Ten #Fails in Professional Twitter Profile Pictures

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Not everyone is on Twitter for professional reasons. If not, get the heck off my blog and go read The Oatmeal or TMZ or something. However, if you are on Twitter to create a professional network, learn, educate and build your reputation, let's talk about your profile pic.

I am consistently surprised by the way some professionals portray themselves on Twitter. You have precious few ways to introduce yourself to new people on Twitter. Before someone can access the pearls of wisdom in your tweets, they first need to follow you, recognize you and want to know you. What impression do you create in the split second someone takes to consider following? And when people scan their tweet stream, what does your profile picture do to lend credibility to your tweets?

People who wish to achieve professional goals on Twitter must select profile pictures that advance, not  hinder, those goals. Of course, if you are on Twitter to have fun, all of the following advice is null and void, but if you are spending time to construct a professional persona and create a professional network, here are ten ways your profile picture may undermine that effort:

1. Illustrations: Remember when Mad Men had that app that converted your picture into a hip illustration? That was cool--in 2009. Creative, artful versions of yourself are fun, but if your goals are professional, do you really want to be defined by a cartoon character?
     
2. Logos: If you are a company, a logo is fine for a profile picture, but if you are a person, ditch your employer's logo (except, perhaps, a tiny one in the corner). You do not introduce yourself at professional events as "Hi, I'm XYZ Corp," so do not do so on Twitter.
     
3. Significant Others: We're so happy that you found your soulmate, but unless you're surgically joined at the hip, think with one mind and have a single conjoined career, two heads are not better than one. Save the romantic couple pictures for your desk, not your Twitter avatar. (And do not get me started about wedding shots as profile pics--it was the happiest day of your lives, not your most professional.)
     
4. Crop Crap: If your profile picture contains a mysterious disembodied hand or shoulder or, worse yet, you cropped off your ear to eliminate another person from the shot, it is time to smile for the camera and take a new picture. Severed body parts are for horror movies, not your profile pic.
     
5. Webcam: Webcams are amazing devices--for capturing video. If your profile picture is a dark, muddy shot of you hunched over your kitchen table staring into a fish-eye lens, then take a real picture with a real camera already.
     
6. Boobs: I am not being sexist--this advice applies to both men and women: Button it up and cover your chest. Twitter is not Match.com. If you do not want people staring at your chest at work, you should not want them to stare at it on Twitter.
     
7. Outdated: Ever meet someone in person that you have only known online and thought, "What the hell happened to you?" Your first meeting IRL should not leave people wondering if you borrowed someone else's photo or had a disfiguring accident. If your photo is more than three years, 25 pounds, or two hairstyles different from reality, update it.
     
8. Animation: I don't see this often, thank God, but please omit animation from your profile picture. Yes, it makes your avatar more obvious and grabs attention--so much so that many people will unfollow you to avoid the blinking annoyance.
     
9. Frequent Changes: Staying fresh is important, but remember that your profile picture is your face to your Twitter friends. When people scan their tweet stream, it is your photo and not your name they are most likely to recognize at a glance. Consistency may be last refuge of the unimaginative, but it is also the best way to be recognized in a sea of tweets and avatars.
     
10. PURE ENERGY!!!! You think your wide-open mouth and eyes convey that you are energetic, exciting, and unafraid to express yourself; instead, it tells us you may be slightly crazed, prone to emotional outbursts and apt to break into Richard Simmons' routines. Unless your profession is cheerleading, impress us with your competence, not your exuberance. 

I considered the profile pictures of the people I follow most closely, retweet most often and with whom I've built the strongest relationships. With very few exceptions, they all share one thing: Their profile pictures feature high-quality headshots.

It may be a digital world, but your face still matters. It conveys trust and personality more quickly and effectively than your 160-character Twitter bio. Be sure to put your best foot, er, face forward.

The Role (and Death) of Marketing in the Social Media Era

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Copyright Warner Bros. Entertainment

The other day I noticed that my December 2009 blog post, "2010: The Year Marketing Dies," was my blog's most popular article. Here it is, 2012, and CMOs are still employed and Marketing Departments still exist. Oops!

