Tag: Social Media

Burn It Down, Start From Scratch And Build a Social Media Strategy That Works

There are times you simply need to destroy what exists in order to replace it with something better. Such is the case for social media. The past seven years have been so full of mistaken beliefs, poor assumptions and outright misinformation that the time has come to reassess completely what social media is, how it works, how consumers use it and what it means for brands.

The fact is that much of the social media dogma we take as gospel has been wrong from the start. As a result, brands are wasting good money to chase irrelevant or even damaging social media outcomes, and the required improvements are not minor adjustments. In many cases, the wrong departments have hired the wrong people to do the wrong things evaluated with the wrong measures.

Together we will burn social media to the ground and rebuild it from scratch. We will do this with data. Data will provide the spark and accelerant that destroys today’s social media strategies, and data will also be the bricks and mortar to build a credible and accurate understanding of consumers’ social behaviors and the legitimate opportunities available to business.

DESTROYING SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING MYTHS WITH DATA

Every social media marketer and pundit knows case studies that tease the promise of organic content success. They share and reference the same ones time and again, building false hope that marketers’ next social campaign will be Oreo Dunk, #LikeAGirl or Real Beauty. But tear yourself away from the rare and apocryphal stories of success and focus instead on broad, unbiased data, and a different picture emerges.

“Organic social media stopped working.” Those words are from the latest Forrester report, “It’s Time to Separate the ‘Social’ From the ‘Media.'” This is the same Forrester that in the 1990s counseled IT leaders to pay attention to “Social Computing” and whose 2008 book, Groundswell, introduced many business executives to the ways social media was changing consumers and the marketplace. Today, Forrester is again ahead of the curve, making the case that brand organic opportunities have disappeared and social media marketing has become entirely a paid game. As a result, the research firm recommends that marketing leaders assign their social budgets not to the social team but the media team because, as Forrester notes, “Social ads aren’t social; they’re just ads.”

The report states a simple fact that too many content marketers ignore in 2015: “If you can’t get a message to your audience, you can’t very well market to them” Facebook reach for top brands’ posts was just 2% of their fans in 2014, and that number will only decrease further this year.

Evidence of social media’s remarkably poor reach is all around, and many social media marketers are simply ignoring it (or hoping their bosses do). For all of its brand strength, Coca-Cola’s Facebook page this past weekend had a People Talking About This figure–which includes every page like, post like, comment, check-in, share and mention the brand earned in seven days–of just 37,700 people. The world’s largest consumer brand (which sells 1.8 billion drinks a day) on the world’s largest social network (with 1.5 billion monthly active users) engages fewer people in a week than can fit in one MLB stadium–and not even Dodger Stadium but Kansas City’s modest Kauffman Stadium.

Not only is reach falling but social has never succeeded in delivering reliable marketing scale, no matter how many case studies suggest otherwise. Social does not deliver purchasers (accounting for 1% of e-commerce sales, compared to 16% for email and 17% for CPC). Social delivers poor conversions (with a conversion rate of 1.17% compared to 2.04% for search and 2.18% for email). Social fails to deliver trust (with B2B buyers rating social media posts among the least important for establishing credibility and just 15% of consumers trusting social posts by companies or brands.) Nor is Social media a major factor in search engine rankings (placing dead last among the nine major factors affecting SEO according to MoZ’s 2015 Search Engine Ranking Factors report.)

Rather than hit the brakes, social media marketers are trying to keep their shaky strategies together with wishes and duct tape. For example, marketers are desperately trying to overcome declining organic reach by posting more frequently, but that is not a long-term solution (nor much of a short-term one, either). Another tactic is to chase consumers from one social network to the next for brief windows of organic opportunity. Instagram is the latest social network hyped for delivering higher engagement, but the social platform is busy adding and growing its advertising programs, which means organic reach will rapidly decline on Instagram as it has elsewhere.

Social media marketing has become a house of cards, teetering with lies stacked high since the dawn of the social media era. Entire corporate social media strategies are crafted on baseless assumptions that presume brands can reach prospects and customers in social networks, consumers want and trust brand content, all engagement matters, likes are marketing KPIs and fans and followers are advocates. The best thing social media professionals can do now is to burn down that tower of cards and start from scratch by studying the data, creating new and realistic proof points and producing more effective social media strategies.

