Is your company involved in social media yet? It’s an essential part of any modern marketing scheme, and in the future you won’t be able to avoid getting involved in it, but make sure when you do get involved you have someone experienced and professional in charge, or else you might end up like a few of these social media disasters.
1. Shell Oil
This is a very recent disaster! Shell’s PR took a massive dip when Greenpeace decided to take some serious action against the brand. Shell don’t have the best reputation when it comes to the environment, and what you do publicly can have some deadly repercussions. In this case, it was Greenpeace who hijacked the global super power’s social media. First of all they started a viral campaign, where images of the arctic were placed alongside disastrous marketing slogans such as “Your ignition is my extinction”, “Some say catastrophe, we say opportunity.” and “Birds are like sponges… For oil!”. The adverts were styled exactly into Shell’s branding and even feature the shell logo and name, causing many people to believe that Shell made the adverts! Not only that, but when Shell threatened legal action, the charity retaliated again with a fake Twitter account. Again people believed Shell was responsible for the account which featured some disastrous and rude quips from the “social media manager”. Shell’s reputation is damaged and the campaign reached a global audience, and how could they have redeemed themselves? Firstly by not attacking the environment ruthlessly of course, and secondly, their Twitter team could have handled the event better – people tend to retaliate when threatened by a brand over Twitter. Keep that in mind!
2. Glossy Box
This beauty sample box brand made one of the biggest sins in social media – they didn’t believe the customer was always right. You need to remember with social media that your one account can’t possible fight thousands of fans – so don’t upset them! Glossy Box’s catastrophe began when they decided to let some famous bloggers run their social media. Foolishly, and allegedly, one of these bloggers didn’t agree with a complaint made by a Glossy Box customer, so went on their personal account and insulted the individual; never, ever, ever, forget your social media accounts are public! The customer found the insult and made it public, sparking many other Glossy Box customers to be outraged. Not only that but it then opened and onslaught of customers claiming their complaints had been deleted from the brand’s Facebook page and they had been blocked from making further comments. The golden rule of social media, is that it’s better to be seen publicly and professionally resolving a customer complaint that it is to delete the complaint and anger the customer!
3. McDonald’s
We’ve all heard the McDonald’s horror stories; people finding things which shouldn’t be in their burgers and so on, so when McDonald’s tried to start a successful hash-tag campaign on Twitter called #McDstories they got a lot more than they bargained for. The hash-tag caused a flood on horror stories about the fast food chain from disgruntled customers to be made public on Twitter. According to Mashable.com, stories included things like “Found a fingernail in my big mac once.” and “Bit into something so hard I chipped my molar.”. The moral of this story? Good social media is founded on a good brand! In this modern age of quick social sharing, keep your reputation squeaky clean!