Social media has taken huge strides in recent years towards becoming the major way for companies to determine what customers like or dislike, to follow customer buying trends, and to establish real time branding for services/products. SEO firms have joined the trend towards using social media for SEM.
Users now trust online media for down to earth, reliable reviews assuming they come from other users like themselves. However, marketing seems to be rapidly destroying that credibility, leaving a wasteland of marketers vying for attention and an increasing amount of white noise that is ruining social media for the rest of us.
Social Media Spam is making SEM efforts junk mail.
Edelman’s annual Trust Barometer survey seemed to indicate that consumers are losing trust in their peers when it comes to sharing credible information about products or companies. Only 25% of people trust what they find on social media, compared to 50% in 2008.
According to ZDNet’s Jennifer Leggio:
“Social networking used to be innocent, peer to peer conversation and now it’s turned into a marketing playground in which almost everything — blog space, tweets and, in some cases, opinion — is for sale.”
According to Inc.Technology,
“All the information being created and distributed is overloading most of us, which may be why there is a return to trusting authority sites, and recognized experts. So, as the trust study is indicating, it’s becoming increasingly important to be viewed as an expert — more than ever before. But I think that there’s a unique opportunity for “people like me” to leverage social tools to also be viewed as trustworthy experts, while keeping the values that made them most trustworthy a few short years ago.”
As Internet marketers dig deeper footholds in social media, it is important to sound authentic. Consumers are becoming more and more skeptical about what they find on social networks, due to the flood of marketers not interested in contributing valuable information, but only selling their own shtick.
Privacy concerns have also become a huge issue, according to Richard Edelman, CEO.
“The events of the last 18 months have scarred people. People have to see messages in different places and from different people. That means experts as well as peers or company employees. It’s a more skeptical time.”
Popular social networks such as Facebook and Twitter have become targets for hackers and spam. Mypetblog619 writes:
“Many of the people that I get as followers on Twitter seem to offer nothing more than a continual stream of advertisements. It seems that a growing number of “Internet marketers” are taking over Twitter, trying to get business in teaching people how to grow their follower counts and sell advertising.”
Search Engine Land weighs in:
“For marketers, in order to repair the lack of trust, extra measures must be taken. Transparency and honesty are the key to establishing credibility with your audience. Couple that with good and credible content and messaging that people will feel comfortable sharing, and you have a recipe for a great foundation of credibility… Once you have your audience on your side, remember to give back to the community and reciprocate however is appropriate.”
A qualified SEO firm can help you create a balanced social media campaign to avoid being treated or perceived as a spammy marketer.
Tags: social marketing, social media