What’s fair in B2B social media love and war? [STRAWPOLL]

Social media exploded onto the B2B scene a few years ago. Do we agree what’s right and wrong in social media promotion? A quick poll.

You’ve probably read posts from one or two wildly self-promotional social media mavens who wrote one of the following:

“In social media, you always need to be authentic.”

“It’s all about engaging in a real way.”

“It’s all about slow organic growth.”

“It doesn’t matter how many followers you have.”

Part of me wants to punch their blog in the face. Not that I don’t agree (in principle). I just suspect their motives in bringing me these platitudes.

Me, I empathize with the marketer who needs to see results, but who doesn’t have half his day to “engage in a real way”. Why not bend the rules? If every great fortune’s founded on a crime, the savvy marketer’s going to be a criminal. And it’s happening in a big, big way.

Yes, strategically and in the long run, doing “what’s right” works. But sometimes doing “what’s wrong” may lead to short-term, tactical wins.

It’s with this thought in mind that I hope now, several years into the great social media revolution, to test the ethical waters with a simple, not terribly scientific poll. A list of 10 activities follow, and I’ll just ask you to vote one of two ways: “Sure, why not?” or “Heck no!” Then to vote “yes” or “no” to whether you have actually ever done them. [It’s a Google Form and totally anonymous]. Please, be honest.

(For the record, there’s no judgment here. I’m guilty of most of them, to varying degrees.)

As soon as a couple people answer, I’ll start updating the results here. But I’ll simply ask you to be so kind to tweet about the straw poll in order to increase the sample and get a better measure of attitudes across B2B marketing. Here’s a sample tweet. Or just share the link directly to the Google Forms page: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGhXaGdBeTE1ZGF5bEotZ2dCdlFVTkE6MQ#gid=0

The survey won’t take you more than two minutes max.

Again, please tweet to help boost the sample size. And check here to see the aggregated results (I’ll update them regularly).