BUILDING SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES WITH DATA

Starting from square one, please allow me to introduce you to social media and the opportunities available to your company, one fact at a time:

FACT: People take social media seriously, and so should business. 
The numbers are impressive–1.5 billion people use Facebook, 316 million use Twitter, 300 million Instagram and 200 million are on Snapchat. And social media behavior is still growing, with the average usage time rising from 1.66 hours per day in 2013 to 1.72 hours last year. Despite some spurious headlines suggesting Facebook’s demise, that social network continues to dominate, with 59% of users accessing the social network two or more times a day (which is two-thirds more than Snapchat or Twitter and 1000% more than Pinterest). What these data points tell us is that social media is important to consumers, and brands should find ways to meet consumers’ needs and expectations in the channel. While numbers like these typically tempt marketers into believing social media is a fertile content marketing opportunity, this is not the case because…

FACT: Consumers work hard to block and ignore brand messaging.
Use of adblocking software is on the rise in 2015, having gone up by 41% since last year. Of people who view time-shifted TV, 37% do so because it permits them to skip ads, and 56% skip every commercial when viewing from a DVR. Of those who have seen online pre-roll ads, 94% have skipped them. And 57% of consumers are actively taking steps to avoid brands that bombard them with irrelevant communications, with 69% having unfollowed brands on social channels, closed accounts and cancelled subscriptions. The reason people do this is that…

FACT: Consumers do not trust brand content.
In the latest Edelman Trust Barometer Study, the majority of countries now sit below 50% with regard to trust in business, and this past year trust in business dropped in 16 out of 27 countries. In the US, consumers do not trust text messages, social media posts or ads from brands. Millennials are an especially tough crowd, with only 1 in 100 saying that a compelling advertisement would make them trust a brand more and they place sales and advertising at the bottom of their trust rankings. So, if organic reach is continually declining toward zero and consumers do not welcome or trust brand messaging, should brands abandon their social profiles? Of course not, because…

FACT: Consumers count on brands to be present in social media, particularly on Facebook.
Consumers indicate they expect brands to be available in an average of 3.5 social media channels, and around 80% of consumers expect brands to be present on Facebook. But if we have established consumers do not want or trust brand messaging in social media (or pretty much any other channel), why do consumers want brands on social networks? It isn’t for brands to fill their news feeds with a stream of promotional messaging but…

FACT: Consumers expect brands to engage on consumers’ terms.
62% of Millennials say that if a brand engages with them on social networks, they are more likely to become a loyal customer. It is not as if brands have no opportunity to listen and engage with consumers one-to-one, considering nearly 50% of people have used social media to praise or complain about a brand in the past month. On the B2B side, 75% of B2B buyers want brands to furnish content of “substance,” that helps them to research business ideas, but 93% of brands focus their content on “marketing” their own products and services. Of course, while too many marketers believe broadcasting messages is a way to engage consumers, people do not consider marketing content to be “engagement.” Instead, they want brands to treat them individually, listen and respond. For example…

FACT: Consumers want fast, responsive customer care in social media. 
63% expect companies to offer customer service on social media, and one in three social media users prefer to reach out to a brand on social media for customer service. 75% of consumers using social media for customer service expect to hear back in an hour or less; half want a response in real time. But despite the demand for customer care in social media, brands fail to meet expectations; one study found that 33% of consumers who reach out to brands for customer service get no response, while another recent study found four out of five inquiries go unanswered on social media. The stakes are high for brands to get this right. Econsultancy asked consumers how brands performed to resolve recent issues, and of those who said the brand was very ineffective, 46% are still customers (compared to 71% for very effective brands) and 13% shop at the same level (compared to 46% for very effective brands).

FACT: Consumers want to collaborate with brands to develop better products.
42% of Millennials say they are interested in helping companies develop future products and services, and studies have shown, not surprisingly, that customers are more likely to buy products they helped to create. The secret isn’t merely to offer a database into which people can dump their product ideas; once again, people want true bilateral engagement with brands. A recent study of ten co-creation projects found that the largest percentage of participants (28 percent) was driven by curiosity and a desire to learn, and another 26% had an interest in building skills.

FACT: Consumers want brands to stand for something, not simply push products and generate profit.
People want more from brands. Consumers do not see a conflict between businesses being profitable and being good for the world–81% agree that a company can take actions that both increase profits and improve the economic and social conditions in the community where it operates. Edelman’s 2015 Trust Barometer study also found that half of respondents attribute increased trust in business to the fact that a business enabled them to be a more productive member of society. Edelman found the biggest gap between business importance and business performance on 16 trust attributes was not products and services or even purpose–it was integrity and engagement. The Nielsen Global Survey on Corporate Social Responsibility found much the same, with 55% of global online consumers across 60 countries saying they are willing to pay more for products and services provided by companies that are committed to positive social and environmental impact. Millennials have even higher expectations–three-quarters say that it is either fairly or very important that a company gives back to society instead of just making a profit.

FACT: Brands win when they get people talking to each other, not about the brand’s content but about the actual Customer Experience. In the US, 70% of consumers trust brand and product recommendations from friends and family, which is almost 400% greater than the trust they have in brand posts in social media. Millennials do not trust traditional media and advertising, so they look for the opinions of their friends (37%) and parents (36%) before making purchases. However, marketers continue to struggle with Word of Mouth (WOM)–64% of marketing executives indicated that they believe WOM is the most effective form of marketing but only 6% claim to have mastered it.

