Key excerpt...

Remember, this is a channel that has not been totally ruined by spam -- yet. Customers still trust social media because of its authenticity. But that trust goes out the window once marketers begin unleashing the wrong tools -- like the three types below.

Message automation: Your goal is to provide organic content and conversations that are relevant to influencers and engaged buyers. Automating messages sends the idea that you have nothing of value to say, and what you do have to say is canned. 

Auto follow: Following keyword-selected users leads to garbage followers and nothing more. To gain high-caliber followers, you can’t be a stranger at the door -- after all, you’re only let into a house if the resident knows you. Start with a list of influencers within your space, study their audience engagement and produce good content that people want to read. Reach out to your connections with a solid social presence or get a blog article featured through popular channels and encourage readers to follow you. It’s not an overnight process, but the results are worth the effort.

Outsourced social maintenance: Given that your CRM and your marketing automation solutions often have a dedicated admin, you might fall into the trap of outsourcing your social media channel management as well. But you wouldn't outsource your own conversations to a third party -- and that’s exactly what your social accounts are. They are your voice. Stay authentic, and don’t use consultants who promise to boost your social following. It won’t lead to true engagement or advocacy -- only hollow numbers.

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Condensed...

While exploring the Social Ops Neighborhood and riding the track on the Digital Marketing Transit Map, consider three stops of high interest for the rest of 2013 and into 2014:

1. Content Marketing: Many social teams are studying the newsroom habits of publishing organizations and developing best practices based on the principles of media workflow. It requires a focused and funded effort that staffs and organizes resources appropriately. These capabilities and resources are something which many digital marketers still do possess.

2. Social Analytics: Clients are starting to move beyond keyword search and basic sentiment and they are increasing demand for Social Analytics, which builds on social monitoring and includes unstructured text (beyond keywords) analytics, predictive modeling and prescriptive recommendations about what to do with the social data they are gathering.

3. Connection to Marketing Ops: Marketing Ops is about the management and operation of marketing platforms and applications, including campaign, lead, loyalty, event, performance and marketing resource management systems and processes. Marketing operations span the gap between digital and traditional marketing channels. Social Marketing must be considered in these plans. Social Marketing at a basic level offers what multichannel marketing seeks to do: giving marketers engaged and targeted interaction particularly when the customer is reaching out themselves.

Key excerpt...

So it’s perhaps no surprise that Gartner’s 2013 social marketing survey pointed to content creation and curation as the key areas of focus for social marketing organizations—and the most outsourced function. Part of this research is available here to the general public, free of charge.

The rhythm and tempo of social marketing puts extraordinary pressure on marketing organizations that are more accustomed to publishing horizons measured in weeks and months than those measured in minutes and hours. Also, as my colleague Allen Weiner tells us, the expectation for content quality and authenticity has changed dramatically. As Allen says, “speak from the heart or not at all.” Amen.