The Scandal That Will Knock Marketing On Its A$$

While tactics may vary, at the macro level there is only one way for marketers to reap rewards from Social Media: via candid & transparent participation with their “audiences” (customers, prospects, etc.).

But there are at least three ways for marketers to utterly screw up their opportunities in Social Media…

1. Lack of transparency due to ignorance (as discussed in the post, “Blogger Relations: Good Intentions, Bad Execution, Lessons Learned”).

2. Overcommitment to techniques they don’t fully understand (as discussed in the post, “Beware the GMOOT!”), which leads to disappointment & premature abandonment of Social Media principles.

3. Cynical exploitation of the Rules of Engagement.

It’s this last that concerns me most. I can’t name names but I recently saw a proposal from a so-called guerilla marketing agency which included this tactical approach:

After gaining a sense for the community at the blog/user forum, our rep (posing as a typical user) will begin to post up to 10 separate Comments over the course of a week or two, to achieve credibility – leading up to the post that will be of-value to the client.

“Then, another of our reps (also posing as a typical user), will come in a day later – using a different IP address – to thank the original poster for the ‘great find.’”

It’s GOOD to “gain a sense for the community” and to “achieve credibility” as a user. The approach highlighted above is a perversion of what’s been discussed, ad nauseum, re: Social Media in general, and Blogger Relations in particular.

Yet such proposals are proliferating, I fear. Worse, some clients think that this represents a clever approach; a way to “work the system.”

When such deluded and scornful approaches are discovered and outed by the blogosphere, the bad guys will blithely skip away with a smirk … while all the good & wholesome practitioners are gonna stay behind to protest, explain, autopsy, etc.

And by fighting that good fight, we’ll get smacked upside the head, poked in the eye, punched in the belly and knocked on our collective asses. Again.

Continue reading here: Social Media: the End of Mediation

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