DOING SOCIAL MEDIA RIGHT

Most companies are doing social wrong and have done it wrong from the beginning. The key to success is to stop most of what today passes for social media strategy and rebuild social plans from the ground up:

  • First, create and measure a new definition of WOM. An individual who recommends your brand based on their actual customer experience is gold; a customer who clicks the “heart” button on a pretty photo posted by your brand isn’t even tin (and a like that is bought is a stain on the soul of your brand). Now is the time to recognize that not all consumer interactions are equal and to succeed, brands must generate the WOM that matters–not the activities that are easy to manipulate and tabulate but the ones that are difficult and meaningful. Discard the fake WOM strategies created with brand-to-consumer content broadcasted in social channels and focus on the real WOM forged peer-to-peer with customer stories, recommendations and advocacy. Fake WOM gets people to click “like” on something the brand posted; real WOM gets people to tell others why they should trust, try and buy your product or service.
       
  • Toss out your social media scorecard immediately. The first step to refocus social activities on what matters is to change what is measured. Stop rewarding employees or agencies for generating engagement that fails to deliver business benefit and start measuring what matters–changes in customer loyalty or consideration, positive and authentic Word of Mouth, inbound traffic that converts, quality lead acquisition and customer satisfaction.
     
  • Reconsider what department should lead your social media efforts. Once you have reconsidered the metrics that matter, the next question is who within the organization is best equipped and staffed to deliver on those metrics. If organic social media is not proving an effective marketing channel, should your marketing team be responsible for content creation and managing social media calendars? If one-to-one engagement and responsiveness are the new goals, which department is best staffed to provide what the brand needs and consumers expect in social media? These are vital questions, because whichever department funds and manages social media will expect the outcomes and use the metrics about which they most care. A recent report from Econsultancy makes the case: Among Financial Service firms, just 38% see social media as a channel for retention; the majority sees it geared for acquisition and cross-sell. That means most of these firms are using social media to chase marketing strategies to drive sales (an approach we now know will fail) while the minority have social media strategies designed to improve customer satisfaction, reputation, loyalty and retention–goals generally not associated with Marketing but with Public Relations and Customer Care departments.
          
  • Objectively assess the return your brand generates with content marketing in social channels, and stop what is not working. If you are not today validating positive return on marketing content posted to social channels, you certainly will not do so in the future as organic reach crumbles to nothing. Marketers continue to act as if content marketing is destined to work and they have simply failed yet to find the right content marketing strategy. Data tells us otherwise; customers and prospects inundated with marketing messages, distrustful of brand content and protected behind social paywalls and adblocking software are not interested in or available to your content marketing output. Content is essential and has a place in Marketing strategies, but now is the time to rebalance the investment the brand is making to match the return it receives and can expect.
       
  • Stop talking at consumers and telling them what you want them to hear. Start listening to customers and responding with what they want and need. Your brand’s intent is more evident than your content, and actions speak louder than words. If the best thing your company can think to do with this wonderful one-to-one relationship channel is to talk about itself, you have no right to be disappointed when consumers perceive and punish your company for its self-interest. Brands that win in the social era will not be better at storytelling but in using social media to hear, help, educate, encourage, empower, connect and respond to their customers and prospects as individuals.
      
  • Get social customer care right. There is no excuse for failing to staff a customer care team properly, secure the right social media management platform, listen for customer needs in every appropriate social channel, manage inbound messages, answer every question, address every complaint and help every prospect or customer in a timely manner. Self-service and peer-to-peer support are valuable tools, but they are no substitute for getting responsive one-to-one customer care right in a growing (and very public) channel of preference for many of your customers.
      
  • Get people talking to each other. Your brand is disappearing from consumers’ news feeds (if it has not already), but friends will always see content from the people they know, care and trust. Stop trying to spark engagement using funny, clever, hip, edgy or inspirational content, and stop acting as if authentic peer-to-peer engagement can be bought by paying influencers to tweet about your brand. Find ways to get people talking to each other about their real experiences with your company and its offerings. Engage your happy customers and help them to share their experiences; intercept customers at moments of truth to encourage sharing; build P2P ratings and assistance into every mobile and web experience; connect people to each other in meaningful ways; and more than anything, provide the sorts of product and service experiences people will want to talk about and their friends will find worthy of attention and consideration.

Here is a place to start as you rebuild your company’s social media strategies: If your brand never posted another piece of marketing content to Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, how would you demonstrate your firm’s values in social channels? If the ability to post promotional messages were taken away, what social media strategies would your company execute to create awareness, attention, consideration, trial and loyalty? If you could no longer rely on your brand journalists, paid influencers, social designers and marketing agencies to create content for social channels, what one-to-one, peer-to-peer, responsive, collaborative, integrated, authentic and meaningful strategies would your brand execute? (Why isn’t it doing those things effectively today?)

