The Dark Side Of Social Media and Online “Marketing”

Yes, there is, surprisingly, a very active dark side of social media “marketing” in a number of business sectors. For business marketing online, it is a highly competitive place. Witness the large volume of SEO agencies and the vast volumes of SEO “how-to” content. Toss in the rise of social media channels and the perhaps even larger amount of content around how to engage in marketing through social media, it’s little wonder there is a darker side.

We’ve completed well over 200 research reports across a multitude of industry sectors; from consumer goods to ball-bearing manufacturers, finance and tourism. In almost all of them we have encountered what we’ve come to term as Digital Dark Marketing.

These tactics vary, mostly it’s been about companies using SEO tactics, legitimate and black hat SEO means, to push down their competitors in search engines. Increasingly though, we are seeing similar activities across social media channels. Sometimes it is simply the usual aim of improving a company or products visibility over  a competitor – this is fine and is part of the benefits of a capitalist society. A business may also hire, unknowingly, a black hat SEO firm as recently happened to a firm in New York (ironically the article is in Forbes, who has just been accused of link spam themselves – link to article below.)

Where is gets darker however, is when nastier tactics are deployed. These range from hiring people to place negative reviews of a competitors product or service all the way through to using tactics that get a competitor pushed into Google’s “sandbox” or listed as spam for the domains web address and company emails. As we looked back at our data over the past three years of research projects, we estimate about a 11% increase, CAGR, over the past two years and forecast an 14% CAGR increase in the coming three years. Not massive amounts you might think, but enough.

There are no regulations over these tactics. Tier 1 consumer search engines like Google or Bing do not have the algorithms or methodologies to know if a dark marketing tactic is being used. Gathering the evidence of these tactics is also not easy in manual form. To trace the activity and create a path of evidence is a significant challenge and most businesses barely understand social media and are still learning how it can help them in legitimate marketing – even the firms consulting on social media are still learning. It is still a nascent sector of the online world in business terms for marketing.

Some of the tactics we’ve seen are;

Link Spamming or Spamdexing: An ongoing point of pain for search engines who are constantly “tweaking” their algorithms to stay one step ahead of these annoying folks. This tactic can be used to push down a competitor in a search engine or cause the company targeted to be “sandboxed” by a search engine in a reverse link spam operation.

Paid Negative Reviews: This seems to work in two ways. 1) is by a firm or an agency hired by a firm, paying people to slam a competitive product or drive down reviews on ranking/rating services or sometimes staff will of the company will do this themselves and 2) finding existing negative reviews of competitor products/services and “promoting” them across ranking/rating sites and other social media services (e.g. using a false Twitter account to promote a negative instance.)

Pay Per Click Fraud: Some companies will find someone or an organization to click on competitors ads in search engines or other sites/services to maximize their ad budget quickly, then place their ads afterward.

Content Realignment: Fancy term we have for taking a competitors own “content” about their product or service and altering it, then placing it on the same social media channels where they placed it, but your name is mentioned. Slightly obvious but rarely gets detected.

Paid Bloggers: A company may find a blogger willing to provide a highly positive review of their product/service and subtly or overtly “slam” their competitor. They may provide the content and the blogger may admit they are being paid to write the review but may be unaware of how they are being manipulated. There are those who have no scruples at all however, and will do as the company bids and not declare their actions. Some laws are being developed to counter this, although the intent of the law is really to hold all bloggers responsible for their statements as general consumer protection.

Blind Party Linking & Ads: Companies may unknowingly be participating in this kind of action. This is when they are “sold” links or advertising by seemingly legitimate online marketing firms or individuals. The business doesn’t understand what is happening and simply thinks it is buying ads and links. Forbes magazine was recently accused of Link Spamming.

There are a host of other tactics, some as obvious as trying to get a competitor kicked out of a social media service all the way through to “flooding” a competitors hosting service or using bot or DOS (Denial of Service) attacks. The industries where see the most of this activity is financial products (mortgages, investing), insurance (home, auto, life), electronics manufacturers and online retailers. Other sectors however, are not immune.

How do you know if your company is being targeted? It’s not easy. It takes some time and effort, but a digital media research firm that understands social media marketing, SEO and search engine marketing tactics and Web technologies can help. Evidence is hard to gather for legal retaliation we have found, but you can develop strategies to fight back. Some online reputation management services are good, but they are too often just “real-time” and do not have the ability to track history and miss many social media channels.

There is an “information war” taking place in Cyburbia today. From spammers in email and websites for pirated or black label goods through to competitive anti-marketing tactics. Unfortunately this just adds to the challenge companies face with their online presence, yet as time goes by, can ill afford not to understand.

Ethics In Social Media Monitoring & Analysis

Two of the top questions we are asked about conducting our research and monitoring in social media channels are 1) what about privacy? And 2) What about the ethical issues. They are good questions. On the privacy front, we stay within the bounds of Canada’s PIPEDA laws and observe similar privacy laws in other jurisdictions. The “ethics” question is a tougher one, I’ll admit. Here’s a bit of our take and we’d welcome your thoughts as well. The government departments we work with, federally, provincially, state and municipal are often the most concerned about privacy – I’m often impressed how much so.

This is a new field of “research” in many ways. Such a rich volume of data has never before been available to anyone, anywhere in the history of humanity. In ethical terms, there are a number of concerns and issues. Namely, what does one do with what one finds?

Let’s be very, very clear on one primary fact – if you put something publicly on the Web, that is not password protected or locked down with privacy stuff – it is public, so anyone can find it. After 200+ research projects, well, we’ve seen a lot of strange content out there.

Research in the digital world of Cyburbia has it’s issues. Some of these ethical issues are;

1. Potential Incriminating Content: What does one do if you come across activity that seems to be fraudulent in nature or seems to be breaking laws, like naughty content? Do you report it and if so, to which authorities? What are the implications of your firm as researching?

2. Libel or Slanderous Content: That’s a grey area, but sometimes you find content that could be libelous or damaging to another person. What do you do with it? Does the potentially damaged party deserve to know?

3. National Security Threats: What about content by terrorists or perceived terrorists and those of similar ilk? Do you report that to authorities?

4. Sockpuppeting, Trolling & Astroturfing: These types of behaviour around content manipulation occur all the time and can be a challenge to deal with for a researcher. Issues like sockpuppeting can have legal ramifications in some jurisdictions and must be dealt with…but on who’s shoulders does that rest?

In many cases we have established processes to deal with some of these issues. Our policies are always evolving and I can say we have some lively debates amongst the team here, and that’s good. But this is a new area of research and the answers are not always simple. Others are clear cut; if we see children being abused, we report it immediately to the relevant police authority. But libel or slander can sometimes be comedic or satirical in nature and the party being targeted may be fine with it.

What issues do you see? Do you think such monitoring is invasive?

(Author: G. Crouch)

Social Media Monitoring or Social Media Research?

It’s a question that comes up a lot with new or prospective clients – what is the difference and value of social media research in regards to social media monitoring. It’s a good question. The answer is “both” are critical. Here’s our take on why and the difference.

If you’re looking to develop a social media strategy, then you need to “listen” before you develop a strategy and listen before you actually engage. This is where the “social media research” aspect comes into play. By conducting the research into social media first, you’ll understand a) if there is any conversation about you taking place, b) what is being said, c) where it is taking place and c) who is talking about your company or organization. This initial research provides the key insights you’ll need to make effective business decisions.

In developing a social media strategy, the questions you need answered are those in the above paragraph. Once those questions are answered, you can then determine a) should I be engaged in social media and if so, to what degree? b) Which channels should I be focusing my resources on, c) what kind of resources do I need and what are the associated costs, d) what kind of content will my audience respond to (e.g. video, text, audio, images) and e) what do I then need to monitor, how often and what tools are best?

At MediaBadger, we come in at the first part- the social media research. From the results of our research, we can recommend the best tools to use for social media monitoring, how often and where to monitor in line with your budget and available resources. Hiring a social media research firm is a critical part to your overall online marketing strategy. Such research can identify keywords for search engine optimization, social media optimization, Web design issues (i.e. User Interface Design), nature and form of content and what business units may be most impacted by social media.

I’ll note that one constant complaint amongst our clients is that they hire a 20-something MBA or grad student to do the initial “listening” but the results are tepid at best. That’s because they are missing the point and the target audience. If you still think social media is not for kids, you’re completely missing your target audience – to the detriment of your bottom line. While MBA’s and PR degrees or diplomas are incredibly valuable, they do not make up for real-world or industry business experience. Such experience is critical to being able to understand the “data” to turn it into useful information that can be acted on to make a positive impact to a business overall or a business unit.

