In yet another example of why corporations don’t understand what social media really is, we now see that in a Forrester survey, corporate blogs are finishing dead last amongst eighteen categories as a source of information. The reason? The blogs are being perceived as being too promotional, as pushing positive stories on the company, its products and services. Gee. What a surprise.
Only 16% of respondents felt that corporate blogs bred a decent level of trust. Email form people one knows was the highest with 77%. This tells me four things.
1) Corporations don’t get social media. OK, that’s obvious. But with all the amount of speeches, presentations, and white papers on this stuff, you’d figure that some of the common sense guidelines would get through. Obviously not.
Josh Bernhoff of Forrester observed, “Everybody thinks their blog is an exception.” Exactly. Regardless of whomever is running the blog operation, you’ve got a corporate culture that doesn’t see beyond itself to see what the blogging culture – and as a whole, that of social media – is about. Blogging is seen as a marketing apparatus that is corporate/product/service centric and not customer centric. That’s the wrong way to go. Corporate blogs have to be customer centric first. Only after establishing a customer centric style blog could a company then add a promotional flavor to it…in limited quanities done in informal language. No exceptions.
2) Social media strategists are yet to be respected. Ouch. Whether it is department heads of communication or CXOs setting the environment for the company blog, one thing is for sure: the message that many of us have been espousing for a few years now is not getting listened to. It’s my guess is that it is being ignored, hence Bernoff’s comment that every company thinks it’s the exception.
Social media is relatively new and I’d bet that many of the real consultants on this – the ones that know what they’re talking about are either relatively young and are automatically ignored by more senior staffers and officials or are too far removed from inside decsion makers and are filited through traditional types who are basically yesmen (and yeswomen) to the people upstairs.
Most of what social media types now say is largely theoretical. Accurate theories in my opinion, but theories nevertheless. We talk amongst ourselves and we listen to one another. But the key officers in the companies that are our clients DON’T listen. At least at the rate they should. I personally don’t really follow any corporate blogs. Maybe I should. Maybe we all should and then pass to one another those that justify the findings in the survey. Maybe we should give the corporate bloggers a chance to change their ways and be less promotional. If we don’t then maybe we should go on the attack. That’s because we’re defending our industry. Which leads me to point #3.
3) This could be fatal to most corporate blogging efforts. Don’t think so? I do. For sure, we’ll see many successful blogs. But I’m betting that for those that don’t adopt the correct customer centric approach, we’ll see abandonment of efforts and then conclusive decsions that blogging doesn’t work or that blogging isn’t for them.
Try to tell one of your clients or perhaps a prospective client that went this route and floundered to look at things differently and nudge them into what is the right direction? Fuggedaboutit. It won’t work. They won’t listen. They’ve been burned by their own stupidity and arrogance and won’t want to hear anymore of it – especially by someone that they perceive to be less experienced in corporate communications.
4) We must be brave and challenge and say things that prospective clients don’t want to hear. It doesn’t have to be arrogance on our part, but we’re going to have to tell the person on the other side of the table that they’re wrong, that they’re not the exception, and that the way they want to do it will fail. That’s be cause they are wrong, they aren’t the exception, and the way they will do it will fail.
We’ll need to back it up and then not back down. Because 16% is far too low of a trust percentage of what we espouse. Those theories we espouse are worth more than that.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Part of the problem is some of these “strategists” either don’t actually believe in this stuff – they see it as another way to separate the client from their $$$ – or they are true believers who don’t understand how business works, the needs of the enterprise or how to educate a client on why this is different.
I have seen on multiple occasions the evil and the clueless “using” social media for their clients. Without a profound appreciation for the user and a “pay it forward” attitude, these efforts are doomed to disintegrate on the users’ shields – and hurt other efforts because the users see it as “yet another way to market at us”.
Its time we start talking about this. SoMe is moving out of its infancy and experiment phase. Clients know they need it. Agencies need to do the right thing or stay out of the way. Fighting against ghostblogging, campaign thinking, crappy execution and lack of committment isn’t good, its critical.
Social Media, like anything done well, takes time, and effort and love.
Thanks for this post. It’s important.
Thanks for the contribution here Sean!