Should I be embarrassed? Before you answer that, I would like to make the case that Marketing is already dead, but marketers just don't know it yet. Like Wile E. Coyote after he has dashed off the edge of the cliff but before gravity has kicked in, I think the profession of Marketing is hovering and waiting for a fall.

I will cop to employing some hyperbole in both my December 2009 blog post and the one you are reading now, but less than you might think. Exaggeration aside, the discipline of marketing has some profound and painful changes coming.

Just this week, we witnessed yet another in a long string of marketing blunders. McDonald's promoted the #McDStories hashtag as a way to get people talking about their McDonald's experiences. People talked, all right--they used the hashtag to vent on everything from poor service to the chain's treatment of animals. Marketing observers can add this faux pas to a long list of recent marketing missteps:

• Earlier this month, Taco Bell irked customers with an insanely misguided promotional tweet on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day about the "dream" of "eating @TacoBell." 
• In November, Qantas Airlines blundered badly with a hashtag marketing campaign that people appropriated to gripe about the carrier having canceled flights and stranded passengers. 
• In September, Unilever sparked a "Ragu Hates Dads" meme with an insulting ad campaign that slighted fathers.
    

It is important to note that I am not citing cases of mistakes or service blunders that became social media disasters (a la PayPal/Regretsy, Chrysler's F-bomb or GoDaddy's Elephant-Killing CEO). Nor are these examples of consumers taking to social media to rail against corporate policies (such as Greenpeace/Mattel or Bank of America's debit fee). Rather, all of these blunders are something entirely different--companies deploying marketing strategies and tactics that consumers reject, resulting in brand damage.

Prior to the social era, it was damn near impossible to have a marketing campaign head south. About the worst that could happen was nothing--a brand might waste its marketing budget on a campaign that fell flat and failed to move consumers. Nowadays, every month brings another story of a marketing campaign that not only fails to help the brand but bites it.

It is at this point in similar blog posts about the state of marketing that the blogger usually says something like, "In the social media era brands cannot control the message, but in reality brands never could." That is a nice narrative--and it is complete horse manure. Whether it was the power of mass media, unsophisticated consumers or a society more willing to trust authority, the truth is that marketers wielded incredible power back in the day. Thanks to pervasive and often misleading marketing, consumers thought smoking was safe and pale skin was unhealthy for decades before the dangers of cigarettes and suntanning were revealed.

Just look at Kodak. They were the poster child for how marketing can create a brand. More than ten years ago, I read an article on branding that contained a line I still recall: "Kodak is memories; the other guys are just film." That was pure, marketing success--a generic product with a powerful brand that delivered decades of protected market share and higher margins.

Today, Kodak is bankrupt. Branding expert Al Ries believes Kodak's problem was not that they failed to adapt to the digital era but that "Kodak means 'film' photography; Kodak doesn't mean 'digital' photography." I believe Ries is wrong--if brands were that inflexible, then Apple would be a defunct desktop computer manufacturer instead of the company that just reported a record quarterly profit of $13 billion derived mostly from sales of music, music players and phones.

The comparison between Kodak and Apple is instructive. Almost every single person who reads these words owns an Apple product, I'd venture, but what about Kodak cameras? I am a photo buff who bought thousands of roles of Kodak film in my lifetime, but I'm on my fourth digital camera and have never once been tempted to purchase a Kodak camera. They were never as small, fast, affordable or feature rich as comparable Nikon, Canon and Fujifilm models. In fact, look at ZDNet's annual holiday buying guides for compact digital cameras in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011: out of the thirty cameras listed, just one is from Kodak.

The problem that Kodak faced--that all brands face today--is that marketing in the social era increasingly works only for brands that first furnish a positive experience. In the social era, marketers can amplify brands that create positive experiences with products and services, but great marketing cannot save mediocre products and services.

If the company is unable or unwilling to differentiate the product or service experience, what is left for marketers to do? For brands with little positive sentiment to amplify and an army of empowered consumers ready to pounce at disappointing products and clueless marketing, the best marketers can hope for is to build buzz not about the product or service but about the marketing itself. "Don't like our burgers? Then here's a free social game that will get you buzzing about something other than our burgers." Marketers for undifferentiated products and services can create retweets, likes, comments, engagement and shares--everything except actual improvement in consumer consideration, intent or purchase behavior.

