Quite some time ago, the social media observers were in a rage over a corporate competitor’s big mistake. The US supermarket giant Walmart seriously tripped up on their blogging/marketing enterprise, losing the confidence of their followers and becoming a laughing stock online.

What happened? The company did the very worst thing you can do in the public eye. They created an interesting marketing idea, and then sold it as if it was truth. The blog, which was supposedly written by two average Americans, chronicled a journey in an RV across America, parking and sleeping in Walmart parking lots as accommodation. It was revealed, shortly into their journey, that one of the couple was a photojournalist and that the whole trip was financed by the company.

The revelation and subsequent shaming of the company was the cause of great debate within the world of search engine optimisation. It brought up questions about what was permissible in the creation of web content. As many companies were, and still are, sourcing content through specialist services outside the company, many panicked that a lot of avenues were no longer open to them.

This fiasco came along at a terrible time for Walmart. Their own foray into social media platforms, a competitor for My Space called The Hub, closed after just ten weeks because users were annoyed by the number of fake profiles that proliferated the network.

Social media networks are figuring ever larger in most companies’ online plans. The Walmart fiasco was a reminder of how marketing methods can seriously trip a company up, turning all of the good vibes in the online community instantly bad.

The reaction to the mistake was so huge and vicious because of the repercussions it had for the rest of the industry. Most PR and SEO professionals were outraged because the stunt went against every best practice there is. In being caught out so publicly, Walmart took away from the credibility of other companies who were trying to enter social media.

The entire affair provided some good lessons on what not to do when approaching social media marketing. Walmart went wrong in many ways, the most obvious being blatantly dishonest. If the company had been up-front about financing the project, it quite probably would have succeeded. After all, it’s not every day a corporation embarks on such a quirky stunt. The second way in which the company went wrong was in allowing the contributors to slip marketing messages into their ‘honest’ content. Internet users are by no means dumb, and can smell a marketing message a mile away. Perhaps this is what raised suspicions about the blog in the first place.

If your business is interested in getting involved in social media, it can help to have experienced professionals on board. Talk to us at SEO Consult about fitting social media into your search engine optimisation campaign. When you are thinking about approaching social media networks, though, the very best approach is always the honest one. Keep your motives transparent and your customers will respect you for it.

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