1. 7 Deadly Sins
of Social Media
Marketing
Dante’s seventh circle of hell was reserved for errant social
media marketers. Seriously — #gettngslizzerd? The end is nigh.
If you want to avoid this fate, you’ve come to the right place. This
tome of social media wisdom will wash the scales from your eyes
and set you on the straight path to repentance.

2. Tethering 1
Warnings Repenting
At Argyle, we base a lot of our product development de- Worry not! With a willing heart (and the right social me-
cisions on our ability to put ourselves in the clients’ shoes. dia tools), repentance is at hand. First, make sure you’re
The better we can understand their problems, workflow, using an enterprise-class social media management sys-
aspirations, etc., the better we can build a product that tem with a social inbox. A good social inbox will save all
suits their needs. interactions from customers and prospects so that you
can return to your desk and slog through them on your
Through the course of these client interactions, we often schedule. Throw in email notifications for particularly
hear that it’s hard for social media marketers to find time high-sensitivity keywords and you’ll be on top of things
to think strategically about social media marketing. The but still able to take a step back.
typical reason cited is that they’re “just so busy engaging!”
Once you have the tools lined up, it’s all about breathing.
We call this tethering—marketers get so glued to the re- In... out... in... out. Now please, put down that TweetDeck.
al-time stream and never step away to look at the bigger
Jeremiah Owyang:
picture. It’s hard to keep your eyes on your feet and the
horizon at the same time, after all. Altimeter
Recommended Reading
what a dreamboat!
Group Analyst Jeremiah Owyang calls this
The Two Career Paths of the Corporate Social Strategist
phenomenon the “social media helpdesk,”
A groundbreaking report by The Altimeter Group out-
which is a great way to describe the result.
lining how to keep your career - and your company’s
If you get overwhelmed with customer in-
social presence - from becoming the “social media
quires and become exclusively reactive, you’re officially
help desk”.
customer support.
Your job as a social media marketer is not to respond to
every tweet and comment you get. Your job is to drive
business outcomes — Awareness, Trial, Churn, Hit Rate,
Customer Satisfaction, and Loyalty. If you’re being swept
away by the stream but don’t know how your efforts are
affecting your organization’s bottom line, swim to the
nearest bank.

3. Tempting Fate 2
A Cautionary Madlib:
Oh snap! corrective actions, and the simple mistake snowballs into
Kenneth Cole Nestle a PR-pocalypse-ageddon. Other times, companies suf-
Pizza Hut Your Company fer foot-in-the-mouth encounters simply because the
expectations for employees weren’t set to begin with.
...was D-U-M dumb when they... This is the same reason we teach children that burners
published that tweet deleted that comment on stoves are hot. Without a little heads up, it’s easy to
pissed off a customer that thing you did... get burned.
with100k followers
According to Jeremiah Owyang’s recent study, Social
It proved beyond all doubt that they... readiness: how advanced companies prepare, approxi-
don’t understand social media. mately 76% of social media crises over the past 10
ARE TOO BUSY ENGAGING! years could have been lessened or completed avoided.
don’t like their customers. How, you might ask? Plan for success from the start.
don’t eat their vegetables.
don’t eat their customers.
Admit it - you’ve pointed and laughed just like the rest of
us, delighted with schadenfreude as an iconic brand gets
scorched by the social media judge and jury.
And having tempted fate just like the rest of us, what
have you done to make sure that your company isn’t the
next laughing stock?
The marketers that work for these very large brands are,
for the most part, educated, smart professionals with
only the best intentions. Sometimes mistakes just hap-
pen, often as a function of systems. Someone makes an
honest mistake or a snap decision, there aren’t any busi-
ness controls or feedback loops to provide oversight or http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremiah_owyang/6098563294/

4. Repenting
A social media marketing policy is an easy way to address
the “tempting fate” problem. A simple set of guidelines
will help prevent mistakes, ensure consistency across
your team, and set expectations for what needs to hap-
pen in the event of a mistake.
One of our clients — Raleigh, NC-based digital market-
ing agency Capstrat — has a pretty simple social media
policy: Don’t be stupid. Other organizations set up very
detailed policies and build complex approval workflows
for their social content. The right answer for your organi-
zation is probably somewhere in the middle.
An ideal social media marketing policy will clarify:
Content guidelines
Roles and responsibilities for your team
Escalation paths for sales, support, legal, etc.
Contingencies in the event of a snafu
Recommended Reading
Example Social Media Policies From Over 100
Organizations The largest online database of
social media policies from companies,
governments, non-profits.

