The Arrest
A person was arrested by the social media law enforcement officer who had a warrant for the arrest due to probable cause of a social media campaign crime. “I told my manager he’d get great results, and that’s exactly what he got. I obtained 5,000 bot followers on X (Twitter), 10,000 fake Instagram likes, and 50 TikTok saves. Sounds like great results to me.” The arresting officer noted that the defendant was clearly suffering from a severe case of vanity-metrics delusion.
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Preliminary Hearing
The social media judge heard evidence and testimony from witnesses called by the prosecuting attorney and the defendant’s attorney. The defendant pleaded to the judge. “I launched branded accounts on my own and I bought company domains. I used free AI to make my campaign report, and launched accounts days before go-live. Who needs the digital support teams, Legal, or IT? It was so easy to create the stack, why all the fuss about governance, consent mode, data risk, and security everyone keeps talking about?”.
Upon hearing this, the judge determined that there was enough evidence to believe the defendant probably committed the crime. The defendant was held for trial in the superior social media court, and an arraignment date was set.
The Arraignment
At the arraignment, the defendant entered a plea of not guilty so the judge set a trial date. The defendant screamed loudly in court, “I’m not the only one doing this you know there are hundreds of us out there. Social is the in-thing and it has no link to business outcomes. It’s a numbers game. I could have joined engagement pods, run AI comment bots, how about that, huh.”
The Trial
The prosecuting attorney was the “Social Media Jedi” and he made the opening statement. “You set wild expectations and ignored where social fits in the revenue engine. You did capture leads from X, LinkedIn, and short-form video. So why not report cost-per-qualified-lead and pipeline? You upgraded to GA4 yet still used last-click thinking. With server-side tagging, UTMs, and CRM integration you could have used data-driven attribution, modelled conversions, and even simple media mix modelling (MMM) to include Social properly.”
The Verdict
The trial was short but there were numerous interruptions like spontaneous laughter from a group of CRM and CDP experts in the courtroom, plus a brief sit-in by a “Be free to use SEO to drive Social” protest group. Eventually the foreman presented a written verdict to the judge. The social media clerk read out the jury’s verdict to the court. “Guilty of all charges.” The court then entered a judgment based on the verdict.
The sentencing was likely to include a stay in the famous social media jail, where the motto was “there is always room for one more”. Extra to do items would most likely include tasks like:
- Drafting an ethical AI and social policy
- killing vanity metrics
- Aligning KPIs to real business outcomes.
Have you been in social media jail yet?
Did you over promise on what the results would be from your social media activities and campaigns? Are you trying to gain leads and insights with your social media efforts? Are you looking beyond just the basics of clicks and likes? No? Remember that in social media jail the motto is “there is always room for one more”.
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