There Are No Social Media Experts at Traditional Marketing Agencies: Social Media R.O.I.

During the recent Waste Management strike here in Puget Sound, we geeks spent two full days watching the WM Facebook page.  This is geek research real-time at its finest.  Say what you will about America’s largest garbage/recycling company, it (or it’s social media agency) exhibited best practices all across the board on Facebook.

Waste Management responded to many User comments (including extremely negative ones).  It let comments remain on its Facebook wall that were clearly in favor of the striking union workers and it continually provided updates about restoration of service specific to neighborhood, user comment and more.  The point?  It was authentic and it was Saran-Wrap-transparent.  

Contrast Waste Management’s Facebook messaging with what many traditional marketing agencies do with social media:

1) Social media initiatives are assigned to experienced agency personnel who tend to have traditional marketing/advertising backgrounds.  These people have little-to-no experience trouble-shooting the social media flash mob mentality.  Instead, these older traditional media planners and buyers often try to craft and control social media messaging, and/or they ignore the negative completely, hoping it will go away.  Fail.

You’ve seen these social media efforts.  They are Twitter feeds that are nothing but tweets about their products/services over and over and over…and over, with never a tweet about anything other than themselves.  Never a RT.  Never a TY.  No conversation.  Nothing.

These social media fails are Facebook pages that post only about their stuff.  Over and over and…you get the point.  Why would you follow, like or interact with a brand like this?  You wouldn’t.  You don’t.  You unfriend them, hide them from your news feed, unfollow, block or whatever.  Traditional marketing agencies still think it’s okay to broadcast via social media.  Those few who don’t, still over-broadcast.  They usually have no sense of the 80/20 rule and have a tough time gaining traction (which hinders R.O.I.)

The other method traditional agencies have of handling social media initiatives?

2) Social media efforts are relegated to younger, less-experienced, traditional agency personnel.  These folks usually have the benefit of digital marketing classes or even a degree of some kind in the field.  Having had a Facebook page since they were teens, they also know the importance of authenticity.  Unfortunately, intuition, gut instinct, having a personal Facebook page and being a hipster are not qualifications for savvy social media business management.  Lacking actual business experience, (and not having any credible, in-house mentoring), they sometimes forget the objective (or don’t have one) and rarely let data guide their social media posts.

You’ve seen these social media efforts too.  Twitter feeds and Facebook posts are far more interactive, follow social media etiquette, feel authentic and keep you from unfriending the brand.  All good right?  Perhaps not, if you’re the brand being managed.

While these more socially savvy, younger “experts” can often retain and increase fans and followers, it’s often questionable if these are fans or followers the brand wants, (especially true in B2B).  In addition, this seat-of-the-pants approach isn’t efficient. 

Without adhering to the greater business objectives and to the data, these younger marketing agency folks are losing traction-- and Reach, Fan Engagement, Virality, RTs, Followers and every other KPI that a business cares about.  So while the social networks look good and feel better, their performance is inhibited by a simple lack of business acumen and social media optimization (tactical level) experience.  Ultimately, this too impedes R.O.I.

Neither of these “experts” have the social media mind-set.  Indeed, it could be argued their minds are set.   Side note: they also don’t tend to want or keep the wonky hours required by social media.  

In short: traditional agencies have their field of expertise and we have ours.

And before you go crazy, traditional agency people, wait for Part III.