Social media is back in the news, and for all the wrong reasons – again.

Per usual, Facebook leads the way, coming under scrutiny for lax content-review standards and deceptive marketing practices toward children – what the British press euphemistically referred to as “friendly fraud.”

But Facebook was not alone. YouTube also came under fire for allowing videos with “wormholes” for pedophiles, and animated videos with embedded “suicide codes” that harken back to the genesis of subliminal advertising and the clam-plate orgy.

Lessons learned

What’s the takeaway from these episodes and others in the not-so-recent past – in addition to the faults so thoroughly and unforgettably outlined by market ing expe rt Samuel Scott? We’ve learned that social-media platforms:

Fail to adequately police the content that appears on them;
Allow and possibly encourage deceptive marketing to children;
Enable pedophiles and other bad actors;
Provide incomplete, misleading, and in some cases fraudulent metrics; and
Are permeated in their upper echelons by a level of narcissistic megalomania not seen since ancient Rome (or, depending on your political persuasion, since a couple hours ago).

Given that, I ask: When is enough enough? At what point do you say “thank you, next” to social media and find alternatives that aren’t fundamentally reprehensible?

Back to the basics

I understand why organizations feel they have to be on social media. Marketing 101 says you market where the people are, and people are on social media.

However, do you understand what it means to be “on” social media?

If you consider a person who is on social media to be open to brand messages or consuming goods and services, then the idea of social-media advertising isn’t completely bonkers, massive ethical questions notwithstanding.

On the other hand, if you believe, as scholars do, that people are on social media to “connect with each other and build relations among people who have the same interests and activities,” then marketing just gets in the way.

Of course, this has always been the dichotomy of social media. People want social media to be a place where they can chill with their buds and look at the scenery, and the people who own social-media channels need them to be places where there’s a billboard every 20 yards and a half-dozen GEICO ads after every song.

Put another way, if social media were a coffee shop, the consumers would want to hang and use the free Wi-Fi; the store would want them to buy coffee until they act like Wile E. Coyote after eating the earthquake pills.

The end of equilibrium

On most social-media channels there’s been near-equilibrium between the business interests and the loiterers, but I don’t expect it to last, for several reasons:

Advertising on social-media channels needs to increase at an increasing rate. Megalomania always wants more.
The number of users is not growing at previous rates, and the time spent on-platform is flat to falling. The Pew Research Center detailed this in early 2018, and subsequent earnings reports have reinforced it. Fewer users mean less revenue per ad, which means more ads.
As platforms age, the effectiveness of marketing messages falls off. Advertisers have flocked to social-media platforms because a splintered media landscape means nothing works like it used to, but the same thing will eventually happen to social media. And less effective ads mean more ads.
Even if none of this were happening, they’re still a bunch of scumbags, and they’ll just keep doing more scumbaggy crap, alienating users like me.

To bail or not to bail

You can argue that every marketing channel has downed the fizzing cocktail of shady ethics and declining audiences, and advertisers didn’t pack up and abandon them, but social media is different. The channels are too amorphous, the intent too brazen, and the people in charge too awful.

If you’re attached to these channels with golden handcuffs, I understand. However, if you’ve had enough, here’s how you should proceed.

Revisit your MVV

It’s like a superhero movie: When you’re at rock bottom, you crack open the ancient magic book that got you into this mess.

Your mission-vision-values statements and your marketing plan aren’t going to give you tactical answers. However, they will get you back to the core questions: What are we trying to accomplish here – and how do we do it without social media?

Ask those questions first, then let your answers lead you onward. If you have a solid marketing plan that’s a logical extension of a strong MVV, any tactics derived directly from either are probably not going to explode. And if you’re second-guessing your decision to abandon social media, you’ll be reassured the first time the word “ethics” appears.

Replicate your best social-media metrics

Analyze your social-media metrics, identify the top performers, and ask yourself how they can be re-created outside of social media.

Try tactics like these:

If you have a high number of Facebook likes, convert those people into subscribers to an email newsletter with a lot of high-value coupons.
If your followers are very loyal, turn them into an online, off-social-media community – maybe even into an advisory board.
To flip your Instagram followers, add an “Images” section to your content area and encourage (and maybe incent) people to share.
If you have multiple comments on posts, engage in dialogue with those people and let them know what you’re doing and why.

The idea is not to alienate social-media users and their affections; it’s to send them somewhere safer where they’re owned by you – not Facebook.

Examine other channels

If you don’t want to abandon social media entirely, how about a Pinterest/LinkedIn strategy? Not only is it ethically less troublesome, but it may break you out of a creative rut.

Have a solid exit strategy

Just like everything else in marketing, your exit from social media should be scheduled and measured. You need to be surgical and calculating; you switch off the channels at 12:00, and at 12:01 the new strategy commences.

However, before you get to high noon, you need to:

Identify and communicate to affected stakeholders, including internal audiences, your agencies, and many of your vendors (see below);
Allow yourself plenty of time to adequately construct and stock alternative channels (see above);
Identify key metrics from the switch-off and the metrics you want to track moving forward;
Devise a Plan B in case sales start to be adversely affected;
Benchmark consumer sentiment on both sides of the switch-off using your key metric of choice – even if it is the NPS; and
Budget liberally, because while you may think you’re saving money on social-media scheduling, measurement tools, and agency fees, you may wind up spending even more on coupons, incentives, event promotion, traditional advertising … and agency fees.

Be public about the split

Explain to anyone who’ll listen what you’re doing and why. While taking an ethical stand can occasionally be problematic, taking this ethical stand shouldn’t be.

Detail your future

Think hard about what you want your organization’s marketing future to look like – and not only what channels you want to use, but how you want to keep this from happening again. What are the ethical standards you are going to demand from marketing channels moving forward?

Go all-in on CX

We know now that most people don’t want to have a social-media conversation with a brand; they just want the brands they support to support them back.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the way to do that is through a sincere, genuine customer experience, and an organization-wide commitment to delivering that experience.

There’s nothing shady, scummy, or megalomaniacal about a great customer experience. It’s just an organization doing what it should do in a way that benefits all the important people – customers and employees.

Social media may be the one you date, but customer experience is the one you marry. So isn’t it about time you got serious?

The 7-Step Program To Kick Your Organization's Social-Media Habit