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Posts Tagged ‘failure’

The Fine Line Between Social Success and Failure

I met someone yesterday who joined Twitter in November, 2007 – a time when there were less than 500,000 users – and probably a year before Twitter really burst onto the scene.

At the time, Twitter was an intriguing service but there was little indication it was poised for explosive growth. Back then, Twitter even had quasi-healthy competition from players such as Pownce and Jaiku.

The decision for someone to join Twitter in late-2007 was as much an experiment as it was climbing on a bandwagon that was starting to gain speed. Having signed up myself in December, 2007 after dismissing Twitter as nothing more than an inane outlet for personal babbling, I never expected Twitter to be anything more than just interesting.

For whatever reason, Twitter caught on, moving beyond the nerds, geeks, A-listers and social mavens. But in many ways, Twitter’s success was due to the fact many people decided to enthusiastically throw themselves into it when it was far from apparent it was going to become anything significant.

For new services trying to gain a foothold (e.g. Yobongo, Quora, etc.), a key part of the challenge is not only creating a service that is compelling but coming up with something that captures the imagination of the right people. This has to happen before another shiny, new toy comes along – meaning there is a small window of opportunity to make an impression.

The mystery is how to attract the key early adopter. How do you convince them it’s worth the investment to sign up for yet another social media service that looks interesting but may not having staying power?

Part of it may have to do with being able to win the affections of a few influential people – e.g. Mike Arrington or Robert Scoble – who will enthusiastically wave the flag on your behalf.

It also helps if you can excite enough “regular folk” that they become evangelists and advocates on your behalf, something far more challenging than whispering in Robert Scoble’s ear about a pretty new thing.

The difference between success (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) and failure (Friendfeed, Friendster, Pownce) is difficult to define or quantify. Some of it’s luck, some of it’s timing and some of it’s just a matter of being in the right place at the right time with the right service.

By Mark Evans - March 1st, 2011 - No Comments »
Tags: , , ,
Posted in Social Media

Sorry, It’s Not All About You

Over the past few days, we’ve been exploring the issues for why social media efforts fail (the dreaded start & stop, the inability to execute, and unrealistic expectations). Here’s another pitfall: social media content that exclusively or mostly features content about your company, brand, people, services, products and news.

As much as social media can be used to distribute corporate news, it is not a corporate broadcast medium that is all about you. In an ideal world, there is a healthy amount of corporate news but it’s mixed with content about industry news, developments, trends and people.

This kind of content provides the editorial variety that engages people on a regular basis by providing something for everyone. It’s based on the old adage that variety is the spice of life.

Many companies fail with social media because they are too self-absorbed. They believe that social media should only be used to talk about or promote corporate activity. There is a place for this kind of thing but it can’t happen all the time otherwise your audience will quickly get a bad case of editorial fatigue.

As interesting as your company may be, there is only so much of you that people will accept – and even then it has to be part of a healthy, balanced editorial mix.

So what kind of content should company distribute other than about themselves? Some ideas include blog posts and news about industry news and developments, links to interesting services, videos and commentary about what’s happening.

By using social media to talk about things about than yourself, it means that when you do promote corporate activity, it’s accepted as opposed to rebuffed.

By Mark Evans - October 12th, 2010 - 1 Comment »
Tags: , , ,
Posted in Social Media

The Benefits of Social Media Failure

The social media community is fascinated with “home runs” – campaigns that are wildly successful, or things such as videos that enjoy tremendous viral traction. This explains why the recent Old Spice campaign was covered with so much bubbly enthusiasm.

What doesn’t get much attention is social media failures, unless they’re major disasters such as Motrin’s infamous “Moms” campaign, or Nestle’s troubles on Facebook related to a Greenpeace report about its palm oil efforts in Indonesia.

The reality is social media “home runs” are few and far between, while the landscape is strewn with failures. Failure, however, isn’t as sexy as success, particularly in an emerging market in which many players are valiantly battling to convince clients to join the social media revolution. If you’re selling social media, it makes no sense to highlight things that don’t work well.

That said, failure is something that should be embraced and discussed. As much as success is great, there are a lot of valuable lessons that can be learned from examining efforts that didn’t work.

Failure offers insight into activities that were not effective and didn’t resonate with users. By putting the spotlight on failure, companies can get a better handle on the best ways to approach social media while avoiding strategic and tactical pitfalls.

Instead of shunning failure, it needs to be embraced.

If a campaign falls flat, it should be thoroughly examined to determine what went wrong and why. A key part of this process is diligently monitoring and measurement social media activities to get empirical information about what happened, compared to what was expected to happen.

By accepting failure as a positive rather than a negative, it lets companies experiment with social media without being overly skittish about something not working well.

Despite the hype, we’re still at a stage in which experimentation is an important part of the market’s evolution.

