10 Social Media Failures (and How to Avoid Them)

As published on Social Media Today

One of the things to expect to takeaway from a solid social media conference is the knowledge of what works in market practice. A good assemblance of industry talent almost always includes a sharing of what successful strategies brands, agencies and marketers do in social channels. With a speaker line up that included names from King.com, appsavvy, RackSpace, Adobe, and Woobox, Media Bistro’s AllFacebook Conference in San Francisco delivered just that.

Two solid days of Facebook best practices, best known methods, and ROI.

But one presentation approached social marketing from another, more polar angle: social media failures. To learn what doesn’t work, is equally valuable to the marketing practitioner who is learning what does. To understand why, and how to avoid duplicating such an approach, is nothing short of priceless. That’s what made Kevin Mullett’s day one presentation so engaging.

What Kevin lacks in a more flashy, name-befitting hairstyle, he delivers in his comprehensive marketing observations. His major themes are these:

• Social is about relationships, and don’t forget it.
• It’s not about your business communication preferences, it’s about the customer’s.
• An abundance of fast food consumption is a necessary component to thorough social marketing research.

That’s hardly an adequate summary, as much as it is a taste of what’s in store. You’ll just have to read it all, yourself. Mullett’s Top 10 Social Media Failures (and my thoughts on each) are below: