care to take a poll on Facebook, use Facebook’s “Ask question” tool to do so; do not mislead your customers with fake surveys that request they “like” if they believe one thing or “share” if they believe another. Your intent with this sort of deceptive status update is not to engage consumers or learn from their answers but to manipulate Facebook’s EdgeRank system. Honest relationships cannot be built with dishonest communications.

Honesty requires that you enter conversations to authentically join the conversation, not to co-opt the conversation. A new trend in social media is so-called “real-time marketing” (or RTM), where brands attempt to engage in the conversations consumers are having about sports, entertainment or world events as they occur. While it is possible for brands to post just the right thing at just the right time in a way that consumers will welcome, much of the recent RTM has been brazenly self interested and thus unsuccessful. The problem is that brands have dishonestly attempted to inject advertising messaging into consumer conversations rather than trying to authentically express themselves or add value to those conversations. If your brand can bring value to the conversation, do so honestly, but if you just want to interrupt consumers’ conversations with brand advertising, then stay silent honestly (or honestly pay for media).

Honesty demands that you walk the talk. Consumers are so jaded about the way brands try to obfuscate their actions behind dishonest communications that an entire new lexicon has developed, including terms like greenwashing, astroturfing, sugging and flogs. Social media allows brands to chart a different course, not simply talking about how much they care but highlighting their care through real actions. At a time when some brands will hold their charitable donations hostage in return for likes, shares and replies, New Balance donated $1 million to the One Boston fund and did so without asking for a single “like.” The actions of the Chicago Tribune went viral this week after the news organization sent pizzas to the Boston Globe newsroom along with a note that said news colleagues “across the country stand in awe of your tenacious coverage. You made us all proud to be journalists.” The honest actions of New Balance and The Trib speak louder than any words could, and they are resonating honestly throughout social media. (How does Ford’s branded expression of gratitude fare in comparison?)

Social media may feel quite mature, given that virtually every brand and the vast majority of people in the US have adopted social behaviors, but the medium is still very young. Social media professionals may understand today’s best practices, but these continue to evolve as brands gain experience, laws and regulations change and the medium matures. In periods of rapid evolution, it can be difficult to discern the ethical from the unethical, but it starts with you. Ethical social media starts with ethical social media professionals–ones who consider the impact of their strategies, constantly challenge their own beliefs and are willing to stand up for what is right and not merely what is easy.

The idea that ethics comes from within rather than externally is not new. For support, I turn to a philosopher who died 2400 years ago and an animated insect. Aristotle believed self-knowledge was the key to individual ethics, and he wrote, “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” Jiminy Cricket, Pinocchio’s sidekick, echoed Aristotle’s advice, reinforcing that ethics starts from self-knowledge: “Always let your conscience be your guide.”

Before you click “submit” to your next social media post, do not simply ask if it will achieve its goal, fits best practices and suits the brand. Ask yourself if it is honest, transparent and ethical. That is a much higher standard, but higher standards are what consumers want and what brands increasingly wish to deliver, aren’t they?

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