Bad Social Media Advice - Part 2

Last time, I discussed some great points on bad advice for social media by Ellie Mirman at Hubspot. Here is some more about bad social media advice from Ellie and how it relates to sponsorship.


1. You can automate your updates. Ellie clearly notes that social media can be time consuming, so automation of your updates is, of course, appealing. But the tough reality of social media is that it's all about people talking with people, and people can easily see through crap-especially automated crap. Automating all your updates screams, "I don't care about actually being here. Just come read my content." While it's okay to automate some content, e.g., your latest blog articles, you still need to support that with real conversations and interactions with your network. Like sponsorship, social media is about interaction, engagement, and relationships. Without these core elements, you have nothing more than a supplier-buyer agreement. Don't fake the relationship. Be true and honest to what you do in sponsorship and social media.

2. We often hear from the self-proclaimed gurus that "the more you publish and the more sites you are on, the better." That's not true. Just like in sponsorship, a brand cannot be everywhere effectively, and just because you seem to appear everywhere does not mean you are achieving your goals. In the social media world, simply having a presence on multiple sites and spraying your content as much as possible won't work. Yes, more content is better because it gives you more valuable social media fodder, but you need to make sure all your content is high quality; otherwise, people will see straight through the crap. Unfortunately, people are being overwhelmed with more and more content. This means the bar for remarkable content is starting to rise, and to be successful, you need to make sure your content reaches that high bar.

3. You can just outsource your social media and not worry about it. Ellie clearly points out that social media is a way for you to communicate with your audience, which means it not only needs to be your voice, but the content of the conversations also needs to be based on your expertise in the industry. Not just anyone can talk about the challenges and trends that your customers face, especially if you are in a niche industry. In fact, as Ellie comments, we've seen instances of social media outsourcing (combined with automation) go terribly wrong for some businesses.

Brent Barootes