BIGGEST MISTAKES MADE BY SOCIAL MEDIA GURUS

By: David Spark,

http://mashable.com/2008/10/21/social-media-guru-mistakes/

Think you know what you’re doing every time you engage in social media? Neither do I, and neither do the social media gurus I spoke to about their biggest social networking blunders. In an effort to learn from others’ mistakes, here’s a list of some all star errors in judgment from some social media all stars. I’ll lead off the order by admitting an error of my own.

Respond to all negative comments –

When I, David Spark,
started being seen publically in print, TV, radio, and online I read everyone’s comments, but focused more intently on the negative ones. I wasted a lot of time putting far too much effort into defending myself to these anonymous naysayers than they put into attacking me. I soon understood that some geeks simply can’t help themselves being negative. They’ve got an obnoxious strand of DNA and must constantly try to prove themselves smarter than you.

Participate in flame wars to increase traffic – Similarly, Dana Gardner, blogger for ZDNet, admits he would engage in online arguments just to watch his Web traffic shoot up. But over time Gardner realized that flame wars don’t attract the right kind of audience. “Going to the lowest emotional common denominator to me is an ineffective way of reaching that audience. I’d rather come up with valuable insightful fresh innovative content than appeal to angry white men sitting around computers that don’t have anything else to do,” Gardner said.

Hire a voice talent for $2,000 to read a podcast for you – Paul Dunay, Global Director of Integrated Marketing at BearingPoint and prominent blogger, made a massive blunder when he decided to get into podcasting. His first show was actually a whitepaper read by a voice talent for $2,000. The resulting podcast sounded like a book on tape and he and his colleagues were horrified. That episode was never published, but the voice talent did get paid.

Send a specially selected mass mailing to your friends – Susan Bratton, co-founder and CEO of Personal Life Media, is still having a problem trying to scale individual relationships with social media. Even when she pares down her mailing list of 8,000 to a personally selected mailing of 250, she still gets nasty messages telling her to “take me off this list.”

Assume that social media doesn’t exist until you arrive – Social media strategist Chris Brogan and founder of PodCamp reached out to the New England podcasters’ bulletin board and said he was going to invite all the social media rock stars to come to Boston for Podcamp. Nobody responded to what he thought was a generous offer until he saw a response on the board that said, “There are a lot of rock stars in Boston and it’s kind of offensive you got to import them from other places.” Brogan learned from his mistake. Wherever you go on the Web realize there’s been a history. Don’t assume you know everything and discredit what’s been done before you arrived, Brogan said.

Post a comment on your own Facebook profile wall – David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR and the upcoming book World Wide Rave, needed his teenage daughter to point out his massive social networking faux pas. After setting up his Facebook profile, he showed it to his daughter to which she responded, “You’re not supposed to write on your own wall. You’re such a dork, dad.”

Don’t engage with people who only want to push their own initiative – Ego and personal agendas often take over many online communications, and Ross Mayfield, founder of SocialText, used to ignore these self promoters. He doesn’t anymore realizing that these self promoters are looking to create an association with you and your business. “You really want to engage with every conversation that relates with your brand,” Mayfield advised, “Even if you don’t want to necessarily draw attention to the existence of a competitor.”

Over-architect a site with features and content without talking to your customers – Deb Schultz, social media strategist for P&G, fell into the trap of making too many assumptions about what an audience wanted and just started developing a site loaded with features and functionality. It’s what happens when you work at a big company and you don’t see outside of the four walls of the organization. Schultz admitted she should have spent more time talking with customers instead of adding more content to the site.

Be overly careful about everything you say online – Futurist Thornton May claims he still falls into the trap of self-editorializing when writing online. Even though May understands that what makes social media valuable is that it’s authentic, real, and unfinished, he still is extremely careful about what he says and that takes the edge off his online persona. He blames his age and says people of his generation are not familiar nor necessarily comfortable engaging in online discussions.

Don’t come to your own defense when people bad mouth you online – It’s often a good idea to have others defend you in a public debate. But Peter Hirshberg chairman of Technorati and co-founder of The Conversation Group got into a situation where his silence in a debate about a product release was just seen as rather peculiar and it backfired on him.

Accept friend requests from people you barely know – Robin Wolaner, founder of the 40+ social networking site TBD.com, made the mistake of accepting friend requests from people she barely knew. These non-friends on her network happened to be very prolific posters and she couldn’t turn down their noise. Many social networks don’t offer a setting that allows you to only get information from your close friends and not from people you barely know. The only thing she could do was de-friend them, and as a result some were insulted.

Stalk women on Facebook – Stewart Alsop, partner of Alsop Louie Partners, claims this is not a mistake and he’s extremely proud of it. Of his 1200+ friends on Facebook, Alsop claims he has about 400 attractive women as Facebook friends. In his mid-50s, Alsop reaches out to young attractive women and asks if he can be their friend. Many say yes. Alsop says he’s an old guy and it makes him feel as if he’s got something going on. There’s no downside for Alsop. Some may think it’s weird, but it doesn’t change anything for him.

You haven’t done everything right online, have you? Want to fess up to a massive blunder in social media?

David Spark is a veteran tech journalist and the founder of Spark Media Solutions, a custom editorial production company. Read more of Spark at his blog Spark Minute and to read and hear interviews with many of the aforementioned people, subscribe to Spark’s “Be the Voice” blog and podcast.