A few days ago CNET’s Caroline McCarthy wrote an interesting article on social media’s hidden bubble. She contends that, while there are many good social media strategists out there, there are also many bad ones who are ready to give poor advice to companies interested in – but clueless about – developing a social media presence. The coming US recession, she says, is good in that it will burst the social media bubble and will help wipe the bad ones away
She makes a good point and you don’t have to look too far to find examples of social media missteps from around the world. You won’t find too many missteps made my Australian companies, though – but that’s because most of them aren’t doing social media at all so they have nothing to mess up! The biggest disaster story from last year, for example, was the brouhaha over people from National Australia Bank posting promotional comments on popular Australian sports blogs. Some people insisted that was equivalent to corporate spamming though, really, it wasn’t such a big deal.
So, if you want to cover your social media butt during the economic downturn, here a few way to tell whether your social media ‘expert’ is any good or not:
- ‘Top 25 Ways to Tell if Your Social Media Expert is a Carpetbagger’ by Beth Harte and Geoff Livingston
Meanwhile, if you’re a social media expert and are considering a social media project offered by company:
- ‘20 Signs You Don’t Want That Social Media Project’ by Chris Applegate