This morning, someone left a comment on a 10 month-old blog post about EMC Corporation’s products over at Gestalt IT. Although the writer, “Brian,” identified himself as “EMC Social Outreach Team”, the short message seemed somewhat spammy, including a bit.ly link to one of that company’s marketing promotions. Further investigation reveals what looks to be an inept social media marketing maneuver by “integrated sales promotions” firm, AlterSeekers. Let’s use it as a case study in how not to do social media marketing.
The saga continues! Read my follow-up, Digging Deeper: AlterSeekers, myYearbook, Sharethrough, and Spam
Social Media Outreach
There aren’t hard and fast rules, but most agree that honesty, credibility, and real human interaction are critical for social media. No one likes talking to a robot, and we hate being spammed by them. But not all robots are mechanical: Many companies are hiring outside firms to spread the word about their products and services with real human agents. Some are laughably inept (like the dozens of poorly-worded comments posted to my blog from “Ugg Boots For Sale” and “Nike Air Force”), while others are probably fantastically well-executed (and thus unavailable as examples).
Skill aside, it is the intent of a comment or other social interaction that determines its quality. Blog comments are intended for discussion of the issues presented in the blog post. Links to other sources are perfectly acceptable if they advance the discussion, and the conversation often takes a turn into unrelated areas. None of this is a problem. Simply put, this is the essence of social media.
Imagine you are having a conversation in a public place and someone stops and joins in. You wouldn’t mid if they were really interested, and would probably be pleased if they had some special insight or suggested you talk to a friend in the business. But what if they stopped by, pretended to be interested, but instead were being paid to interject an advertisement for the sushi place across the street? Even if your conversation centered on sushi from the start, the stranger’s intent makes their intrusion unwelcome.
Hello, Brian
Now let’s turn to the comments by “Brian.” The post at Gestalt IT was written in September, 2009 and is an exploration of EMC’s plans unifying their storage array platform. It was pretty popular last Fall, and one of the authors eventually went to work for EMC. But readership has declined since, and no one had commented in nine months.
Then, along came “Brian” with the following insightful remark:
“Great thoughts on EMC! I’m curious if you’ve heard of EMC’s new 20% capacity advantage guarantee? Check out this paper – and we challenge anyone to beat it! http://bit.ly/ao57rm — Brian, EMC Social Outreach Team”
This short comment is not a contribution to the discussion. “Great thoughts on EMC” can be translated as “this post is about EMC but I have nothing to add to it.” The rest is an advertisement, plain and simple, for a marketing campaign centered around EMC’s “20% capacity advantage guarantee.” The fact that they used bit.ly to shorten the link proves this – they’re tracking clickthroughs with it!
One positive element of the comment is the identification of “Brian” as a member of “EMC Social Outreach Team.” This is much more transparent than most spammy comments, and shows that the perpetrator was more inept than devious. But the fact that the Disqus profile belonging to “Brian” was not filled out was less than transparent.
Dissecting Brian
So who is Brian and what is the EMC Social Outreach Team? A quick check on his (unclaimed) Disqus profile reveals that “Brian” made similar comments on seven industry blogs. All but the one on Gestalt IT contained unique human-written and readable commentary, but none was in any way insightful or related to the discussion at hand. And all included that same bit.ly link. This, and the fact that “Brian” hadn’t commented anywhere else, is clear proof that this was advertising and nothing more.
Happily, bit.ly link statistics are open to the public. A quick run over to the tracking page for that link (http://bit.ly/ao57rm+) reveals that “Brian” got 35 clickthroughs in his short career as a comment spammer. Not great. It also reveals a tracking parameter in the URL, “SOC-UNIFIEDGUARANTEE-Social”. Finally, it shows that “Brian” used a bit.ly login belonging to “amberbragas” – now we’re getting somewhere!
“Amber Bragas” is a fairly unusual name (see Google), and LinkedIn contains just one person by that name. She works for a company called “AlterSeekers”. A quick search reveals the Twitter page for @AlterSeekers (not linked), which calls itself “an integrated sales promotions firm” and claims “We get marketing and we get results.”
