I recently wrote a blog about my lack of enthusiasm for
social media, which prompted quite a few people asking me how I, someone that
works as a communications professional, could possible by against it. My response was that it was exactly because I work as a communications
professional that I had my reservations, since, as I have said before, I am
very cautious about the messages that our clients send out to the public and if
there is no control over what is being said, then there is always potential for
trouble.
If you have seen the English news recently, you will have
heard about the damage that has been caused to a company called HMV – a very
big, established UK company that has just gone under, but that is trying to be
rescued. When the receivers went in and
made loads of people redundant, what did those people do? Immediately start posting as many horrible
things about HMV that they could come up with on all of their social media
sites (including HMV’s own), with the result that the company may, now,
collapse altogether.
Maybe it is due to HMV, maybe it is just that many of the
bigger companies are starting to get worried anyway, but in the last two weeks
we have had three different requests for proposals to manage clients’ social
media sites, and, in particular, advise on crisis management. So if you are not already thinking about how
to deal with your own sites, here are a few tips on how to make it work for
you, without causing a whole bunch of problems:
(a) Treat
your social media like you treat the rest of your marketing materials; as I
have said before, you wouldn’t let just anyone draft your brochure and then
send it to print without first checking it, so do the same with your Facebook,
Twitter, Linked-in and other sites
(b) Make
sure that the messages that are put out on your sites are consistent with the
messages that you are putting out elsewhere; have you followed anyone on
Facebook recently and thought that they appear to be a completely different
person to the one that you know (I know I have and if I had known, I might have
thought twice about being their friend!)… would you want people thinking that
about your service or product?
(c) Be
careful about the way the text is worded on Facebook or Twitter in particular –
we recently reviewed a client’s Facebook site and saw that the social media
manager had been posting a lot of questions – for example, ‘we have just
brought out a new product – once you have tried it let us know what you think
of it’ – now, to my mind that is asking for trouble…..and sure enough, in this
particular case, after a few rave reviews along came one that rubbished
it. Better would have been to keep it
simple and leave the invitation out!
(d) Limit
the number of people that can access your social media sites on your behalf and
make sure that you guard the passwords and so on carefully (at HMV, just about
anyone and everyone was able to get onto the company site and post a lot of
damaging information). Be careful, too,
about who you ‘befriend’.
(e) Monitor
your sites on a daily (or more) basis, and be sure to have a methodology in
place if something starts to kick off – i.e. a crisis management plan.
(f) Consider
adding a clause into your employment contracts that, for example, imposes a
fine on the employee if they post something negative about your company (of
course you can’t control what their friends say about you, and it might be difficult to enforce, but at
least it puts them on notice…..!).
Need I go on? Social
media is an amazing invention and something that everyone in marketing needs to
know about and understand…. But, as with everything relating to marketing,
treat with a bit of caution, and don’t let just anyone do it!
Jo