If we’re afraid to experiment because failure is a possibility, the social media market won’t grow as quickly and, as important, it will be a lot less interesting landscape.

By Mark Evans - July 26th, 2010 - 3 Comments »
Tags: , , ,
Posted in Social Media

Why Corporate Social Media Fails

We – the media, the blogosphere and Twittersphere – do a fantastic job of highlighting and celebrating social media success stories. The reality, however, is the number of social media failures vastly outnumbers companies that are thriving.

The reality is social media “car wrecks” are strewn throughout the landscape. It’s not for a lack of trying; it has everything to do with companies making fundamental mistakes in how they approach, embrace and execute on their social media programs.

Far too many companies are drinking the social media “Kool-Aid”. They buy aggressively into the hype that has continued to gain momentum but don’t have a clear idea of exactly what they want to do and, as important, why.

Here’s are five key reasons why social media failure is far more prevalent than anyone wants to admit to talk about.

1. The lack of a strategic plan. Far too many companies run before they walk. As a result, they jump into social media without a well-articulated idea of why they want to do social media, what they want to get out of it, what success looks like, and what rivals are doing.

According to a recent study by Digital Brand Expression, 78% of respondents said they were doing social media but only 41% of companies said they had a strategic plan.

2. The lack of a tactical plan. This is more than just knowing how to use Twitter, Facebook or a blog because they’re not that difficult to learn. Tactics has more to do about best practices, knowing when and how to engage with other people on social media, and using the best and most effective tools to be as productive and efficient as possible.

3. The lack of resources, or hiring people who lack the right skills or experience to get the job done. Too many companies get excited about a social media program but don’t or won’t allocate enough people to actually make it happen. Another mistake is they hire people who are too inexperienced but hope that their enthusiasm about social media will compensate for it.

4. The lack of content that is compelling, engaging, interesting or valuable. At the end of the day, great content and stories make social media be successful. Truth be told, social media services are simply tools to distribute content. In other words, content and stories and the ammunition that makes the weapons (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) effective.

5. The failure to build relationships. Social media is not a one-way street or a one-way conversation. For social media to work, you need to build relationships with people, have conversations, engage and connect. It’s work requires time and effort.

So, what do you think? Why do companies fail at social media?

By Mark Evans - June 28th, 2010 - 28 Comments »
Tags: , ,
Posted in Social Media

What if Social Media Isn’t Working? Then What?

You’ve listened, put together a solid strategic plan, spent time selecting the right services, and then worked hard to implement a social media program. But after months of toiling away, the results aren’t there: no one has become a fan of your Facebook Page, you only have a handful of Twitter followers, and your blog is collecting dust.

Then, what? Does it mean that social media has been a failure and a waste of time? Should you just walk away, and focus your time, effort and people on other projects?

The answer is “maybe” but not before conducting an audit of your social media activities to discover what went wrong and why.

This exercise, which might involved some external help, will provide insight into whether strategic or tactical mistakes were made that contributed to social media not doing what it was expected to do.

The problems could include:

1. Unrealistic strategic goals. Many companies buy into the “if you build, they will come” approach to social media. They think that by embracing social media, it will automatically attract a lot of people. This belief is skewed by the success of a small number of companies such as Starbucks and Ford, which have millions of fans/followers. Too many people forget, however, these success stories are anomalies or outliers.

2. Selecting the wrong social media services. Just because Facebook has more than 450 million users doesn’t mean it works for every company. A key consideration for most companies when they explore getting into social media is having a handle on where their customers and potential customers spend their time online, and what, if any, social media services, they are using. You have to fish where they’re biting, which may mean not using Facebook because your customers aren’t there.

3. A failure to execute tactically. The easy part of social media is listening and creating a strategy; the difficult part is working social media on daily basis. It’s grunt work and a lot of blocking and tackling. It involves investing a lot of hours to build relationships, engage with people and participate in conversations. In other words, it is more than just diligently tweeting or posting to a Facebook Wall. If not enough time or effort is invested, the results won’t happen.

4. The lack of engaging good creative content. Facebook, Twitter, blogs, YouTube, et al are tools that need to be fuelled by content to make them resonate with users. Whether it is contests, photos, videos, compelling stories or polls, content helps make social media sink or swim.

By exploring these areas, companies can get a better idea about why social media didn’t work. This will provide them with insight into what needs to be tweaked or perhaps overhauled to improve their social media efforts.

It may be that a few strategic, tactical or content changes will make a huge difference. Or it could be that these changes don’t work. Then, a company can determine whether it’s time to walk away from social media armed with the knowledge that it wasn’t for a lack of effort.

By Mark Evans - June 9th, 2010 - 4 Comments »
Tags: , , ,
Posted in Social Media

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