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The 7 Deadly Sins of Social Media

James Clark — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 07:30:00 -0600

The 7 Deadly Sins of Social Media: Summary

Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy and Pride. Yuck - the power of the word is evident in just looking at this infamous list.

The forces of good and evil are universal principles both online and offline. We all come into the real world (and the virtual one) as innocent babes. But once we arrive, our actions can bring us glory or shame.

In the world of social media, are you going to be a force for good? Or are you going to turn to the dark side - ruining your chances and infuriating those who cross your path?

The Fork in the Road

Building an online presence takes clarity of thought, tenacity and honesty. And it demands that we quickly differentiate right action from wrong.
I've got two young children, and I watch this process all the time. With young kids, the reaction isn't the split-second decision adults make. I can see my son's brain working it out while he is holding the permanent marker, looking at his sister's homework and processing: "Should I do it? Should I draw all over her homework?"

More often than not, adults' intuition tells us the correct thing to do.
It doesn't always come easily. In life, this kind of intuition is learned over years, through life experiences and influences and teachings from parents, family, community, religion, school, teachers, friends, etc.

But I'm drawn to saving sinners. For those wanting some form of moral compass to give a basis for understanding the right and wrong of social media, this article will capture the learning that takes a lifetime of community inputs in less than 2,000 words. How's that for vanity!

The Seven Deadly Sins of Social Media

Let's get at it. This list is in no particular order of importance. There is no hierarchy of social media sins. And for those reluctant to reform, you can't simply choose the least of the seven evils and get away with it - they are all bad.

Pride

The original and most deadly of the mortal sins, pride is the grim reaper of social media sins. When you have too much pride to admit you are wrong, and you go on defending your flawed position, even when conflicting facts are made available, you are treading on some seriously thin ice. What's worse is when you "spin" facts in an attempt to convince others of one kernel or intent of truth in your statement. You must accept that it is OK to have made a mistake. Swallowing your pride and accepting that you were wrong is priceless - and in the long run this will make life easier. True character is revealed in times of adversity.

Note: If the clarifying response is not immediate and the apology not genuine, then all hell will start breaking loose. If your community or subscribers find out you are not walking the walk, then the revolution will be openly socialized.
Social Opposite to Pride: Humility

Gluttony

Gluttony - too much, too fast. We've all seen the social sin of gluttony in beginners who look at social media as a new channel that is built to serve them. They jump in and devour all the services they have read about and quickly find themselves swamped, ineffective and wasting everyone's time.

To avoid gluttony, we recommend starting on one or two social media platforms. Get to know the inner workings, leverage the value of each of those communities and then confidently start expanding your social network footprint.

Remember you are present to add value to the communities you join, not to push messaging in those communities.
Social Opposite: Temperance

Sloth

Sloth - I could easily say this sin is being lazy and not participating in the conversation - never posting comments, creating new content or adding value to the networks - and I would be right.

Sloth in the social media sense is more meaningfully the failure to apply and use your talents and gifts in the conversation. Just remember you're good enough, you're smart enough and people like you.

But I'll also stick up for those that have tried getting involved in the social web and failed. Sloth is often a symptom of non-believers. It usually comes from a culture where there is little support for a social media initiative and little commitment to its success. Immersing oneself or an organization in social media takes a tremendous amount of time, dedication and attention, and without a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T from your peers, the effort is futile.

Sloth creeps in for non-believers of the product or company, too. This means if a social media community manager is placed at the head of the program and he or she frankly doesn't care about the company, product or service - it's doomed. Listen, if the effort is not a passion, the creativity will dry up fast.
Social Opposite: Diligence

Envy

Envy - "Damn, I had that idea three months ago." "I know twice as much as that idiot, and he's got thousands of followers." "I wrote about that two years ago, and along comes this A-list blogger who gets all the credit."

'Nuff said - these situations are painful experiences. But face it, the reality is that someone else spent the time, energy and effort to build their network to put themselves in the position to get the credit. You might have brilliant ideas and have written great articles, but if your network is non-existent, then guess what: If a tree falls in the forest... Can you confess your network is lacking punch? (See "Pride," above.) If so, gather the strength and commit to putting yourself into the conversation. Offer to help others in ways that genuinely and directly benefit them, not you.
Social Opposite: Kindness

Greed

Greed - a deliberate betrayal for personal gain. Greed has many different labels in social media: astroturfing, link baiting, spamming, scum-sucking scourges that live in the bowels of hell... The sin of greed just might be the most reviled and hated of all the sins in social media. So I'm going to spend a little more time on this one.

