A lot of businesses are still using the failing techniques of yesterday to market their companies. Being safe and boring is comfortable for many business leaders because it is what worked for decades. That mentality, is already frozen in time and the rest of the world has rapidly sped up light years ahead to a world where consumers have a voice and a solid barometer for BS.
Being safe should never be your solution if you want your message to be shared via social marketing. Safe social marketing strategies are most evident in big corporations but unfortunately that mentality has trickled down to small businesses as well.
These companies so badly fear negative press that they sacrifice their own innovation. I urge these companies to explore why they are not embracing honesty in their marketing efforts. Being irrelevant is so much worse than a thousand negative tweets about your company.
The Fear of Going Negatively Viral
We all realize that we live in an overly PC world. Many company leaders are worried about the media influencing the public to negatively highlight your brand. The sad truth is that companies that spend vast amounts of time worrying about this most likely have something to hide. These companies are either lying to their customers or don't have their customers true interests at heart. That scenario is far worse than 1,000 negative tweets or things written on the Internet. These companies have the most to lose and they know it.
Why Honesty Is Always The Best Policy
If you haven't noticed we live in an every growing transparent world. While some business people pine over how great things used to be, they are wasting time that could be spent learning how to operate in this new world. Consumers have never been more empowered than they are today. Social media has given them a voice and communities like Reddit have the power to bring a shady or dishonest company to their knees.
Companies that are honest and transparent have employees that sleep great at night because they know that the business is coming from a core of honesty. It is extremely easy to innovate and take risks when you are coming from a true and honest place and believe what your company is doing.
Don't get me wrong, you are still at risk of making mistakes on social media from time to time, but when you do people will be so much more forgiving if you are honest than if you hide things from your audience.
Howard Stern and Gary Vaynerchuk are entrepreneurs who have built empires on being honest with their audiences. This can work in your segment of the business world as well.
Why You Should Fear Being Irrelevant In Your Marketing
Instead of fearing that something goes viral in a negative way, companies need to fear being irrelevant. If your client or customer cannot tell a clear difference between you and all of your competitors, you have a serious problem with your marketing. What makes you stand out, what makes you different, why should someone give you time, money, or attention?
If you are worried about saying the wrong thing on social media it limits your possibilities of reaching new audiences. Your messaging blends in with everything else until it reaches a muted tone.
Video Marketing is a Great Example
Too many businesses and organizations are far too scripted. This is most evident in their video marketing pieces. You will see a CEO or CFO wearing a suit, sitting behind a desk in a perfectly clean office. The individual is most likely reading from a card or memorized a short script written by their PR departments. These type of videos will have very low impact on your audience and are probably not even worth the production costs you spend to make them. Viewers of these videos have a short amount of tolerance for watching something like this, because they have seen and heard it before. Mostly likely the viewer will bail and move on to something else without seconds.
However, what will work is the more casual unscripted approach, where the person speaking appears authentic and genuine. Don't be afraid to have your CEO wearing jeans in the next marketing video. Or let them turn on their iPhone and record their own thoughts. But more importantly, teach them to talk passionately about their business as if the camera wasn't even on.
Finally, teach your team that social media is not a press release where you have to jam in all of the important information. It is an ongoing conversation with your audience, which sometimes takes the form of extremely short, medium or long form content.