5. Over-Curating 3
Warning Signs
Rome wasn’t built in a day. And it certainly wasn’t built their own. A recent study we conducted finds that market-
by sharing a blog entry about what someone else had ers who fall into this trap are significantly less successful
built. Yet so many social media marketers seem content at driving revenue from their social posts than marketers
to retweet other people’s content exclusively, day in and who have a more balanced posting strategy.
day out.
Which makes sense. When creating your own content
Curating is incredibly important and a perfectly reason- you have an opportunity to differentiate your brand, and
able strategy for building a follower base — especially if you’re creating a lasting asset that accrues value via in-
you’re able to consistently unearth unique, helpful nug- bound links and SEO. And, you’re getting people to your
gets: the smart content reflects on you and you earn a bit website! If you want readers to convert, they’re going to
of goodwill as the conduit. Some purists might make the have to get to your website first.
completely reasonable argument that curating is in fact
an act of creation.
Repenting
Unfortunately, too many social media marketers spend
Think about the time that you spend reading and sharing
all their time curating content and never stop to create
other people’s stuff every day. Now cut that time in half
and spend the balance on creating new content for your
business every day.
Recommended Reading
New Research Finds the Curation versus Creation
Sweet Spot Argyle Social original research posted on
Jay Baer’s Convince & Convert that provides data to
help you determine your optimal content mix.
Content Creators In The Squared Circle Matt Ridings
makes an impassioned case for the value of the
content creator.

6. Believing 4
Warning Signs
“In God we trust, all others bring data.” Direct Marketing
The goal of direct marketing is to cause as many
W. Edwards You will often find this quote attributed to potential customers possible to take a certain direct
Deming: almost
as dreamy as W. Edwards Deming, the great American action, which is always mapped directly onto the
Jeremiah Owyang business philosopher. Ironically, there is no sales funnel. Ads have a strong call-to-action and/
“data” confirming Deming ever said this. or offer. Direct marketing is measured based on its
ability to drive sales, and it’s commonly practiced
Many social media marketers believe that social media using snail mail, paid search, & display re-marketing.
— the global, always-on cocktail party that we all know
and love — is something utterly new. Something that Market Research / Customer Service
defies measurement. They aren’t entirely sure why this Unlike the other two functions above, the goal
is, but they’re pretty sure it has something to do with of market research isn’t to push information on a
all the kittens. potential consumer. Rather, the goal is to extract
data from potential consumers to make use of it
Well it’s not. And we’re not saying that because we don’t within an organization. This data is used either to
love kittens. (We’re fairly sure it’s corporate suicide to de- better serve an existing customer (customer service)
clare that you don’t like kittens, so let us be very clear on or learn more about consumer preferences for use
that point.) in product development (market research).
The truth is, social media is measurable. There is data out Expert marketers know how to do all three of the above
there that can show you whether your programs are real- things. Brand marketing has been around since the
ly moving the needle for your business. It can be tricky to dawn of time and modern measurement techniques
make sense of it, however: the core difficulty is that social originated alongside television in the 1950s. Direct mar-
media marketing is actually one discipline that combines keting was pioneered in the 1970s alongside the rise of
aspects of three tried-and-true marketing techniques: business computing. And so on.
Brand Marketing Social media marketing is marketing. And thus social
Some marketing is purely to raise awareness of a media marketing isn’t something to “believe” but instead
brand, product, or topic. Ads in this category don’t something that marketers can “prove.”
contain a strong call to action and are measured
based on their impact on consumer awareness. This
is very common within TV, radio, print, and some
forms of online display advertising.

