frankly speaking

Misunderstanding Social Media

There was a recent article in AdAge about USocial promising to deliver all the Twitter and Facebook users/follwers you could ever want. All you have to do is pay USocial a small CPL fee (in quantities of 1000 users) and you can give the appearance to the whole world that you too are popular.

Let’s explore why this is a prime example of being a HORRIBLE social media tactic:

1) It’s disingenuous. Whenever you buy media, you’re taking people from one area of the internet to another area usually through some sort of advertisement (keywords or banners) that has a value propisition  that users may be interested in. What USocial is proposing to do for its isn’t really a solid media buying tactic. Simply telling USocial that you’re interested in pumping up your friend/follower count simply to make yourself look credible. In the end, it will have the oppisite effect

2) Your new users will get annoyed. Let’s say, for example, that I buy 1,000 new followers for my twitter account and start inserting promotional tweets into my twitter feed for the sole purpose of making money by distributing a message for another advertiser. If these followers are worth their salt, they’ll start leaving as soon as I make the first promotional tweet.

3) The new users that you do receive will be questionable at best. This is a variation of the point above. Let’s say that you buy users/follwers from USocial or a similar agency. How do you know that those users will buy the product that you’re trying to sell. For all you know, the users that you are buying are 60 year old males, living in Nebraska, praying that the government sends his next medicare check.

The article goes onto describe how Digg negligently allows paid placement from the Marines and the Mormon Church (these organizations pay USocial to vote up their stories on Digg). This is another prime example of two companies that a) don’t get social media and b) outsource it to an agency that says it does social media, but really doesn’t.

If you’re going to invest in developing a social media strategy (and you should), it’s going to take time, money and the right person (who knows what they’re doing) to manage it.