Let's put the greedy in two camps: fakes and flacks.
Fakes: Fakes blatantly attempt to hijack social media platforms for personal, employer or corporate gain. Think Wal-Marting Across America. Fakery is when a fraudulent blog site, Facebook page, Digg profile, etc., pops up, posturing as if it has no ties or biases to a particular product or company. Yeah, sure, it's just out of the pure goodness of these people's hearts that they are driving around the country visiting Wal-Marts and blogging about it (in the case linked above), or constantly submitting a company's content to Digg, or posting updates in a Facebook group. Just know this: You will be exposed. It is the duty of bloggers and other personal marshals of the social media universe to sniff out the fakes and shine a light on dark-hatched plans.

Flacks: Flacks are in the offing when a team of coordinated individuals premeditate their actions as part of a campaign to go out and fill social media networks and blogs with comments, tags, Diggs or Stumbles supporting a particular product or company. Think: Comcast "Big Ten". Take note of this so I can say, "You've been warned."

Yes, bloggers can deduce comment spamming is happening by referencing the IP address from whence the comments are coming. If you have hired a PR agency, and those individuals are all connecting to the Internet via the same IP address, and all of a sudden three of four new commenters appear on a blog post from that IP address, then it's a good indication the black horde of flacks has arrived.

Common traces of flacks include:
1. First-time comments on a blog. This is an error in the basic understanding of community. Most bloggers and group owners know who their most frequent commenters are, and blog platforms like Post Zinger can even keep a history of comments by name. So after a post that may be controversial or damning receives a flood of new commenters trying to contradict the statements of the post, somebody will likely sniff out the orchestrated reputation management effort.

2. The comments are lacking any anchor text link (the name of the commenter that links to a blog, webpage or social media page). If you're an active participant in social networking there has to be some website, blog or social media profile you can link your name to.

3. Comments teeming with "messaging." We can all spot buzzword messaging a mile away, so please refrain. (BTW, you must play buzzword bingo at the next event you attend.)

To tame greed, make the commitment to the 80/20 rule. That means 80 percent of the content you are commenting on, tagging and submitting is not yours or related to your clients or company.
Social Opposite: Charity

Lust

Lust - "Oh John, Oh Paul, Oh George, Oh Ringo." Come on, people, excess in any form is not good for you. Excessive ass-kissing of social media experts is just downright annoying. I'm not talking teacher's pet stuff, where you are trying to be good by paying attention, showing up on time and participating - that's all cool with me. What I'm talking about is the freaky, inappropriate and relentless pursuit of an individual that is just in bad taste.

I'm not saying don't try to create relationships with these individuals; by all means do pursue those relationships.

What I am saying is have some skill and tact, and use common sense. Don't constantly link to your content in their posts, and spare us the smoochy comments like "Love this post. Thanks!" and "Thanks for sharing."
Social Opposite: Self Control

Finally, there is…

Wrath

Wrath - Uncontrolled feelings of hatred and anger where you lash out and post a stream of vile meant only to tear someone or something down with the intent to do harm.

Now, I can sympathize with the sin of wrath, and sometimes it's borderline justifiable. Do everything in your power to resist publicly berating an individual or company. Don't personalize anything. If you're getting bad service, find a way to creatively discuss your exact experience and stick to the facts; don't get into name calling.

If you're genuinely pissed off to the point of blindness, type up your diatribe in a Word document, sleep on it overnight and come back the next day to see if it's still a good idea to post it. More than likely, you'll come to your senses. It's always easier to catch flies with honey.

Remember: "Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering," states Yoda.
Social Opposite: Forgiveness

Who Are You - Saint or Sinner?

When it comes to social media, there are a lot of great voices in the conversation - let's call them saints - willing to help others understand the right things to do: Chris Brogan, http://www.chrisbrogan.com, Brian Solis, http://www.briansolis.com, Jeremiah Owyang, http://www.web-strategist.com, Steve Rubel, http://www.micropersuasion.com, Peter Shankman, http://www.shankman.com and Dave Taylor, http://www.intuitive.com/blog to name a few I personally enjoy.