Are you saying (or does this go along with your thinking) that many strategist push the concept of a corporate blog on a client and don’t instruct/insist their client on the right way to do it. That’s because they want their fee not matter what. So now they’ve helped XYZ Corp. establish their corporate blog…enabling them to get more clients (read: more cash) where they’ll be doing a similar lousy job…and keep on getting paid to do so?
That’s a long question, but I think you bring up a great point.
But does Abraham Harrison understand social media? Judging by your methods, no. Behind the facade of legitimacy, you are spamming blog authors from multiple email addresses on behalf of the clients you represent. You claim to be in the business of reputation management. What does it do to the reputation of charities such as The Fresh Air Fund to be seen to be employing spammers to push their message?
Multiple identities, no opt-outs, and the inevitable follow-up one week later on the premise that you were worried your original message didn’t get through or that you were re-sending because your servers were ‘acting kind of funky’. Your methods and style might be a little more sophisticated that the viagra pushers, and some might regard your company as a legitimate one, but you’re still a nasty bunch of individuals raping the blogosphere for email addresses to spam.
This blog proudly states it’s blocked over 39,000 spam comments. How ironic, you don’t like receiving spam, you’re only happy to create and send it to other people.
You won’t publish this comment, but just so you know, there are going to be consequences.
Anonymous
There. It is published.
Your personal attack on the people of Abraham Harrison is unfair. We’re not a nasty bunch of individuals raping anything.
In our outreach efforts we are instructed to write that we are contacting “on behalf of”.
I don’t know what you mean by “multiple addresses”.
Follow ups are follow ups. It is commonly done in PR. In the offline world it is often done within 24 hours. We give people an entire week (as you pointed out). Sometimes people receive hundreds of emails a day. They may have missed the original message. So we try recontacting them on behalf of our clients.
I don’t view one extra email as being spam.
You’ve threatened us. Or at least the business started by Chris Abraham and Mark Harrison. And you did it anonymously. How about some transparency?
Now, I’m engaging you. That’s the true spirit of social media, don’t you think? I’m wondering if you would be wiling to reveal yourself (you probably won’t) and further engage.
I had the guts to publish this. I challenge you to have the guts to reveal yourself and develop a dialogue.
Anonymous
It’s 4:00 P.M. here and I have to head out for a few hours. Hope to hear from you. Hope you reveal yourself…transparency.
Well respect to you for engaging me, I’ll give you that. But it doesn’t alter the fact that you’re in the business of sending out unsolicited emails. You don’t know what I mean by multiple addresses? You really don’t?
dan@anamigo.com
sara@freshair.org
dsevilla@survivorcorps.org
ckelley@imcworldwide.org
cabraham@abrahamharrison.com
All originating from your IP address, all your staff using client domain names. I don’t know what you spin this as in your own mind, but believe me, these are multiple email addresses.
You think the attack on your business is unfair – and that just proves how far down the road you’ve gone. You’re bothering people with multiple emails they never asked for or wanted, offering them no way of unsubscribing, and you think people don’t have a right to be upset by that. I bet you don’t even think it’s spam, because to people like you, spam is what other people send, while you of course are distributing ‘online public relations, publicity, and reputation management’ emails. I know Chris Abraham likes his politics judging from the Sarah Palin email he sent to everybody on the mailing list, so I’m sure he’ll appreciate the irony of this being your very own ‘lipstick on a pig’ moment. Just because you call your mass-distributed unsolicited emails ‘PR’, it doesn’t stop them from being spam. Lipstick on a pig.
Maybe you’d argue that because you’re only sending one email every few days, that isn’t spam either. The Internet might be far from perfect as it is, but if every company behaved like yours, it would be chaos. Incidentally, at the very least by failing to provide a method of unsubscribing from your company’s mailing list in your mass emails you are actually breaking the law in my country, not that this unfortunately matters because you’re not based in it, but probably better not to come here for a visit, because you never know.
As far as the challenging the anonymity of my post, I feel you’ve missed the entire point of the Internet. People have the right to their anonymity – and what’s more they’re protective of it precisely because there are companies like yours running around the Internet trying to harvest their email addresses and other private details in order to push their own commercial interests. Why on Earth would I reveal my identity to a company which is spamming me? How do I know that’s not going to lead to my address becoming even more abused? If the best you can do to defend your company’s spamming practices is to attack one of your victim’s anonymity then it just makes you look terribly weak I’m afraid.