Certainly, there are some great recent examples of marketing that works. I've been impressed with the work being done by P&G, RadioShack, USAA (my employer) and others, but their success begins with the right product and service. P&G's Let Her Jump campaign would not have soared if women didn't trust Secret antiperspirant; RadioShack's #UNeedANewPhone hashtag campaign would have backfired if the retailer didn't carry the phones consumers wanted; and my employer's evocative TV ads wouldn't create trust if our service failed to earn trust in the first place. In recent weeks, USAA has been named the top firm in Forrester's Customer Experience Index, ranked by JD Power among the top auto insurance companies in customer satisfaction, and named a People's Choice insurance company in a study by Insure.com. At USAA, marketing is the icing on a cake baked with great products and services.

Marketing is creaking like an aged man leaning on a cane. The real power to create or destroy brands now rests with product managers and service leaders. If marketers are unable to influence the strategies, investment and staffing that impact customers' product and service experience, they are (much like Wile E. Coyote) running in place in thin air, hoping to gain traction.

I've argued my case. Now I'll repeat the question at the top of this blog post: Should I be embarrassed by my December 2009 blog post, "2010: The Year Marketing Dies"? Feel free to shame me in the comments of this blog post.


Postscript

There is a little story behind my post, "2010: The Year Marketing Dies," that you may find interesting. Shortly after accepting my offer from Forrester's Interactive Marketing team, I received a call from my new boss about a change in their blogging policy. The research firm wanted analysts' content and wisdom in one place rather than spread across hundreds of personal blogs, and so they asked me to give up my personal blog and instead write for Forrester's Interactive Marketing blog.

The strategy made sense, but I was concerned Forrester might not appreciate some of my wilder material. My new boss assured me that Forrester had no interest in censuring bloggers, so to test the waters, I decided to write a blatant provocation: as my first blog post as Forrester's new marketing analyst, I announced marketing would die in the coming year.

I shared my proposed blog post, confident a speedy rejection was forthcoming; instead, the blog post was approved without edit. It was a terrific sign as I started my new job that Forrester would be a great fit. And it was!

That blog post may have been intended as a deliberate affront, and I admit I was exaggerating the point, but I'll still stand by that article. Marketing professionals need to help firms build their brands first with products and services and second with advertising, influencer programs and imaginative social media marketing campaigns.
   

The Incredibly Difficult and Important Job of Community Manager

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Happy Community Manager Appreciation Day! The idea for this worthy annual event came from Jeremiah Owyang, and it is a terrific idea. Most organizations truly have no idea how much authority and power they have imparted on their Community Managers, and recognizing the people who fill these difficult and important roles seems very appropriate.

This blog post is dedicated to and inspired by the community managers on my team at USAA, who execute their duties with energy, creativity, passion and grace. Analisa, Jessica and Raul, with the support of Josh and Julie, have taught me a great deal about the challenges and rewards of the job. I would like to share that wisdom with you.

One of the great challenges of being a Community Manager is that few people seem to notice when you do something right, but everyone seems to know when a rare mistake is made. When your Community Managers keep all the spinning dishes from crashing to the ground, the outcome is an engaged community that grows steadily, avoids inflaming detractors and creates loyal customers. We ought to celebrate that with banners every day because those are the results that matter, but instead we tend to heap attention on those who spend the brand's dollars on a program that delivers 250,000 retweets or "likes."

When do Community Managers get attention? Their work becomes the focus of leaders and fodder for case studies when an uncommon mistake is made. Answer a thousand difficult and sensitive questions and you may get a pat on the back, but mistakenly post a personal message to the brand Twitter feed or respond with a frustrated and very human message on Facebook, and everyone from the President to the maintenance crew hears about it.

Another challenge that Community Managers face on a day-to-day basis is how much of themselves to bring to the job. A million blog posts tell brands the importance of being "real," "personal" and "human" in social interactions, but what does that mean where the rubber meets the road?

When your Community Manager is sitting at a computer looking at the brand's Facebook page or answering a question in a brand community, is it "I" or "we"? Are humor and emoticons appropriate or not? Can a Community Manager say "I'm sorry" or does that impart legal responsibility and risk to the company? Even with written brand standards, balancing the voice of the brand against the need (and desire) to make human connections is not easy.