Naturally, the shadowy side has personalities attached, too. Because I'm a Wikipedia addict, following is a link to information about the mortal transgressions, starting with the 4th-century monk who first delivered the seven mortal sins to the world:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_deadly_sins

If you read the Wikipedia entry you will see each of the Seven Deadly Sins is associated with a demon:
Lucifer: pride
Beelzebub: gluttony
Belphegor: sloth
Leviathan: envy
Mammon: greed
Asmodeus: lust
Satan/Amon: wrath

Who would earn a demon title in the social media world? Do yourself a favor: Absolve yourself of the risk of evil new nicknames being hung on your online identity by using social media virtuously.
Now go forth, and sin no more.

About the Author
James Clark is a social media expert and cofounding partner of Room 214, a social media and word of mouth marketing agency. James is also author of the award-winning white paper, Fire Your PR Firm. Some of his other notable Room 214 articles include The Placement Crash: The Failure of PR in the Conversation World and The Top 5 Reasons Why It's RSS or DIE.

James Clark and Jason Cormier co-founded Room 214 (www.Room214.com) in 2004 to help companies with search marketing, online public relations and reputation management.

Leveraging the Cluetrain Manifesto doctrine, James and Jason originated the "Capture the Conversation" philosophy: search engines are media and markets are conversations. To dominate a market, you must capture the conversation by pursuing a unified, multi-tactic approach to social media and high search engine visibility.

Take Some Next Steps To Keep in Touch

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Invite us to help your organization or speak at your event by calling James Clark or Jason Cormier at 866-624-1851 or by filling in the contact form at http://www.room214.com/contact.php

Download the PDF of The 7 Deady Sins of Social Media

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3 Reasons Top Brands Are Absent From Online Sponsorship

James Clark — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 18:45:07 -0500

I won't make you read the entire article for the 3 Reasons. Here they are:

Agencies providing online advertising for top brands have no clue how to target online influencers
Online advertising skill sets are vastly different from traditional MSM advertising
Ad agencies lack understanding of the social web, and still see online advertising as display or pay per click only

Point 1: Using Influencer ID Tools Will Deliver The Audience Targets

Peter Whoriskey of the WaPo had a great post, Brought to You by .... Anyone? on how major brands are slow to move their sponsorship budgets to the web. In the article there were some great quotes that struck me:

Penry Price, Google's vice president of North American advertising sales, noted that while it is relatively easy to do demographic targeting in other media, it is more difficult to get precise information about online audiences for a given Web site. Consider, for example, an advertiser trying to reach young women interested in fashion.

"We know they're online, and they may be online more than they are watching TV or reading magazines, but there's no easy way to find them right now," Price said. The process of adapting to online media is "a fundamental challenge for the entire advertising industry."

Okay, Penry, Google VP of ad sales for NA, is right in regards to audiences for a given website, but the fact is the technology does exist today to target young women in fashion. Penry's quote reinforces the point that ad agencies have no clue how to target online advertising to influencers. They are still stuck in the MSM mindset that the site owner will provide the audience stats. There are other means at getting at this data. It takes work, but it is doable.

Coming from the word of mouth marketing and reputation management field in online marketing, we are often shocked at how few online advertising strategies focus on influencer targeting. By leveraging subject matter influencer identifcation tools such as Collective Intellect and Umbria, we actually can narrow ad targets to those sites, blogs and forums where young women interested in fashion visit.

But, again, it's not just the fact of finding those blogs and running banner advertising and sponsorships. It's about creating content that will put your company right in front of those niche audiences.

New analysis tools are there to dive even further into creating deeply targeted campaigns that connect the common threads of your audience. What does this mean? It means that a company just doesn't target fashion blogs. What they need to do is find the common "tribal" thread that runs through that entire target audience of women and fashion.

So imagine the analysis about young women interested in fashion also tells you that these individuals have a high affinity for social causes, discussions on urban travel destinations and a love for Coldplay.

NOW YOU HAVE A CAMPAIGN PLATFORM, not a just a target demographic to push your advertising to.

With this kind of research and understanding of the audience, big advertisers can truly connect through the "passion threads" of their target consumer. By connecting on a deeper, more meaningful level big brands will see greater acceptance, success and visibility online.