The question is no longer if the tired, failed strategies of the past seven years will miraculously yield success; it is if your social media leaders are willing to admit the mistakes of the past, throw out what is not working and chart a new course. The data to build practical and potent social media strategies is not hard to find, but it easy to ignore.

The true secret sauce of social media has never been and will never be to get people to share your brand’s latest viral video or inspirational quote on Instagram. The future belongs to brands that follow the lead of companies like Uber, Nest, Square, Apple, JetBlue, Costco, Trader Joe’s and USAA–brands that get people talking to each other about their differentiated products, customer experience, values, innovation or community commitment rather than about their clever social media posts.

Grab the fire extinguisher, build a social media bonfire and start from scratch. Do this now, and 2016 can finally be the year your brand meaningfully succeeds in social media.

Stop Social Media Marketing

Today, I gave a keynote address at the PR + Social Media Summit in my hometown of Milwaukee. My presentation was entitled “Stop Social Media Marketing (Unless),” and I have embedded the deck at the end of this blog post.

I predict that many CMOs will diminish their support for social media, content and earned media marketing in the next year or two, and when they do, careers will be adversely impacted. If your career relies on Marketing Department support for content or social media marketing, now is the time to take stock of the trends and consider some actions to protect your career. It is possible that you work for the right sort of company for which social media is well aligned for Marketing Department expectations—that’s the “Unless” part of the title–but, as you will see, I believe this is the exception and not the rule.

What is (and is not) Social Media Marketing?

Before we explore where social media marketing works and where it does not, let’s first be clear that the definition of “social media marketing” does not include paid media on social networks. Go ahead and invest in advertising on Facebook and Twitter, just do not call it “social.” The most popular forms of advertising on Facebook today are retargeting and custom audiences, neither of which are remotely social, and less than one in six ad dollars use social data.

I suggest a better definition of Social Media Marketing is this: Content authored or encouraged by the brand and shared by Word of Mouth that creates earned media and delivers on Marketing objectives. This definition excludes a couple of things, such as advertising (which is not social) and consumer content not coaxed by a marketing program (which is not marketing). It also excludes social media programs that fail to deliver on key marketing metrics, and therein is the problem for most brands.

The Earned Media Venn Diagram

A simple Venn diagram explains what works and what does not in Social Media Marketing. The first circle includes what your brand can say to move consumers closer. This does not mean retweets and likes–the fool’s gold of social media marketing–but rather changes in consumer attitude or behavior such as greater awareness, consideration and purchase intent.

The second circle in the Venn diagram is what consumers want to hear from your brand. For years, we have acted as if consumers crave branded content, but the data on this clear; a 2014 Kentico study found that 68% of US consumers “mostly” or “always” ignore brand posts on every social network. The situation is much worse for some categories than others–a 2014 Scratch/Viacom study found that 71% of Millennials would rather go to the dentist than listen to what their banks are saying! If people would rather get a cavity filled than listen to your brand, it’s a good bet your content and social media marketing faces a profound uphill challenge.

Where Social Media Marketing Works

Some brands have an overlap between these two circles of the Earned Media Venn Diagram; most do not. There are three types of companies that have this “magic intersection” between content that helps the brand and that consumers want:

  • Brands in select verticals:  Some categories have built-in consumer interest. For example, sports brands can easily post content that drives engagement and also increases demand for team attire and products. TV shows and movies have an easy time offering content fans will share that also increases ratings and box office receipts. Style brands are another example–in the same way that women eagerly purchase the September issue of Vogue with its 631(!) pages of ads, so too will style-conscious women pay attention to and share the latest pins and posts from their favorite fashion brands. Brands in select verticals enjoy a magic intersection between the content consumers want and the content that drives consideration and sales.
      
  • Brands with purpose:  Consumers may have little interest in what banks have to say, but that does not stop USAA from delivering great engagement and inbound traffic with its posts. This is because USAA has created a brand with a purpose that resonates with its audience. Another example is Chipotle, which has outperformed other brands in the restaurant industry by promoting its commitment to more locally- and organically-sourced ingredients. (Just last quarter, Chipotle delivered a same-store sales increase of 17% in a vertical where almost no brands are able to achieve half that.)
      
  • Brands with better products and services:  Of course, there is always the old-fashioned way of encouraging attention from consumers: Be better than the competition! Apple has no official company profile on either Facebook or Twitter, yet it still beats Samsung when it comes to building buzz. Both companies had product unveilings in early September (Samsung for the new Note and Apple for the iPhone 6), yet despite the fact Samsung has 2,350% more fans, followers and subscribers on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, Apple still delivered far more Word of Mouth about their event and product. Apple does not need social profiles and content to drive WOM; it just needs to continue producing interesting, innovative products that get fans talking.
      

