What is Fauxcial Media?
1.
Contrived, inauthentic or misleading use of social media resources such as online communities, blogs, Twitter profiles, Wikipedia entries, Facebook pages, etc. to manipulate or to create a false or misleading perception of a company, organization, candidate or cause.
Fauxcial Media is the "Web 2.0" equivalent of atroturfing i.e., the creation of fake grassroots campaigns in PR/Public Relations.
WHAT CONSTITUTES FAUXCIAL MEDIA:
• Businesses pretending to be bloggers.
• Businesses pretending to be journalists.
• Businesses pretending to be “Joe Blow” in order to flog their products in blog comments.
(Bullet points courtesy of marketingexperimentsblog)
EXAMPLES OF FAUXCIAL MEDIA:
- Cisco's Human Network - wrote all Cisco-related Wikipedia entries; had vloggers try to write about the Human Network. Got themselves to #2 in Google organic search
- Whole Foods CEO John Mackey used an alias to ding detractors on forums
- "Wal-Marting Across America" used a real journalist and real photographer, but set them up as simply Wal-Mart fans, traveling across America, parking their RV at Wal-Mart parking lots.
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