What Does A "Passion Thread" Campaign Look Like?

Sticking to the young women and fashion target, imagine a campaign idea that promotes user generated content involvement spearheaded by a fashion icon, donates a certain dollar amount to a major social cause for every UGC upload and awards a grand prize of an all expense trip for four to New York City to see Coldplay live in concert.

So now the targets and messaging go beyond the fashion blogs and sites. You have a common passion thread in multiple niche markets (social causes, music) that gives you the ability to run sponsorship on sites outside of the fashion world and influence and connect with other passionate users.

"If you are responsible for a brand that has been around for 50 years, you clearly are more cautious," said Kelly Twohig, who manages digital investment for Starcom, a media agency. "You have less license to innovate."

I think what Kelly is really saying in regards to less license to innovate is that you just can't take uncalculated risks. So by doing the influencer research upfront and presenting the data about the passion threads, and building the campaign and online media buying targets to tie those passions together, one can signifcantly reduce the risk and increase the probability for success. That's what the client is looking for.

Point 2: New Skill Sets Needed

Another issue is the skill sets required in online advertising. It's not the same game as traditional main stream advertising. There needs to be integration with the interactive team, development of a community manager role, definition of an online conversion, split testing mechanisms in place to make adjustments on the fly, online tracking and sentiment analysis.

I've heard the horror stories from large branding agencies that dived into online advertising only to find out they struggle to understand how to bring all of the necessary tracking, split testing and data and sentiment analysis together to define what would make the campaign a success or not.

For one thing, the largest chunk of money spent for online ads is in search advertising, those little text ads that run beside search results. These ads do not directly benefit companies putting information online. Instead, the money from search advertising is reaped by the search engines -- Google, Yahoo and Microsoft -- that run them.

Listen, PPC search advertising is pretty easy. Yeah there's a science to it and it takes time and attention, but the goal of any brand advertising is to increase awareness and positive sentiment about a brand. So by default keyword PPC advertising is just one of many tools, but it stil dominates the majority of the budget.

Point 3: Embracing the Social Web. Beyond Banner and PPC Advertising

In the WaPo article, Rob Wrubel, chief executive of the online ad company that works for University of Phoenix, the nation's leading buyer of online sponsorship states that he:

...wants to encourage faculty members to have blogs so that when a person searches on a given subject, the results might lead them to the University of Phoenix. He speculates that the company could produce reality-TV "webisodes" involving people going back to school -- a way to find and engage the target audience.

Bingo. Rob has the vision for what is next and what will drive immersion for online branding. I've been saying this for a while, that the most effective online branding tool for companies would be to have their employees actively engaged and involved in social media.

The employee base is the most valuable and underutilized tool in the marketing shed. The more the employees get involved in the medium the more connections there are to spread the word about the organization or campaign. Not to mention the more insights the employees can deliver to the marketing team. I've posted my position about companies embracing employees engaging in social media on the Endless Wormhole blog.

The next wave is about understanding the common threads of your audience and creating content that is relevant and important to them. Brands need to start thinking of themselves as content publishers and looking at ways to increase there social web footprints through employee participation in social media sites, blogs, podcasts, online customer support, events, etc. It's all there, waiting for the taking.

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Understanding the 'Digg Podcast' section

Stepan Mazurov — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 19:31:23 -0600

Almost 2 months ago, for their 42nd (re)design and feature roll out, Kevin Rose announced on the Digg blog about a new feature called "Podcasts." Here is what he said:

Podcasting
Now you can Digg your favorite podcast series and individual podcast episodes. Not only can you see a list of the most popular podcasts by section, you can also dive into any individual podcasts to see the most Dugg individual episodes. And don't forget - every time you Digg a podcast or podcast episode that is bookmarked in your profile and shared with your friends.

The Podcasts Section: what does it offer?

After we all had some time to play around with this section and get a feel for its popularity it is time to get down and dirty and figure out how to use it to promote your podcast. Instead of following the traditional "newest items first" scheme used in every other section, the digg team decided to sort podcasts by lifetime diggs. The basic idea is that each podcast is represented in order from highest diggs to lowest with the image, title and short description of each podcast as well as the good old Digg This button. Those curious enough to dig deeper have noticed that once you are on an individual podcast page, Digg proudly allows everyone to vote for individual shows within a podcast. While the diggs you get for individual shows do not reflect on the grand total for your show, they seem to play a significant role in the "Upcoming Podcasts" section featured on the main podcasting page.