Some companies can publish content that consumers want and delivers on marketing goals, but most brands simply do not have that same opportunity–they have no “magic intersection.” This does not stop them from trying, of course, which is why so many brands stumble with unwelcome, heavy-handed, embarrassing, brand-damaging posts on Facebook and Twitter. 

We entered the social media era suggesting that brands with something to say could use social media to say it; instead, we today have brands with little to say that nonetheless post 4.3 times per day because some consultant told them this was a best practice. Desperate for attention and relevance, these companies continue to invest in content that is delivering neither the scale marketers need nor the content consumers want.

Ironically, even for the best companies, earned media may wither and die in the coming years. In just six months, organic reach on Facebook was halved, and many expect that zero organic reach will soon be the rule on the social network that collects 57% of all social visits. The organic reach game has gotten so tough that Coca-Cola, one of the strongest brands in the world, only earns engagement with 1 in 100,000 of its fans on Facebook. The situation on Twitter is no better; a recent Forrester report notes that the average engagement rate with brand posts on Twitter is just 0.03%–75% less than banner ad clickthough rates today!

Earned media could soon be a thing of the past. What happens to your social media marketing strategies if the content you create and post reaches no one?

Social Media Marketing’s Inability to Deliver Trust, Acquisition or Purchase Conversions

If the prospect of organic reach crumbling to nothing is not enough to worry about, social media marketing has a variety of other problems that marketers have been ignoring: 

  • Trust: Forrester’s 2014 data reveals that people trust brand social media posts 40% less than they do information on brand websites (and, of course, 70% less than recommendations from family and friends). Adobe’s 2013 research found the same–just 2% of US consumers found company social media page best for credibility compared to 17% for company web sites (and 59% for friends, family and coworkers.)
      
  • Acquisition of prospects: Although many marketers continue to view fans and followers as prospects, the Adobe study found that consumers are three times more likely to follow brands from which they already buy than brands from which they aspire to buy. An even more damning study comes from Custora: Studying data from 86 retailers and 72 million customers, Custora found that Facebook and Twitter deliver essentially zero acquisition. While acquisition is best delivered by organic search (16%), CPC (10%) and email (7%), Facebook and Twitter account for just 0.2% and 0.01% respectively. Furthermore, the Customer Lifetime Value delivered by those acquired through Facebook was just average while Twitter was 23% below average.
      
  • Purchase: An IBM study of the online sales generated by 800 retailer websites the week before Black Friday 2013 found that a mere 1% of those sales were generated from social media traffic, essentially unchanged from the year prior. And Monetate recently published its Q2 Ecommerce Quarterly based on 7 billion online shopping experiences–it found that social delivers an add-to-cart rate of just 0.6% (70% less than search), a minuscule conversion rate of 0.12% (70% lower than search) and an average revenue per session of $0.14 (yes, 70% less than search.)

If social media is so poorly equipped to deliver trust, traffic, acquisition and purchases–and is facing declining organic reach–why are marketers increasing their investment in the channel? These are, after all, the metrics that most marketers care about. In a 2013 study by Ascend2, both B2B and B2C marketers reported their top three most common performance metrics are website traffic, quantity of sales leads and conversions–goals against which social media does not deliver. Meanwhile, fewer than half of B2B and B2C marketers measure customer retention, awareness or reputation, which are metrics that align well to social media strategy.

But if social media is poorly matched to Marketing Department objectives, it remains a powerful opportunity for others in the enterprise who do not need to rely on reach and scale to deliver on their goals.  For example, The PR/Corporate Communications function can be successful if it uses social media to create relationships with a few dozen influencers, both traditional ones (journalists) and the new variety (bloggers). Product Development does not need to collaborate with tens of thousands of customers but can work collaboratively to develop new products and services with much smaller subsets of customers and vendors. And Customer Care can achieve success by answering the questions and complaints of a few hundred people in social channels. (Compare that to the average marketing campaign, which would be considered a dismal failure if it only engaged a few hundred people.)

Social Media Marketing on a Collision Course with C-Suite Expectations

For now, CMOs seem to have confidence in social media, but I believe this will change in the next year or two. Social media and content marketing is on a collision course with the C suite.

Recent research by the Fournaise Marketing Group, which was conducted with 1200 CEOs and CMOs, found that 80% of CEOs claim they have lost trust in their marketers. One of the reasons is that “74% of CEOs think Marketers focus too much on the latest marketing trends such as social media – but can rarely demonstrate how these trends will help them generate more business for the company.”

