{"id":391,"date":"2023-03-14T16:20:29","date_gmt":"2023-03-14T16:20:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/?p=391"},"modified":"2023-03-22T18:31:53","modified_gmt":"2023-03-22T18:31:53","slug":"social-proofing-snake-oil-agencies-and-brands-oh-my","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/social-proofing-snake-oil-agencies-and-brands-oh-my\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Proofing, Snake Oil Agencies And Brands (Oh My)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Social proofing\u00a0is not a new concept and one we\u2019ve been discussing for years. There are\u00a0<em>many<\/em>\u00a0types of social proofing, (just a few discussed in the first link) yet these days a lot of brands seem to be obsessed over<em>\u00a0just one<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>One that is almost totally meaningless to everyone except the brand: follower\/like count. It might be a\u00a0<em>little<\/em>\u00a0less irksome if it was an obsession with\u00a0numbers associated with a\u00a0source community. But nope, just social\u00a0<em>outposts<\/em>. Sad.<\/p>\n<p>Look around and you see a\u00a0ridiculous\u00a0arms race to inflate meaningless KPIs like Twitter followers and Facebook likes among others. It\u2019s just silly and as a marketer who\u00a0<em>actually<\/em>\u00a0measures to conversion \/ revenue from the web for clients (and personally) it frustrates me when I see brands:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Run promotions that are basically non-sequitur to what they sell \/ stand for simply to increase (irrelevant) followers (giving away an iPad is basically\u00a0telling the world you have no good ideas).<\/li>\n<li>Hire\u00a0snake oil social media agencies\u00a0that use tools or automation to pump up publicly\u00a0view-able\u00a0metrics with spambots<em>\u00a0(<\/em>you\u2019re\u00a0<em>really<\/em>\u00a0not fooling anyone).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It\u2019s beyond un-creative and a waste of time and resources. It\u2019s harmful for everyone involved because none of these marketers understand how to\u00a0build an activated web community, how to actually\u00a0get to conversion\u00a0from their initiatives or create any sort of\u00a0sustainable returns. These brands will never achieve anything other than reaching an arbitrary number.<\/p>\n<p>This exercise by brands and agencies is shameful practice and if your social proofing strategy includes chasing friend and follower counts (in 2011!) you honestly need to get out of the marketing industry.\u00a0These people are charlatans, not marketing professionals.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s even sadder are attempts to try to extend what is nothing more than a social proofing tactic to a business outcome. Sure, it is\u00a0<em>easy<\/em>\u00a0for companies who sell products relating to the fan\/follower circus to\u00a0assign blanket values\u00a0to these numbers. Easy, but as we keep pointing out,\u00a0ridiculous.\u00a0It\u2019s easy for consultants to slap fancy labels on metrics \/ add pixie dust \/ make up nonsense formulas\u00a0(when those who\u00a0<em>do understand<\/em>\u00a0web measurement don\u2019t need to do this)\u00a0but they generally fall apart\u00a0under scrutiny.<\/p>\n<p>But I\u2019ll actually give a free pass today to brands participating in fluffing KPIs. It\u2019s still shameful, yes, but they either don\u2019t know any better or are getting pressure to perform this\u00a0arbitrary\u00a0exercise which, btw, makes them look bad to smart people. Their punishment is self-inflicted damage they are doing by hurting any actual business benefits they would have accrued through nurturing a real web community. Anyway, see\u00a0how easily\u00a0we have\u00a0called out\u00a0examples of manipulation (from\u00a0<em>major<\/em>\u00a0brands) in the past? It\u2019s going to catch up with them.<\/p>\n<p>It is the snake oil agencies and consultants we should be naming and shaming. Although thinking about this today, if a brand with a legitimate budget for online marketing consulting or internal hire still doesn\u2019t know enough to stay away from swindlers, maybe these two groups are made for each other and we\u2019re better off ignoring the whole thing. As the saying goes, a fool and his money are easily parted.<\/p>\n<p>What do you think? Should we let the fluff KPI-crazed consultants and brands have each other?<\/p>\n<p>None of this stuff is new. At this point, are the serious digital marketing professionals simply better off working with those interested in creating\u00a0<em>real<\/em>\u00a0result-oriented programs?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Social proofing\u00a0is not a new concept and one we\u2019ve been discussing for years. There are\u00a0many\u00a0types of social proofing, (just a &#8230; <\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more-container\"><a title=\"Social Proofing, Snake Oil Agencies And Brands (Oh My)\" class=\"read-more button\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/social-proofing-snake-oil-agencies-and-brands-oh-my\/#more-391\" aria-label=\"More on Social Proofing, Snake Oil Agencies And Brands (Oh My)\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1340,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz","category-digital-marketing-and-pr","resize-featured-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":392,"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions\/392"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}