The Community Managers at USAA are very cognizant of the need to balance their voice with the brand's. In the past, my team has debated things like whether or not they should append their names to the end of Facebook comments on the brand page. (We do so, now.) And when, in preparation of Community Manager Appreciation Day, I suggested we make a Facebook post to let our community get to know the team a little better, our Community Managers wrestled with whether or not it was appropriate to bring this much attention to themselves. We decided that our Community Managers embody the personal commitment USAA employees have for the military community, so later today we'll introduce our community folks with a post to the USAA Facebook page.  

It is one thing to struggle with the balance between being personal and being the brand voice, but it's another thing when your customers make that choice for you. We had one customer accuse one of our Community Managers of manipulating a Facebook contest to benefit her friends. The accusation was baseless and an expression of frustration by a person upset her entry was not receiving more votes, but no matter how much one can logically explain a customer's angry and accusatory post or tweet, it is still difficult and frustrating when it is directed at you personally. There is no situation in which it is more important nor more difficult to set aside personal feelings and bring the brand's voice.

I've shared some of the frustration of the job, but what about the benefits of being a Community Manager? There are some career advantages to being employed at the cutting edge of how brand building is changing; for example, USAA's Community Managers have had the opportunity to directly teach the association's president and other leaders about social media. It also is exciting to be part of every single campaign or important communication initiative within the organization. Plus, one important bonus for handling consumer concerns and needs in social channels is the opportunity to see detractors become advocates.

And finally, there's the autonomy and importance of the job--Community Managers are creating and reinforcing the brand through hundreds of public interactions a week. Your brand's advertising and PR is reviewed by a dozen executives before it is released, but the tweets, posts, comments and replies that fashion your brand in social media go directly from the hearts and minds of your Community Managers to your customers. There are few if any people within the enterprise who so personally epitomize and feel ownership of your brand like your Community Managers.

I hope the USAA Community Managers know how much I appreciate their hard work every day, but I am sure I fall short of bringing this to my daily interactions with Analisa, Jessica and Raul. Today my challenge to you isn't merely to thank your Community Managers on Community Manager Appreciation Day but to consider ways to bring appreciation throughout the year.

In your communities, every day is Community Manager Appreciation Day. Shouldn't it be the same inside your organization?

The Shrinking Half-Life of Never

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"The future belongs to those who see possibilities before they become obvious."
                      - John Sculley, former CEO of Apple

There are many reasons why people fail to see the future, even when it is pounding down their front door. Some are too busy in the now to see the world changing around them; some see trends and mistake them for fads; and some are simply too invested in today's skills and business models to consider their evolution. No matter the etiology of the disease, the symptom is usually the same--bold and unassailable declarations such as "I will never..." and "Our customers will never..." If you hear these words, recognize them as the danger signs they are.

The threat of overlooking vital market trends is certainly not a new phenomenon. Just ask the powerful railroad companies of the early 20th Century, which failed to understand the changing needs and technology of society. Stuck in the mindset that they were in the rail business and not the transportation business, railroad companies watched as rail passenger travel declined 84 percent between 1945 and 1964. In the first half of the 20th Century, the Pennsylvania Railroad was the largest publicly traded corporation in the world, but by 1970 the merged Penn Central declared bankruptcy.

The forces that undid Pen Central 40 years ago are the same forces that torpedoed Borders in recent years. As recently as two years ago, Borders Group operated 511 superstores across the globe; late in 2011, the company liquidated its last store. Unwilling to see (or adapt) to the way media sales first went online and then went digital, the company struggled. It first turned to Amazon as its online store provider, but by the time Borders tried to establish its own online store in 2008, it was too late.

How do highly compensated executives--recognized and experienced experts in their field--miss profound change on this scale? You do not need deep insight into the railroad or book selling business to understand how this phenomenon works. If you are over 40, you've experienced it firsthand. Chances are you have repeatedly declared (either aloud or silently) "I will never..." only to prove yourself wrong time after time:

• In 1994: I will never own a personal computer.
• In 1997: I will never waste time on the information superhighway.
• In 1999: I will never be tethered to a mobile phone every hour of my life. 
• In 2001: I will never submit my credit card number through a Web site.
• In 2003: I will never need a smartphone--my email can wait until I get to my PC.
• In 2007: I will never share my personal information on those crazy social networks.

