The (Sad) State of Social Media Marketing

In the wake of reading a book on social marketing, I considered "liking" a number of companies on Facebook to see what they were doing ... but after looking them up and checking out the posts on their walls, I decided against it. After about an hour of poking around, I couldn't find a single instance of a company (or even a nonprofit) that seemed worth engaging with.

I'll concede that, after a dozen or so, I was more in the mindset of finding reasons not to "like" firms, which may have skewed my perception and made me more sensitive to bad practices and less forgiving of their missteps. But even so, I think it's fair to say that it's a disaster.

And while there's a bit of good news - most firms seem to be exercising a bit of restraint when it comes to making overt sales pitches - the information they are posting is dull and not at all useful. It's largely image marketing and product announcements - things that the company is interested in saying about itself, but not necessarily anything that would be beneficial to the people who subscribe to their feeds.

Arguably, the same can be said of people in social media. Not many announcements have been made by friends, family, and colleagues have an immediate "benefit" to me - but I cut them a bit of slack. They are people with whom I share interests, and with whom I am interested in staying in touch, and they're definitely not posting comments with the subsumed motive to get me to give them money.

But worst of all is the gross volume of it. It seemed to me that many companies involved in social media post three to five times per day, which probably doesn't seem like much, until you consider that it's every firm doing that. If a person selects twenty companies that they really want to keep on top of, that would mean their personal "news feed" would contain between sixty and a hundred posts per day, the vast majority of which are complete fluff. So in that sense, companies are well on their way to doing to social media what they have done to e-mail: abusing it to the point where people will simply ignore them.

Back to the comparison to people in social media, companies are doing far worse. I don't have any acquaintances on Facebook who post three to five times a day on a regular basis. Every once in a while, someone gets bored and spends some time surfing the Web and posting a string of two or three funny/interesting articles, links, and videos - but that's rare. Most people are a bit more respectful of others' attention and, presumably, consider whether something is worth sharing before posting it.

Additionally, companies are not really interacting with the social network, just using social media as broadcast medium. When fans comment on a post, there is no response from the firm- even when a question is asked, the firm doesn't answer. In some instances, an unflattering remark would get a quick (defensive) response - but that's about it.

And back to the comparison to real people, I can't think of a single person who is that one-sided. If someone asks them a question, they always answer. And while they don't post a reply to every single comment (which would be a bit too chatty for my liking), there is the periodic acknowledgement or retort that lets you know they are there, and listening, and value your attention.

So in spite of the vast amount of attention and budget that social media has received in recent years, companies still seem to be getting it wrong, and have not quite figured out how to successfully engage with customers, or even behave properly in a social setting.