Jump over to the AlterSeekers web site (not linked) and one is greeted with a flash header featuring a photo of none other than Amber Bragas! Considering the mission of AlterSeekers, the connection to IT industry companies, and the bit.ly connection, I feel safe in assuming that “Brian” is actually a spam bot employed by this company to drive traffic to EMC’s guarantee. He could even be AlterSeekers employee, Brian De La Torre.
I’m going to guess that this was a “proof of concept” pitch by AlterSeekers to win EMC’s business. There is one click from July 16 (perhaps a demo), then more clicks and comments starting on July 19. Similar comments were posted by “Marlon” (De Jesus?) and “Justin“.
It would appear for the offending party searched Google for “emc unified storage systems -oracle“, an amusing construct that reveals the intent of the perpetrator. Why exclude Oracle? They left a comment as “Brian” or “Marlon” on just about every blog post that search returns. The visitor came from Port Washington, New York (home of AlterSeekers) and the IP address traces as “alter seekers inc.” I guess we can be pretty certain who the guilty party is!
Bye, Brian
Whoever Brian is, he’s not part of some “EMC Social Outreach Team”, nor is he “making authentic connections with your customers.” He’s spamming blogs with tracked marketing links. And he’s also apparently out of a job.
EMC Marketing CTO, Chuck Hollis (who I will link to) responded this morning with two tweets that speak for themselves:
We found out about it yesterday morning, and quickly shut it down. Somebody’s bad idea, quickly fixed. (1)
and
Someone thought it would be clever to go to an external “social service”. Imagine our collective horror …(2)
‘Nuff said, Chuck. EMC is really astonishingly good at real social outreach. They don’t need this pathetic and spammy “social outreach” by a third party. Chuck quickly took responsibility and shut it down, demonstrating the correct approach to this sort of thing.
Lessons Learned
Social media is about being genuine and, well, social. You can’t hire an outsider to do this for you. Your customers will see through inept attempts to “join the conversation.” As AlterSeekers own web site notes, one has to make “authentic connections” not post transparent blog comment spam.
This is the core problem facing so many “social media marketing” firms. They employ people who aren’t part of the conversation, use inappropriate metrics, and try to entice non-genuine behavior. Regardless of whether you sell flowers, cars, or IT equipment, you cannot outsource the conversation. You must rely on genuinely engaged and authentic commentators.
One must also consider the goals of this sort of campaign. Clearly, AlterSeekers was trying to entice people to click through to that one link. When social media goals focus too narrowly on a single specific action, they tend to look like spam and go off the rails. Goals should be broader, guiding the conversation and spreading the message rather than just taking a single (albeit measurable) action like clicking a link.
Returning to our example of the street corner conversation, what if the sushi restaurant encouraged sushi lovers to spread the word about their love of sashimi? They would undoubtedly encourage more sushi eating! And what if they offered discounts or supported a sushi club? They would drive real traffic and, more importantly, a devoted audience. Fresh sushi sure beats canned spam!
The saga continues! Read my follow-up, Digging Deeper: AlterSeekers, myYearbook, Sharethrough, and Spam
Chuck Hollis says
Hi Stephen
You and I would agree on these topics.
Unfortunately, many large companies (EMC included) have all sorts people who are very new to this, all piling on trying to figure out how to leverage social media and social interactions.
I (and a few others) try to keep an eye on things, but — occasionally — one escapes the leash, and causes all sorts of havoc. This being a prime example.
As mentioned above, we’re still trying to figure out exactly what happened, and what group(s) might be responsible. Getting to the root cause will be important here.
My apologies — both on a personal level, and on behalf of EMC.
We all deserve better.
— Chuck
Chuck Hollis says
Hi Stephen
You and I would agree on these topics.
Unfortunately, many large companies (EMC included) have all sorts people who are very new to this, all piling on trying to figure out how to leverage social media and social interactions.
I (and a few others) try to keep an eye on things, but — occasionally — one escapes the leash, and causes all sorts of havoc. This being a prime example.
As mentioned above, we’re still trying to figure out exactly what happened, and what group(s) might be responsible. Getting to the root cause will be important here.
My apologies — both on a personal level, and on behalf of EMC.
We all deserve better.
— Chuck
Stephen Foskett says
Apology accepted, Chuck. EMC is a huge company and these sort of mistakes happen. You responded appropriately and I have no beef with you or the many fine folks the company has who are genuinely part of the conversation.