Never isn't what it used to be. It took most of us no more than two to five years to move from "I will never..." to "I am doing it religiously..." for all of these behaviors.

Many of those who laughed at the nerds typing away on their Atari STs and Commodore Amigas are now on their third generation of personal computing, having transitioned from desktops to laptops to tablets and mobile. The people who declared they would never be stupid enough to trust their credit card number online are today storing their Visa numbers on Amazon and checking their investment accounts on their cell phones.

When we personally misjudge the future, the implications are relatively minor. The folks who mocked Treo and Blackberry addicts changed their minds, bought iPhones and Androids, and caught up to the early adopters. Conversely, the organizational implications of misjudging the future are far more serious. "I will never..." too easily becomes "Our customers will never..." which is expressed as "Our organization will never..." By the time "never" becomes "OMG!," it is too late to steal market share from more agile and established competitors; it is even more difficult for a fading brand to recover lost trust and convince consumers it is still relevant. Buy books at Borders? That is so 2007!

Today, what are you saying you will never do? How will your 2017 self prove your brash and ignorant 2012 self wrongheaded and shortsighted?

How about, "I will never lend money to a stranger through a peer-to-peer (P2P) web site?" Many bankers today think peer lending is a minor blip, but with the leading P2P lending sites growing more than 100% per year, this may well be a social business model many will regret discounting. (Given all that goodwill many of the big banks have accumulated, I'm sure they have nothing to worry about.)

Other executives say "I will never spend more on social media than traditional advertising," even though the transition is already well underway; Coca-Cola has shifted 20 percent of its marketing budget to social, for example. The trend toward social will not abate soon. Forrester reports that 55 percent of marketers expect "created social media" to grow in effectiveness while 21 percent expect the same of television and just 10 percent anticipate radio advertising effectiveness to rise.

The cure for the disease of business myopia is quite simple: Never say never. Recognize that the half-life of "never" has never been shorter. The quicker we appreciate that "never" is not a very long time in today's environment, the sooner we can start leading our organizations to embrace the remarkable changes ahead.

Four Ways to Fix Social Media Marketing

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My last blog post, "Social Media Marketing is Broken," was a rant, and while rants are fun and cathartic, they are not helpful. (I'm also disappointed to note that rants tend to draw more retweets and visits, so perhaps I should aspire to be the Lewis Black of Social Media.) Since I strive be helpful and create positive dialog on this blog, I'd like to explore four ways social media marketing can be fixed:

• Don't report fan page increases without reporting engagement level: It's too easy to add fans and followers for the wrong reasons. Run a sweepstakes on Facebook, and hundreds of thousands of freebie hunters with no interest in your brand will click "Like." As a result, your engagement will go down, your EdgeRank will not improve, and your brand's posts will not reach a larger audience. Let's be clear: Increasing your fan count with disinterested fans who do not engage means you've squandered your precious budget dollars.

  If you need a simple engagement metric, look no further than Facebook's recent addition to fan pages, the "talking about this" number. Divide your page's "talking about this" figure by the "like this" count, and you get an easy, free measure of engagement. How does your brand's ratio compare to your competition's? More importantly, how does it compare from month to month for your own page? Investing in strategies that increment your fan count while leaving "talking about this" unchanged means you are NOT engaging more people where it counts--on their walls. (And any page administrator who has glanced at his or her Facebook Insights knows that relying on large numbers of people to visit your wall is a losing proposition.)

  By the way, I used the word "report" and not "measure" for a reason. It isn't good enough merely to measure your fan count and engagement numbers, you should report both metrics to leaders and peers. This is the only way to educate them on the importance of maintaining and increasing engagement rather than obsessing over the easy to monitor but less important fan count total.

• Don't report on engagement level without reporting on quality of engagement: That simple engagement metric I just suggested comes with one major caveat: It is easy to manipulate. If all you do is post jokes, viral videos and silly questions, you will increase engagement, but probably in way that increases your brand's EdgeRank to the wrong people for the wrong reasons.

  Don't get me wrong, there's a place for posts that help your brand convey more personality on Facebook, but it is imperative you focus engagement-raising tactics on the people who matter most to the brand. If your target prospects and customers are seniors or B2B buyers, it does no good to increase your EdgeRank with viral videos that appeal to younger people (even if it does boost your "talking about this" number).