Monitoring comes afterward and is equally important and is often called online reputation management or ORM. We generally do not provide monitoring services. There are a number of tools and services that do that; at the top end is radian6 and the bottom end is WhosTalkin, a free service that offers links but no metrics or sexy graphs. In fact there are over 40 services. Keep in mind though that almost all of them only use a connection to Google, which means serious limitations on what might be found…all miss key hyper-localization services such as Yelp or FourSquare – that’s important if your a very local business. We often help clients find the best monitoring solution for their business, industry and budget. Conversely we offer monthly and quarterly updates – which may be preferred if your engagement level is low and audience participation not on the level of the likes of say Apple, Nike, Adidas or Sony.

So to sum it all up; the research part provides you with the road map of where to go and what to say while the monitoring makes sure your good with your audience for the online reputation management component. Here’s a blog post on SocialMedia Today talking about where monitoring tools fail as well. And here is a good list of monitoring services.

Social Media & Business Use in Atlantic Canada Update

Citizen or “netizen” use of social media technologies in Atlantic Canada is fairly high at around 78% of the online population. So what about business use? We monitor such activity on an ongoing basis in Atlantic Canada, UK and Northeastern US. So here’s a quick update on usage in Atlantic Canada this year.

Trend: While we’ve seen a 32% increase in businesses using social media in Atlantic Canada this year over 2009, what we’ve really noticed is “individual use”, that is, professionals, use social media more than a “business entity.” We define a business entity as a company that has a presence in a social media channel.

Professional Usage: Professionals use of social media tools is up 48% over 2009. The most popular business social media tool in Atlantic Canada is LinkedIn followed by Plaxo. eCademy and FastPitch are distant third and fourth respectively. We also note that “knowledge workers” or “white collar” professions are more active than “blue collar” or “skilled trades”. Knowledge workers dominate this space for business use. The top professions using business social networking tools are; 1) marketing, 2) public relations, 3) insurance/finance, 4) real-estate and 5) technology.

Business Usage: Businesses are increasing their usage of social media tools, mostly for marketing messages. The most popular channels for businesses in Atlantic Canada are LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and blogging. The most popular blogging platform is WordPress followed by blogger.

We do note that although blogging is up 21% over 2009, businesses will average 1 blog post per month only. In 67% of the instances where we looked at a business blog, the blog design did not match their website design or corporate branding. This can lead to prospective mistrust amongst potential customers and purchase dissonance.

Conclusion: We forecast growth in use of social media by businesses this year and are seeing slightly higher use than we expected. We do note that businesses tend to have one person who engages the most with social technologies. We saw that 43% of businesses that use social media have sales professionals as their front while 40% were marketing and the remaining 17% were public relations/communications professionals.

Methodology: We monitor 1,500 business domains across Atlantic Canada (similar and scaled to population in UK and NE USA) with our crawler then running search intervals every month. Data is then compiled through our Artificial Intelligence Engine and reviewed by two analysts. We combine automated and physical research and analysis. We began benchmarking in 2008 and now have two years of statistical data on usage in these regions.

When to Adopt Social Media Tools into Marketing

There’s three ways to look at adopting new digital media and social media channels for your marketing and communications efforts.

A) Bleeding Edge: Get in before the service becomes super hot to build presence and traction (i.e. getting into Twitter in 2007.) The upside can be getting to shape the tone and manner and building a strong brand presence. The downside is knowing it will be a winner and that it won’t shut down for lack of service. If you picked Plurk as microblog platform, well, sorry about that.

B) Leading Edge: This is when, it would seem, mainstream media first starts to report on a service. A good example would be blogging. You can better pick which service is likely to be around in a few years (even through acquisitions or mergers) and you can still play a role in shaping the channel and building  a strong presence.

C) Laggard: Shareholders of pharmacy chain Walgreen’s kept pushing senior management to build an online presence fast and start an eCommerce site. Management resisted and waiting until 2000, watching and learning from others who failed. Smart move on Walgreen’s part. Sometimes this can be a safe bet, but you’ll expend more human resource time and money in social media channels the later you enter.

In large part, when you choose to use a social media  service depends mostly on senior management’s comfort with that level of engagement, expenditure and how it can relate to ROI for the business. Other factors include time, brand values, market size etc. As always with social media, do some listening first. A service may not always live up to the hype or may not even be right for your organization.

Some companies have a culture of being “bleeding edge” and want to be at the visionary stage of product adoption (i.e. Moores Law of technology adoption)