7. Repenting
Being an analytics ninja is hard when you have to mea-
sure a single type of data. It can be overwhelming if
you’re staring the full complexity of social media in the
face. But don’t despair: there are resources, tools, and ex-
perts aplenty to get you where you need to go.
Start by defining your social strategy. What are the busi-
ness outcomes you want to drive with your social pres-
ence? What metrics will you use to evaluate your prog-
ress? If you don’t start with these fundamental building
blocks, all roads lead nowhere.
Social media listening platforms are excellent at measur-
ing brand mentions and share-of-voice — critical mea-
surements in brand advertising. Use a social conversion-
tracking tool to measure your social conversion funnel.
And use social CRM to integrate your social presence to
your customer base.
Required Reading
Argyle Social ROI White Paper Argyle’s white paper on
social ROI is the gold standard for social media market-
ers that are serious about social as a direct marketing
channel and driving real sales.
The Limits of Online Influence This wonderful piece by
Tom Webster talks about how only measuring the top
of the funnel can get you in trouble in social — the
conversion rates from awareness to retweet to pur-
chase can be infinitesimal.

8. Abusing Composite 5
Metrics
Warning Signs Repenting
Simple metrics never lie. A click is a click (is a click). Follow- Start from the bottom: what are the metrics that matter?
ers, retweets, replies, fans, likes, comments — you know If you’re focusing on quickly breaking into a large market
exactly what each of these metrics mean. You know what and snapping up customers with a low-end price-point,
it means when your follower count goes from 13,700 to the metrics that matter to you are Awareness and Trial. If
15,400 in a month, and you certainly know what it means you’re in a mature market with entrenched competitors,
when your replies goes from 150 on Thursday to 900 on your metrics are Satisfaction and Loyalty.
Friday (a long weekend!).
Once you’ve identified these metrics, build upwards.
But what is a Klout score? How do you calculate it? What Is your vendor’s measure of “reach” a reliable proxy for
is a “reach” of 75 or “engagement” of 30? If your “reach” is Awareness? Is “engagement” a reliable proxy for Loyalty?
down 15% month-on-month, what should you do? The only way to answer these questions is via good old-
fashioned market research.
The social media world has fallen in love with composite
metrics. Calculated by smart people with big computers, Fortunately, it’s more fun than it sounds, especially when
they lend your social dashboard a sense of weightiness. you include free-response questions on your surveys.
And, as long as the trend line points up and to the right, Consumers say the darndest things.
no one ever seems too interested in actually digging into
the details.1
Required Reading
However, this is not good marketing practice, and it
On Influence Tom Webster recounting a perfect ex-
won’t drive long-term value for your company. Tom Web-
ample of why oft-measured social media metrics don’t
ster says it best in his post on the topic:
translate into the bottom-line results you’re looking to
achieve with your campaign.
“…a given metric is meaningless until you can
prove that it isn’t. Just because you can mea- Derivative Measures in Social Media Tom Webster
sure something doesn’t mean it has any ties to delivers the foundational wisdom on composite
metrics and encourages marketers to “do the work” to
the metrics that matter for your organization:
determine what matters for their brand.
Awareness, Trial, Churn, Hit Rate, Customer
Satisfaction, Loyalty.”
We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.
1. 83% of social media marketers will believe any graph that goes up and to the right, up from 79% last month!

9. Hiding behind 6
your brand
Warning Signs Repenting
Often the first step of bringing a brand onto the social “Uh…so…how the heck am I supposed to fix that?” Don’t
scene is by creating branded social media properties. worry — there are straightforward, above-board ways to
And that’s good. What’s downright sinful is that this is of- combat the trust haircut. Before you go down that path,
ten where the account creation process stops. Posting all however, evaluate the content that you’re publishing on
social content from branded social properties is what we your branded social properties. Is cultivating trust one of
call “hiding behind your brand,” and it’s all too common. your main goals? Are you honest about your product’s
limitations? Do you link to reviews that aren’t always
Here’s the problem. Trust is a hard-wired aspect of hu- 100% positive? Do you deal with criticism honestly?
man brains. We subconsciously assign levels of trust to These are characteristics of a trustworthy brand.
every source of information we ever receive, whether it’s
from a person, news source, ad, or alien invasion reports Once you make sure that you’re doing what you need to
on AM radio. And it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that do to cultivate trust on your branded properties, you’re
people don’t trust brands — people trust people. ready to move on to step #2: establishing non-branded
properties. What exactly does this mean? Amber Naslund
If you pause and think about it for a second, that makes (@AmberCadabra), the VP of Social Strategy for Radian6,
complete sense. Brands have a very clear ulterior motive: is a great example.
they want something from you. A purchase, a trial, a posi-
tive mention - always something. As such, information Amber has a significant following on Twitter, and while
coming from branded social properties has a very differ- she doesn’t use this following to actively promote her
ent trust profile than non-branded personal accounts. product, her public presence and employment at Ra-
dian6 clearly promotes trust in the brand. While you ob-
If your brand’s only voices are @brandname and face- viously won’t become Amber overnight, make sure that
book.com/brandname, every one of your posts is getting you’re investing time and attention at developing non-
a “trust haircut” — the equivalent of a subconscious eye- branded social accounts to build trust.
roll. Don’t let that happen.

