Stop Making Mistakes with "Social Media Mistakes"

Really? You didn’t hear? Shortly after McDonald’s endured its "McStories" fiasco on Twitter, the fast food giant went belly-up. McDonald’s is no more.

At least, that is a conclusion one might reach following a perusal of a recent commentary on social media mistakes.

Even as business media professionals grow more savvy in their understanding of social media, it is staggering to see how few presently understand its role within the context of the corporation. Businesses, executives and strategists would be insane to ignore the importance of social media for customer management in 2012, but they are similarly insane to continue to pretending social media is something that it is not (at least not yet).

Marketing and customer management enthusiasts consistently encounter a barrage of "social media horror stories," with advisers vehemently pleading they learn the lessons brands like McDonald’s, Chrysler and Microsoft Xbox had evidently not learned when they executed their own social media blunders.

Preying on the reality that a single Tweet can reach tens of millions of a brand’s existing and potential customers, these advisers warn brand-builders and executives of the critical importance of controlling social dialogue. Just one mistake, they argue, can be all it takes to kill a brand.

And, granted, social media’s power to amplify brand discourse and enable a single complaint or ill-advised Tweet to resonate throughout the marketplace is irrefutable. It is true that any bit of ill-sentiment or any instance of poorly-thought-out messaging now has the potential to send shockwaves through the industry.

But how often have those "shockwaves" truly been sent? How many major brands have truly been killed dead by an errant Tweet? Of course there are some examples, but more often than not, the "conflict" is entirely contained within the world of social media.

The reality is that social remains a means to an end, a piece of the puzzle. Savvy marketers and customer strategists are leveraging social media to produce significant rewards for their businesses, while those without such savvy are potentially allowing the channel to bring harm to their businesses. But at the end of the day, it is only a tool for helping a business get to a destination with customers—or, if not that, then a roadblock that makes reaching that destination more difficult.

Too many social "experts," however, portray the channel as the destination in and of itself. They bypass the bridge that links social performance to business performance and immediately assume that they are one in the same. When a company’s promotional video goes viral or its Facebook fan count hits 5 million, millions consider that a major "win" for the business. And when an embarrassing, "accidental" customer response leaks over Twitter, the overall business gets gobsmacked with negative consequences.

The reality simply does not justify that exaggeration. We see entertainment organizations cultivate millions of followers, routinely establish "trending topics," win renowned awards for digital media but ultimately fail to demonstrate any noteworthy impact on their core business metrics. We see prestigious marketing publications, like the aforementioned, chastise brands for making brutal PR mistakes on social media and yet conveniently "forget" to include a discussion of the billions of dollars in lost profit and customer churn.

Most intriguing is the fact that the very social "experts" most inclined to join in on this exaggeration of the pros of an effective social strategy and the cons of an ineffective one are those most inclined to laugh in the face of anyone who demands proof of a "return on investment" from social media. This prototype of analyst routinely mocks the idea of viewing social through the black-and-white lens of financial ROI, noting that the channel should instead be measured for its ability to facilitate broader marketing and customer experience goals.

They cannot have it both ways. If they want to portray social mistakes as end-all, be-all scenarios for corporate bottom lines and social successes as tickets to endless profit, then they have to accept a measurement philosophy that benchmarks against the income statement.

If, however, they choose to keep consistent with the notion that social media is a gateway rather than a destination, they will be able to appreciate social blunders for what they are: challenges associated with building a brand in an era of amplified customer interaction. A lack of customer-centricity, as demonstrated by a poor social interaction, can absolutely hinder a brand’s ability to use customer experience as a unique selling point in the market, but it will simply not rise to the level of "disaster" in most cases. Again, McDonald’s might have gotten some bad PR, but when push comes to shove, its business remains intact.

The intent here is not to "bury" or trivialize social: as a communications channel, it is undoubtedly revolutionize much of how companies connect with their audiences.

It is, however, calling on brands to approach social media in a productive manner rather than an overeager one. Instead of living or dying by follower counts or Facebook status typos, look to social for its ability to help achieve marketing objectives, strengthen brand messaging and better engage with customers.

Think, quite simply, about how social can integrate with your customer management, marketing and greater business strategies rather than about how it can single-handedly save or destroy them.

For those interesting in making social the way you do business, participate in our free, online Social Media for Customer Management Summit. Our 3^rdrunning of this program, it begins at 10:45AM on Tuesday, March 13 and features speakers from leaders like Autodesk, Oracle, SAP, Parature, Telus, Lithium and more. Click here and register—registering also grants you the ability to watch the sessions online after the 13^th.