Archive for January, 2012
Social Media and Corporate Woes
Monday, January 16th, 2012
Social Media and Corporate Woes
By Yvonne Lenton (Special to Deraney PR)
When it was first developed, social media was jumped on by any company with a little bit of marketing savvy. It is not that often that an entirely new marketing medium comes along, and so the opportunity to use these entirely new channels of communication. Social media began as something that young people used to chat to each other during lunch-break, and then it became something that marketers wanted to get in on, as quickly as possible.
Where marketing people go, everyone else who wants to get noticed follows. And so now, social media is used by every celebrity, every politician and every company (right down to the local grocery store) when they want use to know something. It can be used for marketing and for reputation management by anyone who people want to listen to. It can also be used to unwittingly damage reputations, either of the user or the company they work for, in a way that few other media forms can. Customers and others can also quickly cause damage using social media channels.
Damaged Reputations
There have been many cases of employees – sometimes accidentally and sometimes maliciously – damaging their employers’ reputations through their use of social media. Most people who name their employer on their personal Twitter account will put a disclaimer on there for exactly this reason: nobody wants to be the one who gets sacked because of a careless comment. People often forget when they write a tweet that they are not just speaking to a few friends, but to the whole world.
Even entirely innocent actions have the potential to cause some damage or anger. Volunteers who will be working at the London 2012 Olympic Games have been asked by bosses not to show share details or pictures of their experiences online while they are working at the games. The concern is that athletes’ privacy could be breached. This demonstrates the inter-connected nature of social media, and the way that one action can lead to a much bigger chain reaction.
This can create a situation where paranoia and distrust are rife. While the Olympic organisers’ worries may be well have good foundations, John Flexman would never have thought that he might suffer due to his use of social media. All he did was upload his CV to LinkedIn, and tick the box marked looking for ‘career opportunities’. Pretty much every LinkedIn user does the same. However, Flexman ended up being fired for his efforts. It seems as if the joke may be on his employers, energy firm BG, as Flexman is disputing the dismissal and the case is now, inevitably, being discussed on social media. So perhaps it is BG who will come out of this the more damaged?
Online Arguments
Social media lends itself to quite ugly and very public arguments at times. Very public spats can end up taking place between celebrities, sportspeople and politicians. Sometimes deliberately provocative commments are made by one party, starting the row, but sometimes they seem to develop out of nothing. Either way, they can be highly entertaining. Take this example of a spat between Kim Kardashian and Demi Moore over the use of a word.
These celebrity spats might be funny, but for companies, social media can be a very dangerous tool in the wrong hands. Its marketing power can cause marketing disasters. Because social media works fast, it can be really hard to control problems if they arise. As detailed in this article, one person can quite easily cause a huge social media storm that it is often difficult for companies to deal with.
So, if a disgruntled customer causes your company’s reputation damage online, how do you deal with it? Well, ideally you’d avoid it in the first place, of course, by making sure you don’t give them anything to complain about. If the worst does happen, the key is to be open, honest and credible. Exactly as you would if you were dealing with a complaint in person, though of course the stakes are a higher as everything is public. Don’t allow yourself to get defensive, show that you are genuinely listening and that you are doing something concrete to fix the problem. You can’t fix problems with a tweet, but you can let people know about how else you’ve fixed them.
Tags: Demi Moore, John Flexman, Kim Kardashian, Olympics, Reputation Management, Social Media, Yvonne Lenton
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