This criticism is, sadly, entirely fair. In just-released data from the 2014 CMO Survey, derived from 351 top US marketers, a mere 15% of CMOs say they have proven the impact of social media quantitatively. Another 40% “have a good qualitative sense of the impact, but not a quantitative impact” and a whopping 45% have “not been able to show the impact yet.” Despite this, CMOs expect to increase social media marketing spending 128% in the next five years. 

If you wonder why the tenure of CMOs is so short compared to the rest of the C-suite, the answer is right there. Less than one in six CMOs know if their social media investments are paying off, yet they still intend to rapidly double that investment!

I predict that increase will not happen. The falling organic reach, low acquisition, microscopic purchase conversion and inability to measure quantitative success will come crashing headlong into the growing pressure on the Marketing Department to demonstrate results. When this collision occurs, will you be the one holding the social media marketing bag? If your career depends on the success of social media or content marketing, now is the time to consider the data, trends and future.

How to Protect Your Social Media Marketing Career

For those in the social media marketing profession, I believe the time has come for a candid assessment. Protect your career by asking three questions:

  • Does your brand have a “magic intersection”? Are you in one of those categories–such as entertainment, sports and style–that has built-in consumer demand for branded content? Or has your company won high levels of loyalty and advocacy with its sense of purpose or by producing products and services that are leaps and bounds better than your competitors? If so, then social media marketing can be an effective channel for the Marketing Department, but if not, then ask…
     
  • Does your firm evaluate its Marketing spend based on reputation and loyalty? When marketing leaders furnish updates, do they lead with Net Promoter Score and measures of repurchase and reputation? Or do they lead with sales, conversions, acquisition and traffic data?  If the former, then social is well aligned to what the organization most cares about, but if it is the latter, then ask one last question….
      
  • Can you control the paid media budget for social? If you can control the ad budget and are really held more accountable for delivering paid media than earned media, then your job is secure (provided you are doing it well). If, however, the ad budget is controlled elsewhere and your job is dedicated solely to content and earned media, I would suggest you have career challenges ahead. It may time to consider one of three options:
  • Redirect: If your social media scorecard is full of non-marketing metrics such as likes, retweets and number of fans, then the time has come for you to lead a change. Do not wait until Marketing leadership begins to question how those useless social metrics tie to Marketing objectives; take the lead and start that conversation today. You may be able to change the conversation and redirect expectations toward the sorts of metrics on which social can realistically deliver.
      
  • Detour: It may be time to consider social media opportunities outside of the Marketing Department. While social may not deliver on typical marketing goals, it certainly aligns well to the needs and expectations of Public Relations, Customer Care, Product Development, Sales and others parts of the organization.
     
  • Exit: Or perhaps it is time to exit social media altogether and consider other career paths where your experience in customer-centricity and innovation can be of great value. In recent years, I have seen social media professionals successfully shift into new careers in Customer Experience, mobile and customer care, for example.

Of course, if your career is in social media marketing, you could choose the fourth option and bury your head into the sand. I hope you will not, because the data is consistent, the trends are in place and the questions about social media marketing effectiveness are only going to rise.

Below is my deck. I welcome your feedback, questions and challenges. 

United Breaks Another Guitar and the Social Media Hype Cycle Comes Full Circle

It was one of the first stories any of us heard about the power of social media and how it was changing brands. In Spring 2008, Dave Carroll got off his United Airlines flight and found his Taylor guitar damaged. He spent nine months trying to get the airline to make it right, and in frustration he wrote a catchy tune and produced a funny YouTube video recounting his story.

The rest is history. Or is it?

Is “United Breaks Guitars” a lesson in how consumers are wresting control from brands, or just an entertaining tale?  Has Dave Carroll’s saga been repeated so often because it is a powerful omen of how brands must evolve or because that story proved to be a successful sales device, raising fears and encouraging the purchase of social media services?

I have been asking these questions for years, but I think I finally got my answer Friday night at a terrific Ellis Paul concert where he described how United broke his beloved Taylor guitar and is refusing to pay for repairs. Déjà vu! We have come full circle, from one identical event to another. This furnishes us an opportunity to reexamine the “United Breaks Guitars” tale and what it really means to United Airlines and your brand.

The United Breaks Guitars Fable

Before we get to Paul’s recent experience, let’s revisit why Carroll’s 2009 YouTube video became such a legendary social media fable. You already know the story, I’m sure; if not, search “United Breaks Guitars” for the 1.8 million(!) articles and blog posts on the topic. Each recaps how United refused to do right by Carroll until faced with an avalanche of bad PR in both social and mainstream media. It was only then that the airline was embarrassed into offering Carroll compensation.

Had the story ended there, the moral would have been concise and accurate: One individual, given enough talent and creativity (plus, let’s face it, a great deal of luck) can cause so much pain that a brand must take action.

