Behind the Buzz posts a list of the “9 worst practices in social media.” Communicators should take note, as this list is focused on social media strategies that just don’t work. The nine worst practices, paraphrased by me with commentary in bold, are:
- Create a fake site — today’s Web readers will sniff out and kill a fake site faster than you can create it.
- Publish a fake blog with fake writers — WalMart still gets buzz from this fiasco (see first bullet for why).
- Ghost post for your company’s living caricature — I believe PR folks should encourage executives to blog, but don’t bother with those cute little cartoon characters (remember how annoying Microsoft’s Clippy was? He’d be worse if he had a blog).
- Post template comments from said caricature – see last bullet. no matter how “cute” it sounds, it’s not … unless maybe you’re promoting Disney to a set of tweens.
- Astroturf — fake grassroots support is still fake, and it’s insulting
- Disrespect bloggers/treat bloggers as second class citizens — as the lines between traditional media and bloggers continue to blur, you need to be very careful when tiering your outreach list. Don’t assume you can pitch the WSJ with an exclusive and then get day-of coverage from some bloggers.
- Spam bloggers with the cookie cutter release — the spray and pray mentality never worked with traditional reporters, and it doesn’t work with bloggers.
- Ignore criticism — one of the driving tenants of social media is fostering a conversation which, by definition, is two-way. That means that you need to embrace feedback, even when you don’t agree with it. Often, it’s a great starting point to win over a key influencer who will then create a lot of positive exposure for you.
- Have no social media plan — this one’s obvious, but the post goes on to point out that sometimes, your social media plan can be simply “to listen”
What I like about this post is that it’s a good list of things to avoid. Unfortunately, we’re still figuring out how to best integrate social media into PR and communications so there isn’t a list of rules. But, as a community, we’ve discovered several strategies that just don’t work while recognizing that everyone needs to pay attention to social media.
Wondering how to insert social media into your ongoing PR program? I’ll dig into that topic tomorrow!
