How Do I Define Failure Vs Success In My Social Media Campaign

I was recently asked this very question by a consulting client of mine and it is not as cut and dried as you would think. Please allow me to explain by giving a couple of good examples.I will change the names but these are real world examples.

Example #1 Joe Get Rich Quick Guru

Company Background: This company sells informational course material and teaches people financial tips and tricks to making money with certain transactions. They however have a horribly bad history of customer service complaints, they virtually ignore their disgruntled customers, and frequently file lawsuits against anyone that says anything negative about them.

Social Marketing Campaign: This company sets up an “Open” forum for discussing and talking about their various money making strategies and how to improve them. They seed the system with bogus accounts filled with nothing but positive praises and hip hip hoorays.

The Result: They got tremendous growth, they were virtually flooded with customers, both paying and non paying interacting discussing the course material etc…. Unfortunately they were also flooded with many disgruntled customers that were complaining about the bad customer service and expressing genuine issues about the product. The company would block and kick these comments to the side and only allow comments that were positive in nature. This quickly backfired as the negative customer that were scorned just opened new accounts to further express their outrage and then began engaging the non paying customers and then BOOM it all came crashing down around their ankles.

THE VERDICT: Well most people would certainly consider this a failure and I understand how it can be hard to interpret this as anything but failure. And mostly it was a failure but not for the reasons you would think. In my opinion this simple strategy could have worked and actually very well. The major flaws were that the company was not ready willing and able to handle the negative feedback as it came up.  The amount of negative feedback that came in was an absolute goldmine of a missed opportunity. Negative customer feedback in an open forum can give you the opportunity to be real in ways never before imagined. The power of you handling a customers issue and making it right for the whole world to see is an invaluable message that can actually speak more praises to your customers than all the publicity in the world can. No consumer actually believes that all companies are perfect. We know in our hearts of hearts that any company has made someone mad for some reason. For that company to show the world how they deal with the unhappy customers makes potential customer much more comfortable in doing business and actually has been proven to lower complaints.  I won’t ultimately give this campaign a success rating but I will point out that it wasn’t the plan that was wrong it was the overall approach to the plan that was off.

I talk a lot about the “Rules of engagement” these are rules that apply across the board for all social media. It is these rules that must be followed religiously, and if followed virtually guarantee success.  The Rules of engagement were broken with this campaign and so regardless of their intent or planning it was doomed to fail before it started.

Example #2 Computer Company

Company background: This company sells desktops, laptops and other computer peripherals. While still in their infancy they are growing fast but the amount of complaints and the number of disgruntled customers is growing steadily.

Social Marketing Campaign: To actively seek out and look for all upset customers and find out what went wrong and earnestly try to fix it. As well setting up a public forum for customers past, present, and future to talk and discuss their products.

The Result: A complete and total success, this program yielded literally thousands of disgruntled customers all over the US and through open and honest dialogue the company was able to fix some, learn from others and leave the rest with the feeling that at least they had been heard. This is an excellent example of a social media success.

THE VERDICT: The company now continues to grow and is in the top tiers of business for their industry. I can only call this a success but I must point out that this success was not a weekend ad campaign or a well structured media blitz, it was a methodology and a religious practice that required participation and focused action for years. It took approximately 5 years to turn this company around but now they are one of the most respected names in computing.

The difference between both of these companies campaign was actually very little if at all. They both had the same approach to “Engaging” the customer but the way they handled and defined the customer engagement was a polar opposite. It was this particular detail that made all the difference in the world.

Defining Success: Both campaigns had their successes In example #1 the company was quickly and easily able to find their target customers. In fact their growth was fantastic and exponential at times. They were gaining real traction and success.  Any company that had a growth in their community like that I would call a raging success. Their would be no other term for it.  In fact example #1 had a faster growth rate on finding their customers than in example #2.  However comparing the execution of the policies and procedures it is easy to point out that example #2 was far more successful than example #1. The difference clearly was how the deal with and talked with their clients and the rules they used to govern their communities.

I don’t want anyone reading this to think that Example #1 was a failure. It was not and in fact this is the very problem that companies are faced with when putting a social media campaign together. They have things like ROI, or lead acquisition as the goal and they are actually throwing out some of their greatest success stories without really evaluating the commodity they are after.

The true commodity of social network marketing is called “Social Capital” this only comes from a continuously focused action, and a strict and disciplined following of the rules of engagement.  When followed the long term result will be a solid and happy customer base that will be fiercely loyal. And how can that result in anything but a bigger bottom line?

Questions? Comments? Please let me know what you think and what topics you want me to talk about.

Mike Waters

CTO SocialSAM

Twitter.com/mwaters5

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