Using social media can be a simple and effective way to market a brand. Such social networking tools have seemingly fallen into the laps of corporations and have provided them with a new venue to connect with their customers on perhaps a more interpersonal level.

That, however, was most likely what fast-food giant McDonald’s thought when they launched their #McDStories campaign earlier this year. For those who aren’t quite familiar with this story (which ironically has become a McDStory itself), last January McDonald’s created a social media marketing strategy on Twitter which focused on the notion that customers would use the #McDStories as a hashtag to express feel-good and positive stories regarding their experiences at the fast-food chain. Yet, this was not the case. Not at all.

Instead, the hashtag backfired on them and ultimately the campaign became a failure as well as blueprint for how not to use social media. In other words, people used the hashtag to instead share their gross, disgusting, and sometimes disturbing stories about their true McDonald’s experiences.

This clearly is social media marketing gone wrong. This story, however, shouldn’t merely be a reminder of the potential dangers of investing in social media (especially those more traditional companies) rather it should be a reminder of the importance of understanding how social media operates, and also how to effectively communicate your brand using these tools.

Here are two reasons why this social media campaign failed and why others can just as easily fall on its own sword:

1) Trying to be something you’re not

One of the fundamental issues I see with this marketing campaign is that McDonald’s tried to become something they are not; they essentially did not stay true to their brand. Companies typically fall under three categories in which they can be categorized: price, convenience,and image. These categories are also important to the marketing of the brand as they represent what the company is all about.

In this case, it seems as if the #McDStories campaign steered toward representing McDonald’s as a brand of great image when everyone knows they are a company based on their cheap food prices by comparison.

Instead of trying to convey McDonald’s as a lifestyle brand they should have tried promoting themselves as a company that does great charitable work as well. Yes, you can get ‘great cheap food here’ but also you can sleep well at night knowing that you are helping donate to the Ronald McDonald House of Charities!

2) Refraining from seeing social media as an essential tool to connect to your customers

Traditional senses of marketing and advertising usually translates into a ‘one-sided mirror’ streamline of communication: this is what we have to offer you, should you choose to accept or deny. But social media marketing works exponentially different in the sense that tools such as Twitter gives the public — the customers — a voice that can be heard, and more importantly, seen permanently and immediately.

If you are a company and you create a hashtag to promote your company (even with such silly marketing schlock as #McDStories)  then you better be prepared to receive your mailbag’s worth of hatemail. I see it as this: social networking media should be viewed as a public suggestion box — you’re going to get cruel notes stuck together with gum, but if you look deep enough, it should be easy to find the desired responses from your dedicated customers.

McDonalds however did somewhat come to their senses as their Twitter status now reads: We’re here to listen and learn from all of our fans and followers.

Every other month there seems to be a new social cause arising on social networking sites, such as Facebook or Twitter. With little things such as changing their profile picture or forwarding a status update, countless individuals have been exercising their support for these frequent trending causes.

However, despite the recent controversy with creator Jason Russel, the newly established KONY 2012 video has been making waves in the public and in the media, attracting over 70+ million views (on Youtube and Vimeo), in only three weeks.

For the most part, the media attention has interestingly not primarily been about Joseph Kony himself;  Kony, the man, is only half of the story. Much of the concentration in the media has largely focused on the KONY 2012 campaign’s recent viral success. What began as a simple yet effective video campaign based on spreading awareness of a certain cause has quickly developed into a media narrative on its social networking success - it has become a viral trend about a trend.

Kenneth C. Wisnefski,of the The Washington Post,elucidates that the, “[KONY 2010 video] is now becoming more than a trend — viral is, in large part, the future of marketing”.

So what has made KONY 2012 rise above most of all other contemporary social trends in terms of awareness?  Corporations, individuals, and social causes are now beginning to recognize the exceptional power that ‘the viral’ can have on establishing significant marketing practices.

There certainly are lessons that can me learned from such a polarizing campaign. Social Media specialists have dissected and studied the video to determine some of these important lessons, in this FORBES article:

12 Lessons from KONY 2012 from Social Media Power Users

Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter, @Sean Catania.

It’s no secret that social networking as a medium has rapidly expanded over the past couple of years, if not months. As a whole, the proliferation of this new form of communication has fundamentally taken advantage of what seems to be one of the greater intrinsic uses of the internet: an effective networking tool that acts as a basic social structure. It is a practice by which individuals around the world interact with others who share the same common interests, beliefs, or even relationships.

