Zen and the Art of Social Media

Now that Twitter is opening up to sponsored tweets (see below) and Facebook is confirming the future of sponsored stories, I’m getting abut it’s been on my mind

It’s not that I mind ads; I find them interesting. And I’ve always enjoyed engaging with my favorite companies online. But now that the social networks are pushing these new ad formats to companies already enjoying mildly aggressive social media campaigns, it’s become a bit much.

As a marketer and as a consumer, I’m a strong believer in earned media. If something commercial is popping up on my newsfeed, it had better be something that someone’s shared to me. There’s a place for paid advertising, and it’s to the side where I can easily disregard it. The newsfeed is supposed to be filled with things I’ve opted into seeing, and that’s no longer the status quo. Soon my feeds will be filled with ads, all expecting me to engage with them in the same way I would stories by my friends.

I’m definitely a social media lover, but all these ads are starting to make me want to leave my social networks, and they certainly don’t make me want to buy anything. Earn your media or run ads, but please don’t cross pollinate.

It’s hard to imagine going to a marketing conference and running into the social media person for Al-Shabab, but now it seems that just might happen.

That’s right. Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen, the Somalian group designated as a terrorist organization and most recently in the papers for banning aid workers from an already struggling Somalia, is now on Twitter.

Obviously you’re already scanning for the link, so here it is.

I’ve already spoken in favor of companies bolstering transparency by moving their customer service to the social media sphere, but there’s a danger there for the consumer; just because you’re tweeting openly doesn’t mean you’re tweeting honestly.

It’s less scary when your airline clouds the truth than it is when an allegedly brutal political organization does it, but the fact remains: there’s a certain trust that exists within social media channels that can be easily manipulated. Perhaps it’s my own bias, but I trust a brand I can have a conversation with a lot more than one that doesn’t acknowledge the humanity behind it.

Now, obviously Twitter has been a breeding ground for political rhetoric for quite some time now, and it’s not for me to say that Obama deserves a Twitter and Al-Shabab does not. In their own, though visibly biased, words, “If #US has a virtual embassy in #Tehran, why can’t HSM maintain a virtual presence to impart the reality of Somali warfare?”

Still, groups like Al-Shabab taking to Twitter does worry me (insert comment about western bias here). It worries me because social media holds a similar power to music. Like music, social media is both public and meaningful (in that it conveys a message). It’s emotional and communicative. It allows people from very different backgrounds to connect. It makes us feel like we’re part of something and because of that holds an incredible power to influence our decisions.

If you’re not sure why that’s a bad thing, you might have forgotten about Simon Bikindi, the Rwandan singer whose music and lyrics incited people to join the Interahamwe, who then slaughtered almost one million people during the genocide.

It’s important to remember that behind every Twitter account is an agenda, and that we mustn’t take tweets or posts at face value.

For small businesses, this is why social media must necessarily be founded upon a strong PR campaign [Edit: A friend on Twitter pointed out that it’s not a good PR campaign that matters, but real public relations]. Your tweets tell only part of the story. It doesn’t matter if you’re tweeting about caramel macchiatos when the first twenty news articles on google are about you cutting off peoples’ hands and killing aid workers.

Maybe you can fool people into thinking you’re something you’re not through your Twitter account, but let’s hope, as good global citizens, that this isn’t the case.

If you’re someone I’ve worked with, lived with, or spoken to in the last few months, or one of the kind employees at ZocDoc that has to read and respond to my fanmail, you probably know what a big fan of them I am.

In case you’ve never heard of them (in which case you’re terribly behind the times), ZocDoc is an amazing platform for booking medical appointments online. It’s definitely a cool concept, but what really attracted me to them is their amazing customer service, much of which is conducted through Facebook and Twitter.

Opening up your Facebook and Twitter to customer support can be terrifying; it’s a lot like hanging out your dirty laundry for the whole world to see. But for a company like ZocDoc, it’s pure gold. Since their marketing budget is mainly spent on customer service, according to founder Cyrus Massoumi in a Bloomberg Businessweek interview earlier this year, the reaction and engagement they receive is overwhelmingly positive.

Despite how important it is to keep the conversation in your channel (and to develop a conversation at that) I’ve spoken to many small business owners reticent to do the same; it’s likely that many are afraid of something like the PayPal Debacle happening.

If you missed it, PayPal’s poor dealings with Regretsy caught the attention of the Internet, and fairly soon afterwards a mob armed with e-pitchforks stormed their wall (which was disabled and then reappeared with all of those posts missing).

Awkward. And terrifying. No one wants 10,000 angry posts on their wall, right?

The moral of the story is that moving your customer service into social media channels necessitates truly great customer service. It’s a solid business move (this great mashable article explains why), but more companies should be following ZocDoc’s example by backing it up with excellence.

Here at MyPRGenie, we try to help small businesses bolster their image online by offering tools to simplify more traditional PR and social media, but it’s up to each individual business to decide how far they want to go. Getting into social media is a commitment, and when you take your customer service into those avenues, you’re telling the world that you’re confident enough in your product and your staff to tell the world about it.