But that is not where the tale stopped. To professionals in the nascent field of social media (including yours truly), Dave Carroll was not just a skilled and creative guy whose unique talents and situation permitted a special way to elevate his gripe. He became, instead, a powerful everyman, effortlessly wielding free social media tools in the same way every consumer can.

This single consumer’s actions were inflated into an apocryphal lesson: “United suffered grievous brand damage thanks to the new power of Word of Mouth (WOM), and your brand will face the same fate unless you change (and buy our listening/strategy/consulting services)!”

Did “United Breaks Guitars” Break United?

For years, I have sought evidence “United Breaks Guitars” represented something more than one guy’s creative solution to a customer service problem. Yes, United eventually acted to make the situation go away, but was the company really harmed and transformed due to social media WOM? If so, there is little proof.

For example, the Wikipedia page for “United Breaks Guitars” suggests that United’s stock dropped in the four days following the video’s release. Of course, it is ridiculous to correlate a few days’ stock variation to a single cause, and if you instead evaluate United’s stock over a longer period, you find that in the six months following the release of Carroll’s video, United’s stock outperformed competitors’ by more than 100%.

Another claim repeated time and again is that people who saw this video lost trust in United and chose competitors’ flights. That is the standard WOM assertion following any and every social PR “crisis,” but is it true? It turns out it is very easy to get people to watch funny videos or retweet brand-shaming tweets, but it is much more difficultto change buying behaviors. In presentations over the course of years, I have stood in front of thousands of people and asked a simple question:

As a result of seeing the “United Breaks Guitar” video (and not because of your own personal experiences), have you ever opted for a more expensive or less convenient itinerary to avoid flying United? 

Not one person has yet fessed up to altering their purchase behaviors as a result of seeing the video. You’re not surprised, are you? After all, you saw the video and did not change your airline purchasing habits, either. In the end, we all buy airfare the same way, choosing whichever carrier offers a route from Point A to Point B that is cheapest, easiest and provides the right loyalty miles. If we hate and avoid United, it is because of our own experiences and not because of a YouTube video.

There is no sign that “United Breaks Guitars” impacted consumer behaviors or hurt the airline’s business, but did that video affect changes within the company? That is the claim oft repeated: United learned its lesson and transformed itself! As conveyed in the book “Empowered” by Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler, “United has changed its policies. Baggage claim agents now have a little more discretion with customers whose special situations warrant the company looking into the claim more closely; United uses Dave Carroll’s video in it’s training.”

By repeating the story of how United had learned and transformed, were people like Josh, Ted and I (and many others) redefining the way companies must operate in the social era? Or were we merely cogs in the United Airlines PR machine, helping to turn an embarrassing brand situation into a positive corporate message? Ellis Paul’s recent United experience makes it clear which is the truth.

United Breaks Guitars, Part II

Ellis Paul is one of my favorite music artists. I regularly listen to his folk-pop music while working and commuting. Paul is a terrific storyteller, an amazing songwriter, and he performs with a passion and wild abandon that I find breathtaking. His songs, such as Maria’s Beautiful Mess, have appeared in more than 50 compilations and movie soundtracks such as “Me, Myself, and Irene” and “Shallow Hal.”

Last month, Ellis was flying to a show in Portland. He got off his United flight and found that his expensive and beloved Taylor guitar, nicknamed Guinness, had been cracked in transit. Paul did what any of us would do in the same situation; he posted on Facebook, filed a claim and wrote the president of United. In response, Paul received a call from someone in charge of baggage handling in Portland, but all he offered was an apology. United will not pay for the repair, which Paul estimates will run around $1,500.

This is not a mere possession to Paul. He didn’t find Guinness; the guitar found him. Paul borrowed it while performing at the legendary El Reno Vintage Guitar Shop, and you can see his first performance with the magic guitar on YouTube. As he tells the story, he had no choice whether to buy the expensive, beautiful instrument. Even though it is now damaged, Ellis continues to perform with Guinness, duct tape covering the crack caused by United’s baggage handling. That will do for a while, but it must eventually be repaired.

Where’s United’s Social Transformation?

Paul’s 2014 situation could not be more identical to Carroll’s 2008 United issues, and the airline is dealing with it in exactly the same way. If United learned a lesson, changed its policies and revised its training, there is absolutely no evidence. Given the chance to prove how it transformed, United has failed. Just as it did five years ago, the company is “handling” the situation, not resolving it.

With Ellis Paul’s United Airlines disappointment, we have come full circle in the social media hype cycle–two duplicate events separated by six years–only this time we do not have to buy the hype. We may have believed that Carroll’s experience transformed United, but Paul’s experience demonstrates otherwise.