The visibility of the Podcasting section is incredible, but after 2 long months, getting to that page is extremely difficult for an up-and-coming podcast. To make matters worse, and crush your hopes of getting recognized for your great podcasting talent, 6 out of 10 Revision3 (Digg's videocasting company) shows reside snugly on that front page without a chance of being pushed out. To gratify your work and challenge the front-page status quo you must not look to digg, but rather your own subscribers.

Tips on utilizing Podcast Feature to promote your Show.

The plan is simple. You need to utilize your listeners and subscribers to increase your visibility on digg, which in turn will drive more traffic to your podcast and get you more subscribers. To help you through this process, digg has some great tools for us to use. Recently they updated the embeddable "Digg This" buttons for your site in order to be smarter and less intrusive than ever. Here are a few tips on how to take advantage of them while promoting your podcast:

-Include digg button in your posts and on your site. With each blog post or in a designated location on your site there should be a "digg this" button embedded. After these tips there is a quick step-by-step guide explaining how to do it in more detail. You have 2 styles to choose from and you can change out the background color, but that's it, you cannot change the color of the link, nor use something other than yellow if its not your color. If the button does not work with your design or for personal reasons, you can just include a link to your podcast section on Digg with an encouraging and, possibly, a life-threatening message. Before you ask "Can I add the button to my iTunes podcast page?" the answer is "No," iTunes does not allow you to embed or link to anything other than your home page. Your best bet is to verbally ask your listeners to ether go to your site and digg your show, or direct them to your podcast page on digg.

-Include a link to the individual show page in your blog posts. This should be your number one priority because the diggs you get for individual podcasts directly determine if your podcast is worthy to be featured in the "Upcoming Podcasts" sidebar. There is no easy way to do this, and sadly the "smart" digg this button isn't smart enough to recognize the links pointing to the individual pages. To add insult to injury, there is no way to know the link to that page beforehand (although, they are all sequential and you can just +1 the number at the end of the link), so you are stuck with doing some mouse work after you get the URL and including it in your blog post that way. Some of you are beginning to wounder if you can just skip this step, but like I said earlier, the upcoming podcasts sidebar is a great way to promote your podcast. And the diggs that individual shows get seem to be a significant influence in getting featured there, so prompting your audience to digg the individual shows is very important.

-Promote your digg account and encourage your listeners to add you as a friend. Digg is becoming widespread and has accumulated a huge user base. Chances are some of your listeners are regulars on digg. If not, some will definitely like the idea of following what you digg and would love to share some of their interests with you. If you show some love and promote mutual friendships, with a bit of luck and depending on your demographic, you will have quite a few people digging every episode. This will only improve as you visibility on digg solidifies. Also do not forget to digg your own shows, there is no harm in that.

How to add a "digg this" button for your podcast to your site.

The process of this is quite simple. All of this is taken straight from Digg Tools:Integrate page.

1. Make sure your podcast is on digg and identify any mistakes it might have. If you have an iTunes feed, chances are all is well and digg is syndicating your content correctly.
2. Identify podcast URL. Navigate to Podcast Search and do a quick search for your podcast. Take a note of the URL. For these instructions I'll use our own Kris Smith's podcast, Croncast. The URL of the digg page for his podcast is http://www.digg.com/podcasts/Croncast_Kris_and_Betsy_Smith_2
3. Pick a button design you wish to use. You've got 2 to pick from: Plain Vanilla or Slim Peach

If you wish to use Plain Vanilla remember "normal" and for Slim Peach keep "compact" fresh in your mind.
4. Get to embedding! With all info collected, use the code below to embed Digg This Button in a post, or anywhere on your site. It is quite straight forward, just remember to replace bold, italicised parts with your own.

digg_url = 'http://www.digg.com/podcasts/Croncast_Kris_and_Betsy_Smith_2';
digg_skin = 'compact';

That's it! You are done. Now comes the time to use the social media reactor and get your audience pumped up and participate in the promotion of your podcast. So that your mad ninja skills can finally be rewarded with some fame.

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