  How can you report to your boss the quality of engagement? Many Social Media Management Systems can divulge the demographics of the people you're engaging. If you don't have the budget for an SMMS, a simple way to call attention to the people you are engaging and the ways your brand creates engagement is to report the most engaging content posted to the wall each month. If doing so raises difficult questions about the topics you are posting or the audiences you are engaging, that's a strong sign your social content strategy needs tweaking.

• Don't report on quality of engagement without reporting on brand or business metrics: What good is investing in social media marketing tactics if all you're getting is digital babble without driving any value for the organization? Driving WOM isn't a true business measure if all those retweets and shares don't change minds, spark consideration or alter buying behaviors.

  Remember Taco Bell's "Yo quiero Taco Bell" chihauhua? Of course you do. Back in the late 90s, that campaign became what we'd today call a "viral success." It got lots of people talking and sold 13 million stuffed animals. Alas, what it did not do is sell tacos. The campaign and agency were scrapped after same-store sales dropped six percent. "Viral" and "Engagement" do not equal "successful" if no business value is created.

  Business value can be derived in a number of ways. Short-term and direct business measures include site traffic from social sites and tracking links through to conversation. Longer-term measures are harder to come by but are even more important, because we in the social media arena are in the relationship business and not the direct response business. Using brand measures and media mix methodologies validates that today's social media investments equate to tomorrow's consideration, intent and sales.

• Make marketing the SECOND most important thing you do in social media: Much of the reason social media marketing is broken is that the medium is not, primarily, a marketing channel. It's a channel for connecting, sharing, conversation, collaboration and sentiment. Your brand may want to connect with customers on marketing matters, but your customers have different goals.

  I'm still amazed at the number of brands that will constantly update their status in Facebook while ignoring virtually everything posted by consumers. Regardless of the intent or quality of your content, your actions are delivering the message that your brand only cares about itself. I'm reminded of one of my favorite Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes--a phrase I consider the defining maxim of the social era--"What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say."

  The beauty of prioritizing customer service over marketing in social media is that doing so will actually enhance your marketing. By demonstrating you care about customers, your messages are more likely to be received. Engaging to solve customer problems also increase sentiment. And creating dialog about the issues customers care about increases your EdgeRank, making your posts more likely to get through to your fans' walls.

We can make social media an appropriate and successful medium for marketing--some brands already have--but until we improve upon the metrics and goals in social media, we cannot improve social media marketing itself. The poor grab bag of freebies and sweepstakes that are too common in social media marketing today are hurting more than helping, and it is well past time for Marketing 2.0 thinking to match our Web 2.0 world.

Social Media Marketing is Broken

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"I am going to Germany for seven months," announced my friend on Facebook, and her confused, concerned and excited friends erupted with a dozen urgent questions. An hour later came the explanation: "It was a cancer awareness meme. Sorry to have put bad info out there." Well, I feel so much more aware about cancer now, don't you?

This is just the latest example of how social media marketing has become (or always was) broken--a chase for memes for memes' sake. Social media marketing is an insular and largely meaningless game where the perceived winner is not the brand that gains awareness, consideration or purchase intent but the one with the most retweets and likes.

The problem rests not with social media but with marketers. I blame marketers for focusing on quick fixes and easy metrics rather than appreciating that--as always--brands gain customers' trust, usage and loyalty through hard work and not button clicks.

The problem isn't only in social media, of course. Too many marketers have been lazy, focusing more on saying different things about the brand in paid media rather than helping the brand to be different in meaningful ways. These marketers continue to invest in lookalike ads, hoping the right headline or creative imagery will catapult the brand forward, ignoring the preponderance of evidence that validates people are drawn to brands for deeper reasons.

For example, the 30 companies featured in the book "Firms of Endearment," selected because they are driven by purpose rather than quarterly earnings, grew their stock by 21.06% annually compared to 3.3% for the S&P. These "firms of endearment" advertise, but not like everyone else. Take Patagonia--while other retailers were using Cyber Monday ads and emails to pump discounts, Patagonia used the same channels to tell its customers "Don't Buy This Jacket." Patagonia won not by telling customers "Pick me! Pick me! I've got the best discounts!" but by encouraging customers to "buy less and to reflect before you spend a dime on this jacket or anything else."

