2/14/2011

Fourteen Risks of Social Media | MENG

Fourteen Risks Of Social Media

by guest contributor Bernie Borges Social media is a boon to most of us, and a lot has been written about its benefits and how to get the most from it. Businesses are jumping in with both feet. But my conference presentations on the fourteen risks of social media have also been well received, and we need to be aware of the downside as well as the upside. My list of fourteen potential risks every marketer should consider follows, and you should know what they are to at least minimize the risks. 1. No Strategy When a business says lets just dive into social media with no objective and no strategy, thats a big risk. You can expect limited or poor results, if any. 2. Wrong Strategy If sales improvement is your goal but you have product problems, maybe your strategy should be improved customer service. Align your social media strategy with the current circumstances in your business. 3. Lack of Executive Support If you want to achieve any social media success, executive support is a must. Otherwise, it will be a skunk works project. Some companies can pull this off, but not many. 4. Wrong Staff The staff must embrace social media. If they are resistant or view social media as another shouting platform it could undermine your social media strategy. Assess if the current staff has what it takes to engage in social media according to the culture it requires.
mengonline.com//fourteen-risks-of 1/4

2/14/2011

Fourteen Risks of Social Media | MENG

5. Not Measuring Progress Its important to measure progress. For example, measure customer successes, downloads, comments, reach, subscriptions, and other metrics. These can be first downs along the way to scoring touchdowns (results). 6. Measuring the Wrong Stuff What and how you measure depends on your objectives. If improving customer service is an objective, then measuring growth of fans on Facebook is only important if they are existing customers. If increasing sales is an objective then tie calls-to-action to social media content. Set measurement strategies that align with your objectives. 7. Not Using Available Tools Measuring progress and results can be achieved through many available tools. Some are free and some are fee based. Here is a partial list of tools to measure your social media progress and results: HubSpot. Website Grader. Twitter Grader. Facebook Grader. Facebook Insights. Unilyzer. Raven. Hootsuite. SocialOomph. Manage Flitter. Google Alerts. Google Trends. Social Mention. 8. Unwilling to Experiment You must be willing to try different ideas. Thats why executive support is so important. If you dont experiment, you wont know what is effective for you. 9. Expecting Overnight Results Results vary according to a business, industry, people, and circumstances. Set expectations with executive management that results usually dont happen overnight. 10. Trying to Maintain Control We have little or no control over of our markets. We can influence our
mengonline.com//fourteen-risks-of 2/4

2/14/2011

Fourteen Risks of Social Media | MENG

markets, but we cant control them. You can build your reputation but you cant control it in social media. Continually work on your brand promise and make sure everyone in your company can articulate it. 11. Employee Abuse All employers have this risk, but large employers have more risk just based on the numbers. A well known example is an incident at Dominos Pizza in 2009. They were slow to respond through authentic communication. The online community was very harsh on them. Dominos has since improved its social media strategy with authentic and consistent community engagement. 12. Responding Slowly to the Community The social web is 24/7/365. We now live in a world where we must respond in minutes, not hours, days, or weeks. Thats simply reality. Accept it. 13. Shorting the Effort or Not Applying Sufficient Resources If a new social media strategy is added to someones job, in the beginning it may make sense but as it evolves youll need to allocate more resources to be successful. Dont under resource your social media marketing plan. 14. Underestimating the Influence of One Person United Airlines learned this lesson the hard way. Band leader Dave Carroll wrote a song and produced a video viewed over 8 million times on YouTube when United Airlines ignored his complaints due to mishandled luggage which broke his guitar. These are fourteen of the most common risks in social media marketing. The way to minimize risk is to have a well defined strategy, get executive support, allocate resources, get the right people, be responsive in a timely manner, be willing to experiment and use tools to measure progress and results.
mengonline.com//fourteen-risks-of 3/4

2/14/2011

Fourteen Risks of Social Media | MENG

Do you have any other risk factors to add to this list? BTW, I cover this topic in my book, Marketing 2.0. ********** Dont miss a post! Receive new MENG posts automatically in your inbox by subscribing right here. Share on Facebook
Excerpted from Fourteen Risks of Social Media | MENG Blend http://blog.m engonline.com /2 01 1 /02 /1 4 /fourteen-risks-of-social-m ediam arketing/? utm _source= feedburner&utm _m edium = em ail&utm _cam paign= Feed:+ MengBlend+ (MENG+ Blend)

Readability An Arc90 Laboratory Experiment http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability

mengonline.com//fourteen-risks-of

4/4