Page 131 - Social Media Marketing for Dummies

Sadly, these challenges exist across the business world. Put simply, companies
aren’t always truthful with their customers. It can be a CEO speaking about the
company’s future, a marketer talking about a product’s benefits, or an engineer
responding with data to a government ask. Companies, too, suffer from stretching
the facts when it suits their interest. This is a problem and in a social media driven
world where lies can spread like wildfire across the Internet, being true to the
facts and honest at all times takes on even greater significance.

This puts a special responsibility on the marketers in a company or anyone prac-
ticing social media marketing. Marketers are in the persuasion business using
stories to convince others to change their opinions and purchase specific products.
Furthermore, through advertising budgets, the marketers also fuel other indus-
tries that depend on advertising revenue streams. Misinformation is rampant in
our world, and by virtue of providing the revenue stream for social media plat-
forms that may inadvertently allow for the spreading of the lies, marketers carry
unique responsibilities.

As a marketer, you can easily fall prey to furthering falshoods and misinformation
when it supports a business’s objectives or directly influences online sales. This is
especially the case in social media where the way a product is positioned and mar-
keted may not be visible to regulators or informed third parties who can call out
misleading advertising. You may find yourself unintentionally marketing your
own products in a way that may not be completely ethical and without the checks
and balances that come with mass advertising, it may go unnoticed for a while.

Five ways to encourage truthfulness

Few marketers intentionally try to mislead or cheat their customers. And social
media marketers are typically even more careful because they want to please their
customers, being fully aware of the real-time feedback loops of social media.
Those feedback loops serve as natural checks and balances. However, something
can always go wrong when you’re publishing a lot of content quickly. Here are five
ways to encourage truthfulness from you and your team.

» Ask for facts. When you have a team member reviewing their social media
marketing plan with you, ask that person whether he or she has verified
all the facts. Look for the facts and encourage the team member to keep
opinions to a minimum.

» Use reflection to override bias. You rarely mean to intentionally perpetuate
lies. However, you’re human and you may accept certain opinions as facts.
One way to address this problem is by consciously choosing to delay arriving
at your judgment. Let all the available information sink in and deliberately
reflect on it before approving the direction.

CHAPTER 6 Understanding a Marketer’s Responsibilities 115