Page 103 - Social Media Marketing for Dummies

when responding to critical comments in a discussion forum about his
company in 2007. Fortunately, companies learned from his mistake; fast
forward to 2019 and it’s rare for someone from a company to use a pseudo-
nym to defend his or her company.
» Learn from the community and respond to its feedback.
A key part of being authentic is telling your customers the way it really is,
hearing their feedback (both positive and negative), and being willing to
respond to it. It’s no use participating in the social realm if you don’t respond
to commentary or feedback. If you’re worried about not having the time to
respond, consider not participating at all.

» Be humane in your approach.
It’s easy to forget that for every comment and every unique visitor, there’s an
actual person somewhere in the world. Make sure that you participate with
consideration and with the same respect that you’d reserve for someone
you’re talking to face to face.
For more information on authenticity as it applies to word-of-mouth marketing
and social media marketing, visit the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) at
www.anao.org. Through their acquisition of the Word of Mouth Marketing
Association in 2018, they have amassed a rich repository of research around
word-of-mouth marketing that you can find at https://www.ana.net/content/
show/id/womma.

For all the altruism associated with the social web, it’s easy to forget that it oper-
ates on the premise of quid pro quo. We’re all good human beings, but most peo-
ple expect something in return if they’re giving you their time. As you develop an
SMM campaign in which you’ll be demanding your customers’ attention (and
often a lot more than that), think about the possible quid pro quo. Are you giving
enough back in exchange? If you’re not giving something back, your customers
won’t participate. They’ll simply ignore you. The social web is littered with mar-
keting campaign failures. These campaigns assumed that just by putting a banner
advertisement in front of customers, they would achieve their objectives.

Much better is the example of an SMM campaign that provided a strong quid pro
quo for its audiences and was highlighted by Ad Age. Target ran a marketing cam-
paign in the summer of 2014, through which it donated millions of dollars to the
Kids In Need Foundation by contributing money for each Up & Up school supply
purchased during a specific time period in the summer. The campaign was
launched and promoted extensively through social media, which served as the
anchor to the entire marketing campaign. This was an SMM campaign that
encouraged the consumer to purchase a particular product by tying the purchase
to a cause and then motivated him to share his experience and encourage others
to participate in that fashion. Success of the campaign was defined as much by the
amount of money raised as it was through any traditional measure.
CHAPTER 4 Launching SMM Campaigns 87