More Sharing of Social Media Business Failures Please!
Written by Robert Bacal | 
| 
| 
| Social Media Topics - Future of Social Media |
If we could identify businesses who have tried and failed or given up on social media as a business tool, would we be far ahead of the game? Would we understand better the strengths and weaknesses of the tools we have?
You bet. In fact, we're probably at the "end" of usefulness for repeating the same tired examples of social media success -- Dell, Starbucks, Best Buy. There is little actionable information there for businesses unless they are named, Dell, Starbucks and Best Buy.
Knowing what not to do, and what doesn't work is at least as important as what might work. Unfortunately, few businesses are willing to trumpet their failures, so while we have visible loud successes, wwe also have invisible failures from which we could learn.
Do they exist, these failures? Oh yes. The invisibles number in the tens of thousands, if account abandonment rates on Twitter are any reflection. Some brief research we conducted looked at whether smaller businesses were trying Twitter, and then abandoning it, and suprisingly, many of the abandoned business accounts had thousands of followers, and had emitted thousands of tweets.
We won't hear from them, at least not on social media channels.
Too bad.
Well, if you have tried things that didn't work on social media (and I bet most things don't) let's hear from you. Comment.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
 |
| Subscribe to Work911 Ezine |
| Visit this group |
Learn From Competition?
MicroThoughts
Some believe you should monitor and emulate your competition on social media. Here's a thought:
If you look at your competitors, will you end up looking like your competitors? The ongoing issue in any marketing or even in developing a network is how to standout FROM the competition, and not to BE like the competition.
Social Media Peril
The biggest peril facing social media users and businesses has to do with trust. Anyone can be anybody they choose in social media since there are no even close to adequate methods to verify identities. The peril lies with users who, after interacting with someone they think they know, will believe they know them well enough to trust them as if they had known them for a long time. It's a dangerous situation on many levels, and I wish social media proponents would start educating people as to the dangers. Even if a person is who they say, we have no idea of the vested interests and agendas, and that's one reason to verify anything important heard via social media.
Twitter Skank(Y)
Friends1
In order of stability and connection strength, (strongest first) friendships/relationships can be categorized as 1) unconditional 2) semi-conditional 3) transactional and 4) User Based. Social media users tend to confuse these, and believe the weakest types of ties are actually much stronger than they are.
Social Media Frauds
You know someone isn't worth following if they retweet compliments given to them by others. They are either frauds who are better at self-promotion than they are in their alleged area of expertise, or they are so insecure that they have to -- just have to, make sure that everyone knows how wonderful other people think they are. Hint: Run away. These folks are like empty drums. Bang on the outside and you get a cool sound. Empty inside -- nothing to offer.
Full Social Media Bust Feed - Atom
Social Media Bust Articles