10. Taking this approach to the next level, Zappos is about as
socially open as you can get. Take a look at some of the
required reading links below to learn more. Complete
openness has serious customer perception benefits, but
beware: this level of openness isn’t for every company.
Think hard before opening the floodgates.
Required Reading
Zappos Shows How Social Media Is Done Zappos has
had an inclusive social policy longer than anyone in
the business. This case study is from 2008!
twitter.zappos.com Every tweet from every Zapponian,
located on the zappos.com domain. Is your company
ready to take that step?

11. Going Solo 7
Warning Signs Repenting
If your organization is breaking into a new marketing Effectively integrating social into your organization re-
channel, it makes sense to assign this initiative to a per- quires planning, buy-in, and technology. Start out by list-
son or small team. New to search engine marketing? Pull ing all of the types of interactions that you get on your
a team together, have them build a plan, review it with social properties, as well as all of those that you could po-
the group, and have them go off and execute the plan. tentially get moving forwards. Create a response strategy
Simple, right? for each. In each response strategy, focus on who within
your organization is best suited to respond — customer
Unfortunately, social just doesn’t work like that. Social support, HR, product, etc.
works best when integrated throughout your organiza-
tion. As Warren Whitlock says, “Asking who should be do- Make sure you have tools in place to route messages ac-
ing social media is like asking who should have a phone cordingly. Your listening platform should have the option
on their desk. Assume everyone is on social media.” to route posts and create queues so that the social me-
dia team can function as a switchboard rather than a call
Why? The answer relates directly to Sin #6 above. People center.
want to connect with people, not companies. And they
want to connect with someone who can directly address And make sure that the social roadmap gets both execu-
their message, not to someone with a long list of planned tive and staff buy-in. Without broad-based support, ex-
auto-responses designed to pacify, rather than solve. ecutives won’t prioritize social and staff won’t become
public advocates.
If your social media team is tasked with replying to all
inbound messages, your messaging will not achieve this
goal. While you may know your product, you don’t know
Required Reading
it like your product managers do. And while you may
The Five Ways Companies Organize for Social Business
recognize a good PR opportunity, you can’t pull the ap-
This piece by the Altimeter Group is the most oft-cited
propriate resources together as effectively as the PR folks.
thinking on the topic of crafting the social organiza-
You don’t have all the recruiting answers for job-seekers,
tion. Owyang proposes several possible models of
or customer support answers for troubleshooters.
integration and discusses the pros and cons of each.
No small team can be experts in all functions of the en-
Social Media Management 101 – Cardinal Roles, Man-
terprise. So don’t try to be. Social media shouldn’t be the
agement Roles, and basic Social Business organiza-
purview of a select few. It should be an integral part of
tional structure Olivier Blanchard outlines why social is
the entire company.
a cross-functional competency and not ultimately the
purview of a single department in this canonical post.

12. About Argyle Social
Founded in 2009, Argyle Social is an innovative software-as-a-service platform
for social media marketing management and analytics. The platform helps mar-
keters easily organize and publish social content, manage customer interactions
across social channels and quantify the bottom-line impact of their social media
marketing efforts. Argyle customers include Gander Mountain, Sharefile.com,
Blue Sky Factory and UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School. The company is based
in Durham, NC.
For more information, visit http://www.argylesocial.com