Stephen Foskett says
Apology accepted, Chuck. EMC is a huge company and these sort of mistakes happen. You responded appropriately and I have no beef with you or the many fine folks the company has who are genuinely part of the conversation.
Laura Hood says
Great blog! Thank you. A really good reminder of how NOT to do it.
Laura Hood says
Great blog! Thank you. A really good reminder of how NOT to do it.
Christopher Kusek says
I am offended at your claim that visiting the unnamed site will deliver a photo of Amber! I had to refresh the page at least 4 times before the photo of Amber appeared! Although I have to admit the caption which appeared in tandem with Amber’s photo.. well, I laughed. 🙂
Good coverage of this whole thing Stephen, having received multiple comments on my blog content I had a lot of the same thoughts and concerns you did – I’m glad we had folks like Chuck step up to tackle the WTF happened.
– CXI
Christopher Kusek says
I am offended at your claim that visiting the unnamed site will deliver a photo of Amber! I had to refresh the page at least 4 times before the photo of Amber appeared! Although I have to admit the caption which appeared in tandem with Amber’s photo.. well, I laughed. 🙂
Good coverage of this whole thing Stephen, having received multiple comments on my blog content I had a lot of the same thoughts and concerns you did – I’m glad we had folks like Chuck step up to tackle the WTF happened.
– CXI
Mike Beevor says
Brilliantly written post highlighting some of the downfalls of social media. I was also gratified to see the rapidity of Chuck’s response. But the most delicious thing was the use of social media to trace, track, name and shame the offending parties… Now that’s a truly inspired use of social media!
Mike
Mike Beevor says
Brilliantly written post highlighting some of the downfalls of social media. I was also gratified to see the rapidity of Chuck’s response. But the most delicious thing was the use of social media to trace, track, name and shame the offending parties… Now that’s a truly inspired use of social media!
Mike
Stephen Foskett says
Sorry, Chris! FYI, Amber’s caption reads “The days of talking at your customers are over. Now they expect to have a conversation with and about your brand, 24/7.”
Note that only three of the “AlterSeekers” appear to have Twitter accounts, and only one has tweeted this MONTH. And that’s all spam @replies pointing to a Crucial RAM promotion. The main @AlterSeekers account last posted on June 18th as of this writing. Way to be involved 24/7!
And thanks to to Mike!
Stephen Foskett says
Sorry, Chris! FYI, Amber’s caption reads “The days of talking at your customers are over. Now they expect to have a conversation with and about your brand, 24/7.”
Note that only three of the “AlterSeekers” appear to have Twitter accounts, and only one has tweeted this MONTH. And that’s all spam @replies pointing to a Crucial RAM promotion. The main @AlterSeekers account last posted on June 18th as of this writing. Way to be involved 24/7!
And thanks to to Mike!
Dave Hurst says
First, great detective work to trace this back to the source and uncover “Brian”. Secondly, thanks for turning this into a great blog post on how not to do social media.
It is “buyer beware” on blogs, Twitter, etc. I am constantly following and unfollowing people and blogs to filter out the junk and get to GENUINE people and data.
I look forward to your continuing series, To Catch a Predator!
Dave
Dave Hurst says
First, great detective work to trace this back to the source and uncover “Brian”. Secondly, thanks for turning this into a great blog post on how not to do social media.
It is “buyer beware” on blogs, Twitter, etc. I am constantly following and unfollowing people and blogs to filter out the junk and get to GENUINE people and data.
I look forward to your continuing series, To Catch a Predator!
Dave
3parfarley says
Fire the rogue intern who set this up! Tear up the contract for that ex-employee turned consultant! Relegate that Atmos marketing guy to working in Cork with Zilla! Its Mission Impossible for Social Media “The secretary will disavow all knowledge of your actions.”
3parfarley says
Fire the rogue intern who set this up! Tear up the contract for that ex-employee turned consultant! Relegate that Atmos marketing guy to working in Cork with Zilla! Its Mission Impossible for Social Media “The secretary will disavow all knowledge of your actions.”
Brian says
Another effect this had was to tarnish the reputation of other Brian’s like me. We need to build a pro-Brian advocacy group to rebuild our name !
Brian says
Another effect this had was to tarnish the reputation of other Brian’s like me. We need to build a pro-Brian advocacy group to rebuild our name !