IKEA, another "firm of endearment," is again demonstrating why it belongs on the list. IKEA could've had a sweepstakes for a Fado lamp or given away a virtual Klobo loveseat for Farmville farmers; instead, the company listened to the people who launched their own fan page entitled, "I wanna have a sleepover in IKEA." Voilà, a perfect combination of PR, social media and fan-building loyalty program with a 100-person sleepover in an IKEA store.

In social media, marketers suffer from the classic problem of failing to understand cause and effect: "Starbucks is a social media success with 26 million fans on Facebook, so all I need to do is gain fans by giving things away in Cityville and I'll be a success, too!" I am not suggesting Starbucks hasn't done some savvy marketing in social media (more on this later), but Starbucks does not succeed because they have Facebook fans, they have Facebook fans because they succeed at providing a product and experience with which people connect.

Seek social media marketing case studies and you will find a typical assortment of tired marketing promotion tricks ported into the social media era--brands that gained new "fans" by giving away a freebie or offering a sweepstakes. These tactics have been around for decades, so why is it we see them featured in so many social media case studies but so few brand marketing case studies? Because experienced marketers know these tactics do not (for the most part) work.

Freebies and sweepstakes accomplish very specific things--they help launch a new product, promote a new product feature, penetrate a new market or secure display space on retailers' shelves. They may raise trial and awareness, but they do not deliver repeat usage, loyalty and advocacy, the very building blocks of social media success.

If most freebies and sweepstakes are a mismatch for social media, why do social media marketers use them so much? The argument seems to be that providing an incentive to Facebook users to try your fan page is a first step toward building Facebook relationships, but that sort of thinking ignores how Facebook works. Thanks to Facebook's Edgerank, adding a bunch of disinterested "fans" who hide or ignore your posts does not help but rather hurts your brand's chances for success on Facebook. Running a real-world sweepstakes so that 3% of the participants become customers may or may not be a smart marketing investment, but running a Facebook sweepstakes so that 3% of the participants become engaged members of your fan page is a brand-killing play every time.

Is it possible to succeed with a freebie or sweepstakes in social media? Yes, if you focus on two things--the thing you offer has to encourage people to engage with the brand in a meaningful way and the audience on which you focus must be not the largest but the right audience. For most brands, offering an in-game freebie to Cityville's 43 million users makes as much sense as offering a new chess piece that devastates opponents' pieces in an entire rank of the board. Chess players of the world will take it; they will use it to enhance their chess game; but does it make them consider or buy your insurance or peanut butter brand? No, because it fails to provide meaningful brand engagement to the right audience.

I mentioned Starbucks earlier, so let's explore how this "firm of endearment" succeeds with freebies, ads and sweepstakes. It gives away free Wi-Fi in stores and offers free content for customers--meaningful brand interactions to the right customers. Starbucks used Promoted Tweets to serve ads to people who search for "coffee" and "Starbucks" to let them know about the free drinks available for those who use reusable cups--meaningful brand interactions to the right customers. And Starbucks has given away samples of a new coffee available in the aisles of grocery stores, not just to anyone but only to Twitterers who influence others and who tweet frequently about coffee--meaningful brand interactions to the right customers.

If I see one more headline about a brand that adds 100,000 new fans in a day because of a sweepstakes or freebie, I am going to throw my laptop out a window. I'm just tired of it. Not only is it frustrating to see so much attention lavished on poor social media marketing, it also is time consuming to constantly explain to others why there is no easy (and truly beneficial) way to add hundreds of thousands of fans to our own fan page, despite evidence to the contrary.

It is time social media marketers abandon the easy metrics and focus on the ones that matter. It's the NFL postseason and I'm a Packer fan, so I cannot resist the analogy: In the 2010 season, six quarterbacks threw for more yards than Aaron Rodgers did. Nine completed more passes than Aaron Rodgers did. Five threw for more touchdowns than Aaron Rodgers did. Seven even won more games. But Aaron Rodgers led his team to a Super Bowl victory.

Stop counting yards and start focusing on how your brand truly wins in social media. If most social media marketers shifted their attention to metrics and strategies that matter more, social media marketing would matter more.