Fear of the unknown
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Information Age analyses the barriers to adoption of social media marketing
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Is this caution appropriate? There is certainly a considerable risk of ridicule associated with social media use, as news of a business or government body using the medium inappropriately spreads quickly, especially in the case of well-known brands. But it seems unreasonable for this risk to prevent organisations from achieving the benefits of customer engagement that social media offers.
There are technological approaches available that can help prevent employees from making harmful contributions to social networks, deliberately or otherwise, most of which work by monitoring Internet traffic from the company premises. But many more respondents identified ‘negative publicity’ as the prime reputational risk associated with social media (56%) than did ‘inappropriate staff usage’ (16%).
This suggests respondents feel that even an organisation’s planned and deliberate social media strategy could cause it reputational harm. Having confidence in one’s own strategies perhaps requires a more mature approach to social media – a better understanding of the rules – than is today the norm. This may well come in time, but only for those organisations that actively pursue it.
It must also be noted that social media advocates argue that it helps organisations to prevent PR disasters, by allowing them to detect them early and nip them in bud. “Social media allows you to handle [PR] issues more effectively,” Dominic Burch, head of new media for supermarket chain Asda, told Information Age recently. “You get to find out what issues people are talking about before you get a call from the Daily Mail.”
Knowing the law
Another risk that wards organisations off social media marketing is the threat of legal consequences, identified as a barrier to adoption by 22% of respondents, making it the sixth most common barrier.
There are a great number of legal issues associated with the commercial use of social media. These include the fact that an employer may be liable for any contribution made to a social network by an employee, especially if it relates to the company’s products or services; that the organisation may be required to produce their employee’s social media contributions as evidence at a later date; and that misrepresentation in social media can constitute false advertising.
Encouragingly, most respondents said they had either some knowledge of the legal implications of social media usage (61%) or extensive knowledge (19%). However, when those respondents who admitted that their knowledge was less than extensive were asked why their knowledge is not greater, a worrying 25% indicated their agreement with the statement ‘We don’t host anything ourselves and use public platforms like Facebook/Twitter, etc’. This is not a legal defence – organisations can be legally responsible for the actions of their employees on public social networks – and the finding raises questions about how well informed they really are.
It is striking that while some risks prevent organisations from participating in social media marketing altogether, others appear to be underestimated. Clearly, there is room for greater maturity in the way businesses and public sector bodies approach social media marketing.