A recent study states that approximately 47 per cent of Canadians have used social media - be that Facebook or LinkedIn - at least once a month in 2011, and globally, social network users represented about 17 per cent of the world’s population[1]. By such statistics, it would not be impractical to suggest that social media has largely taken over as the primary venue to communicate messages on a global-virtue scale - but that’s for each individual to decide. Subsequently, much of what can be defined as part of the social networking spectrum is not so black and white; the online world has become an increasingly creative playground for hyper-connectivity.

However, social media’s late public presence can not always be thought of had having a smooth rise in fame. In several ways, social networking has arguably become underestimated, and even misunderstood, by many who are either unfamiliar with social applications or perhaps just chose to ignore such practices.

Much perception of what social networking has become is a medium that caters to the half-witted minds of young folk who may be looking for a simple way to speak out about everyday fluff from menial teen angst to what they may have had for dinner.   

Realistically, this content does exist considerably with social networking, however social media can be - and is - much more than that.

One’s understanding can be relative to personal experience. Digging back into what every college freshmen has come to hate, Marshal McLuhan’s “the medium is the message”[2]notion would surely support that social networking is not so much about what is written (the content); rather what is important here is how that medium is being used. Arguably, not until quite recently have corporations and business alike fully realized the true potential and advantages of what seems to have become more than just a basic trend. Every day major corporations are joining in on the fun and are looking to social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook in getting their brand out to the public.

This development can be understood as “social media marketing”, which purpose primarily revolves around a corporation or company using the internet as a tool to achieve branding by communicating a particular message that is intended to be shared through the participation in various social media networks[3].

Essentially, corporate marketing by way of social networking can be reasonably compared and related to word-of-mouth conversations that are shared among a group of friends. Everyone in a given group (or community) has something to say, so messages are discussed and shared with one another. With social media marketing, this notion is taken to a more intensified and perpetual level. Much of the effectiveness of social media marketing stems from the internet’s inherent ability to not only allow any individual to speak their mind, but promotes them to do so as well.

Corporations both effectively and efficiently profit from this outlook. The key motive in marketing a brand through social media practices centres around efforts that encourage people to share their message - whatever that may be - with others within these social networks. This corporate message is intended to spread like a contagious virus that infects others with awareness of their brand. If done so creatively, the message or brand will be shared and reproduced with users around the world because the source appears to come from the trusted words of countless individuals instead of the company promoting their brand as a whole. It is as if one person in that group of friends saw a billboard advertisement he/she liked for a new product, then brought it up to them, and from there it continued to be passed along - with the true genesis becoming more lost every time that idea is shared.

As this form of marketing is driven by word-of-mouth, corporations have become progressively warmed to social media practices as a promoting tool mainly because it is relatively inexpensive. As opposed to most television advertisements where compensated spokesmen are marketing a company’s product or service, conversely, social media transforms the customer and user into the advertiser with or even without that individual knowing. When a person ‘shares’ or ‘likes’ corporate content on social networking websites, it is no different than wearing their logo on your shirt, but is instead merely hidden under a sophisticated social platform.

Starbucks, for example, has launched “MyStarbucksIdea” (http://mystarbucksidea.force.com/) where customers can submit ideas for the company which are then voted on by other users, the best of which will be implemented by the company. Additionally, this program is available on several social networking sites to be shared and linked with friends and family.

However, these social media practices have become much more complicated than simply shared content. Several corporations are also taking advantage of new technological practices with social networking websites that allows for obtaining information from users based on what they are posting online. Companies can gather information from sites like Facebook and applications such as Foursquare where people are willingly posting what they like and where they go. This process is called “data-mining”, and corporations can use this data for future marketing planning, such as which locations to have certain promotions.

As it stands today, corporations are always looking for new ways to promote their brand, product, or service, and with other mediums of advertising underperforming, social media marketing seems to be the best possible venue for establishing and promoting brand awareness. Yet, the percentage of social media users is speculated to drop from about 95 per cent this year, to 93 per cent in 2013, and 9 per cent in 2014, according to eMarketer[4]

Is social media marketing here for the long haul? Or are websites like Twitter and Facebook soon going to be outmatched by even more superior marketing mediums?

Nonetheless, until that next best thing, social networking will continue be integral for contemporary corporate marketing practices which would likely send Don Draper crying himself to sleep for some time.

Don’t forget to follow me on twitter, @Sean Catania.

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[1] http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/digital-culture/social-networking/canadas-most-socially-networked-title-slipping-away/article2354250/

[2] A scholarly journal, Vol. 1, Marshall McLuhan’s “Medium is the Message”: Information Literacy in a Multimedia Age

[3] http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2008/04/social-media-marketing-beginners-guide.html

[4] http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/digital-culture/social-networking/canadas-most-socially-networked-title-slipping-away/article2354250/