Still, the fact that you engaged me gives me some hope that you might have some decency left in you, but don’t you see that what you’re doing is wrong? Your emails are becoming more frequent and God forbid you should get more clients because then I can only imagine it will get worse. I only have basic spam filters on my email – so I can block one address at a time, but you keep using new ones. Do I have to resort to going through SpamCop and other systems to get your servers blacklisted? Do I have to contact your clients and complain?
If you consider that a threat to your business then I’m sorry, but you’re bothering me and you won’t go away. You can act the victim if you like, but believe it or not, most reasonable people seem to take the view that when commercial enterprises send out successive unsolicted emails to private individuals, it’s the private individual that is the victim, not the company which insists on sending them.
If you’re not spammers, provide a method of unsubscribing from your mailing list – and preferably one in which recipients’ email addresses don’t get reused every time you set up a new campaign with a different email address.
You say you’re not ‘a nasty bunch of individuals raping anything’. No, of course you’re a great bunch of people – model citizens – harvesting personal email addresses from the Internet which you then send multiple emails to from multiple addresses which the recipient has no method of stopping. How could anyone possibly have concluded this was a nasty thing to be doing? Go on, take a guess.
I am totally open about the fact that we’re doing this work:
http://ahllc.eu/thank-you-again-survivor-corps-bloggers
http://ahllc.eu/thank-you-fresh-air-fund-bloggers
http://ahllc.eu/thank-you-all-who-supported-international-medical-corps
Totally open and actually complete proud!
Thanks for sharing. We have nothing to hide.
I actually spent a bunch of time searching for bloggers myself today and to be honest, if someone doesn’t want to have their identity openly known and shared on their blog, then we just move on.
You have to be very open with your public email on your public site for us to ever engage you. If you publish your email and have a public persona, then we’re happy to say hello and ask for your help.
So, I appreciate your engagement and I am happy to chat with you! Happy holidays!
Chris
PS: Actually, I am super proud about Anamigo, too: http://twitter.com/chrisabraham/status/1061845401 — so cool!
PPS: Anonymous, why would you have your email or anything about you on your public site if you want to avoid contact? That is my question. Pray tell!
Anonymous
I have to say, I love your passion. I sort of wish I could meet you. I bet you’re an original thinker and a true idealist. But we’re not in the same country and you’re probably not much for any of us on this end.
See, what you did was make Chris Abraham super proud. You’ve gone and made his day. That wasn’t your intention of course, but he’s very happy now. Talk about unintended consequences.
But you know what? You have a point. We must be driving you crazy. You get an email from dan@anamigo.com, then you block it, then you get an email from sara@freshair.org, then you block it, then you get an email from dsevilla@survivorcorps.org, then you block it, then you get an email from ckelley@imcworldwide.org, then you block it, then you get an email from, cabraham@abrahamharrison.com which you block but not before he sends you another one…this time about Sarah Palin.
It’s like you’re strapped to a seat and you’re being forced to watch a bad movie. Over and over again. : (
Does that help?
I think Anonymous is assuming I am being sneaky. I’m not. The only reason we use the domain and the brand of some of our clients is twofold:
1) We are consultants. We’re hired as social media PR consultants by organizations and companies and so we act on the company’s behalf as the company — and are brought on board to work intimately with their communications team as social media PR experts. This is the company’s choice. When we negotiate the campaign we ask, “would you like us to do the outreach on behalf of you or would you like us to do the outreach as you?” Most companies prefer to be perceived as having their own SoMe team on-staff. And, obviously, it is important to keep all of the focus on the organization and none of it on us at Abraham Harrison — we prefer to not compete for attention with the brand we are promoting.
2) KISS — Keeping is Simple Most choose “as them” because there is less confusion as to who is communicating — our client, not us — and why and how and so forth.
We have been invited on board as a temporary service, so for all intents and purposes we are communicating as the organization. Everyone in the organization knows who we are and what we’re doing. We have the sort of expertise that people within the organization do not posses so we act on their behalf.
So, it certainly is not intentionally to be sneaky or to get around email blocks or anything else. It is just that we offer both: outreaches as the organization and outreaches on behalf of the organization and almost all choose the former. And, these organizations and companies sign off on everything all along the way.
And, like I said, I am proud of the work we do because what we do is 100% earned media, which means each and every bloggers who posts about our clients do it out of the goodness of their own hearts.
And that makes me even prouder!