The most provocative question is not whether United was transformed by social media, since it clearly was not, but why not? As social media pros hype the transformative powers of WOM, one of the things they conveniently omit is that offering better service to customers costs something. In many cases, investments in better service and improved WOM will provide a return, but that opportunity is far from universal for every brand in every category.

United could immediately pay every damage claim (or offer more legroom or give every flyer a free alcoholic beverage) and generate a lot of positive sentiment in social media, but that would also increase costs and prices. It really comes down to financial calculations: By treating customers better, will positive social media attract more customers despite higher prices? By treating customers badly, does negative WOM result in lost customers despite lower prices?

United doesn’t need to wonder the answer to these question; it got its answer back in 2009 when you, I and everyone else watched “United Breaks Guitars” and changed absolutely nothing about the way we purchase travel. The fact United has not changed its practices is not because it does not care but because we do not. Social media changes nothing by itself; if consumers are not willing or able to change their spending habits, then social media crises like “United Breaks Guitars” will always be more smoke than fire.

This is not to say that WOM is never powerful, but that its power is not uniform. How often have you searched for customer ratings of airlines in the past year? And how often have you sought customer ratings for hotels? Your very different answers to these questions are why hotels thrive or struggle based on WOM and airlines do not. Because consumers probe online reviews when making lodging decisions, WOM matters; one study found that if a hotel increases its rating by one point in Travelocity’s five-point rating system, the probabilities of being booked increase by 14% and price can be increased by up to 11% without affecting demand. There is the power of WOM for you!

For too long, we have used “United Breaks Guitars” as a blunt weapon to put the fear of WOM God into brands, but looking back with clarity and hindsight, we can see the real morals of this story are:

  • Social media professionals need to stop believing every story told by brands and bring greater critical thinking to our field. “United Breaks Guitars” was not a social transformation success but a PR success: Dave Carroll became an author and public speaker, and United’s PR team turned a painful PR problem into a wonderful–and fictional–story of transformation and customer commitment. The fact “United Breaks Guitars” was inflated into an endlessly repeated cautionary tale for every brand says more about the social media industry than it does about WOM.
      
  • The way brands treat customers in the real world has far more impact on WOM than what they do in social media. United’s problem was not that it failed to reply appropriately in social media but that it did not treat Dave Carroll right from the start. Once he launched that video and it began to accumulate hundreds of thousands of views, it was too late for United–no social media strategy or program could save the company at that point.
      
  • Listening and responding to customer needs in social media isn’t transformative but business as usual. Any brand of sufficient scale will see hundreds of tweeted complaints; that is business as usual, and those tweets need a business-as-usual response, the same as you would manage the same inquiry via email or on the phone. Social media can prove transformative for companies, but only if it changes the way they operate. Merely responding to consumers on Twitter is not a transformation; it’s just good, smart business.
      
  • There is an exception to every rule, and that exception sometimes demands special treatment. Every now and then, a single customer can rise above the noise and generate enough attention to force a company to take special action. The reasons may have less to do with WOM damaging business and more with the fact these rare situations increase customer service costs, consume time from PR executives and interfere with the company’s ability to deliver its intended PR and marketing messages.

    This is no different than in the past–businesses have always treated important or influential customers differently–but today someone can gain influence through the right combination of skill, talent, creativity, luck and perseverance. YouTube, Twitter and Facebook are littered with millions of customer gripes, and not all demand the attention that Dave Carroll got. He was not a famous musician before “United Breaks Guitars,” but United made him a star, and that’s why he eventually got more attention from United than many others who have since attempted the same thing.

Help Make Ellis Paul One Of Those Exceptional Situations

If you are so inclined, please tweet @United and ask them to do right by @ellispaulsongs. With your help, we can get United to do right by one musician and get one guitar repaired.

I have no illusions that spurring United to action will mean anything more than an appropriate resolution to one customer situation. If they respond, it will not represent a new paradigm, nor will it mean United has become a new and better company. All it will mean is that one worthy musician got what he deserved from a large corporation.

And if you will not do it for me or Ellis Paul, then do it for United. Ellis knows Dave Carroll and is preparing his own YouTube song with the hopes it becomes “United Breaks Guitars, Round 2.” Perhaps a few tweets of pain now will prevent United from a great deal more pain later. Better United hears from you on Twitter today than read about it on CNN or HuffPost a few months from now!

. @united @ellispaulsongs went thru normal channel; got apology but no offer to pay for repairs. Do you really want United Breaks Guiters 2?
— Augie Ray (@augieray) May 31, 2014

Déjà vu? @united broke but won’t repair @ellispaulsongs’ beloved guitar. If you think they should, please RT.
— Augie Ray (@augieray) May 31, 2014

Please RT to let @united know they should repair @ellispaulsongs’ guitar. Why is doing the right thing so hard for some brands?
— Augie Ray (@augieray) May 31, 2014

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