Campaign killer No. 1
Putting tactics ahead of strategy
It's important to recognize this one immediately and steer clear of it before it makes you do something stupid.
You come to work one morning, and there's a forwarded email newsletter from someone in executive management sitting in your inbox, accompanied by a single question -- "What are we doing on Twitter?"
It doesn't have to be Twitter. It can be any social media vehicle. The problem arises when that simple question causes a major fire drill within marketing to figure out Twitter without the benefit of an overarching social media strategy.
Marketing departments often experience a lot of pressure to operate both reactively and tactically. After all, every moment that you're not on Twitter represents an opportunity for a competitor to figure out how to leverage the channel to steal market share. Additionally, if senior management asks about a specific vehicle, it's usually because they think there's some merit in being there -- why disappoint? Further, many companies have difficulty figuring out who should be in charge of social media within the organization. Someone else from another department (customer service? corporate communications?) could propose a Twitter program before marketing does and end up steering social media programs going forward.
If any of these things are going on within your company, it's tempting to try to figure out the tactic before the strategy is in place. Don't.
An approved social media strategy is a must before any significant programs go live. Without it, companies can't effectively evaluate vehicles, figure out how their contribution to the mix builds the business, or measure their effectiveness. In such a vacuum, tactical programs can at best hope to be dismissed as mere experiments or at worst be deemed dismal failures that didn't produce favorable ROI.
Of course, if you already have a social media strategy in place before the questions come, dealing with them is relatively easy.
