Nothing frustrates me more than poorly executed or disingenuous marketing and PR efforts. That’s one of the reasons I’m motivated to blog: I’m irrationally committed to seeing brands implement quality, useful marketing programs.
But what is especially irksome is social media marketing software and service providers who don’t take the time to give their own marketing efforts the proper love. They really should know better.
So let’s go through (yet another) recent example I stumbled-upon.
From what I hear, Spredfast social software is actually pretty good. And in fact I’m their target market, as I work with a global digital team (and many clients) who could implement such a solution. However, when I see their website I don’t actually think these people understand social. So I’m immediately turned off from starting a conversation with them.
Case in point – at the bottom of their website they are pulling in a Twitter-feed of their CMO (who looks a bit like Bill Maher):
It’s a cool idea, except horribly executed when the Tweet shown is one from last year in December (yet, they state, inaccurately, it is the “latest Tweet”). They’re trying to make their website “social” except for the fact that this isn’t social or even useful.
Further their CMO hasn’t updated Twitter since September (2 months ago):
I actually don’t have a problem with executives not being social. But if a brand is going to portray themselves in such a way that implies their team members are in fact social it is somewhat deceitful to implement the above.
Aside from their CMO, this team as a whole has published a total of 18 blog posts this year, pretty dismal considering socially-savvy competitors in the space who have structured their marketing properly for the web publish 18 posts per month. Aside from that, they have ATD fails all over their own social efforts. For one glaring example (there are many more) check out their blog title tag (or lack thereof):
Yup, I look at this stuff when determining if software providers actually understand the web. In this case, does the above brand? Maybe …but they don’t show it in their own online marketing. That’s important because I certainly care to work with savvy software providers who are willing to go the extra mile and understand why these items (and more) are important. If they aren’t paying attention to their own efforts, would they with me as a customer?
The lesson is don’t be disingenuous and put in a half-hearted effort with your own marketing: whether you’re targeting the marketing category or otherwise. Your customers are smart and will see right through this.