New research commissioned by Internet security company, Webroot, is a real downer for social marketing. It shows that US and UK SMBs are increasingly concerned about social malware and data leakage through social networks and that half of them no longer allow their employees to access any social networks on company time and equipment. This is bad news for business marketers who increasingly rely on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social networking sites to generate sales leads and communicate with their customers.

If you are using social marketing and don't seem to be getting the results you expected, it may not be your content quality that is to blame. The problem might be its visibility. You may be getting "Soc Blocked!"

If you are marketing to small and medium sized businesses, you should consider reducing your SM ROI and finding other ways to reach your targets, because this problem is only going to get worse.

Analysis

According to Webroot CTO Gerhard Eschelbeck, "One in six of those we surveyed said a social networking site or Web 2.0 application was the source of an infection or attack and over half of companies said their network was infected with spyware this year." So, it is no wonder that employers are getting tough on social network use in the workplace.

Variants of the Koobface social networking worm and other threats are multiplying and they are taking a disproportionate toll on smaller companies. Larger enterprises can afford the dedicated hardware, software and personnel needed to deflect these threats and still allow employees to make legitimate use of social networking sites and rich Internet applications.

Another growing security problem for companies of all sizes is "data leakage" through social networks. That is where sensitive company information, proprietary data, or personal information about employees is exposed through social network use by employees. Again, there are a growing array of tools and techniques that large companies are using to prevent this from happening.

But, smaller companies that have not employed such IT resources in the past are now finding that they either must make the investment or take a more heavy handed approach to dealing with these problems, as the research shows.

42 percent have implemented an Internet use policy as a result of an employee's inappropriate use of social networking site; more than one-third (34 percent) deployed a Web security product to monitor Internet use and enforce policies;
Four in ten of those polled (39 percent)have an Internet use policy that prohibits employees from visiting Facebook, 30 percent block access to Twitter and 27 percent from video-sharing sites like YouTube
Two in 10 SMBs (21 percent) only allow employees to visit social networking sites during specific times (lunch break, after work hours, etc.)
16 percent grant certain departments (e.g., marketing) permission to visit specific social networking sites

More than half of the SMBs surveyed said that they were very or extremely concerned about social network malware infections and almost half said the same thing about data leakage.

Recommendations

If your company relies on social media to promote your products and brand, to provide customer support and service, or to gather market feedback, getting soc blocked could really hurt your marketing effectiveness if you do not mitigate the risk with other methods. Here are a few possibilities.

Duplicate your Facebook page on your own website and drive your Facebook friends and followers to it with added content, discounts, special deals, or other incentives. Even if your customers are blocked from visiting your Facebook page, many of them will still receive email messages notifying them of new content there. Be sure to include the link to your new page in those messages and direct them to go there instead if they are soc blocked on Facebook.

Use RSS feeds. Google Reader and other "feed readers" allow you to easily push information to people who subscribe to your feed and can be a good alternative to Twitter for many purposes. You can use it to send a short message or a link to your web page. You may already offer RSS as one of several ways for people to stay in touch. If you do, promote it more, if you don't, you should set one up.

Bite the bullet and spend money on advertising. Social network discussion groups have been a way to do free promotion to targeted groups of people. Google ad words don't cost that much and SEO/SEM services are getting cheaper all the time.

Work the blogosphere. You could set up a blog to do some of the things you have been using social networking sites for, but, unless you promote it like crazy, you will probably not get many visitors. Instead, look for well established blogs that are focused on your subject area and respond to postings on them every chance you get. Shameless self-promotion will not be tolerated, but comments are usually welcome. If you make careful use of keywords and self-references as a matter of explaining who you are or setting the context of your response, it will probably fly and often it will be picked up by search engines as well.

Use email marketing - carefully. Permission-based opt-in schemes may get you around the spam filter, but they won't ensure that your messages get read. Incentives help. Use coupons, limited time offers, drawings, and other "do it now" calls to action to keep the recipient from hitting "delete" before reading.

Soc blocking is a drag, no question. And there are few substitutes for the seamless "BE HERE NOW" user experience of Facebook, but you may find that for your individual marketing or customer care purposes, some combination of these and other alternatives may be nearly as good. Some may even be better.

What do you think? Have you been soc blocked? What did you do about it? Do you have other ideas to share that help others who are coping with this problem? We'd like to hear from you.