In March last year, supermarket giant Coles released the same message over its Facebook and Twitter accounts, inviting users to finish the phrase “in my house it’s a crime not to buy”. Originally, the post had only been meant for Facebook since it had recently allowed its comment pre-moderating feature. Coles had the right idea and everything may have gone off without a hitch, but somehow the comment was posted on Twitter as well and there was a marked difference in the users’ comments.
Stephens says visible comments from Facebook users were predominantly standard responses such as milk, cheese and bread, but Twitter users used the promotion as a chance to air their views about Coles exploiting Australian farmers and its relationship with gambling companies.
Tweets included “in my house it’s a crime not to buy from a sustainable supply chain” and “in my house it’s a crime not to buy food from markets while Coles exploits mental illness via pokies”.
Coles responded to the Twitter comments saying, “Sorry guys that post was not meant for Twitter”.
Stephens says the comments were not appallingly inappropriate, but they provide a good example of how messages can be easily changed, as influenced by the medium and pre-moderating ability of comments.
“The social media community is not homogeneous; you have individual audiences for each channel. It’s better for posts to be targeted to a medium, and useful to the audience. Recognise the difference in the way group will respond based on the culture of the platform,” he says.
Stephens says in situations such as this, Coles could have used social media to respond to the criticisms and correct inaccuracies.
“A well-placed tweet can actually diffuse a situation. In this instance, Coles could have used Twitter to educate the community about what it was doing well at and tried to move the attention away from the negatives.
“You can also take it as an opportunity to correct misperceptions, but it needs to be done with care. You don’t want to turn it into a PR exercise, you can just as easily throw petrol on the fire rather than extinguish it,” Stephens says.
On July 21 last year, James Holmes went on a shooting rampage during the Batman movie at a cinema in the Colorado city of Aurora. Tweeters quickly took to Twitter to express their sadness and outrage, causing #Aurora to trend. At the same time, fashion label Celeb Boutique had launched its Aurora dress and tweeted: “#Aurora is trending, clearly about our Kim K inspired #Aurora dress 😉 Shop celeboutique.com/aurora-white-p…”
Following the misguided tweet, the store removed the tweet an hour later and said it had been posted by a PR person who had not realised the shooting had taken place. While it was an honest mistake, the Twitter community was not sympathetic.
Griffin says brands should be aware of what’s happening in the world at large, whether or not it has a direct relationship with the brand.
“Simply jumping onto a hashtag because it’s trending can have some really negative consequences. The timing of social media is really important and some simple research prevents things like this from happening,” he says.
Stephens says it’s important to have someone who is experienced in community management in charge of social media and to think about appropriate times to launch campaigns or new products.
“You wouldn’t want to launch a campaign on the same day as 9/11. If you’ve been planning for months in advance, you obviously can’t predict what will happen, but when there are external factors at play you need to be flexible.
“It’s important to keep an eye on what’s going on within the company and out,” he says.
Griffin suggests a change of thinking to avoid issues such as this and says social media should no longer be a task relegated to an intern, or someone of little experience.
“A lot of organisations are putting some structure and governance around social media and that’s seeing a change in how things are done. Management of social media needs to be considered at a senior level,” he says.
The Red Cross isn’t the typical organisation you think of when it comes to social media stuff-ups, but even it has made the odd mistake. Fortunately for the charity, it seems it understands how to handle a mistake and even have a laugh while doing so.
In February 2011, the American Red Cross employee Gloria Huang (@riaglo) accidentally tweeted from the company account that she was going out and “#gettingslizzerd”. Realising her mistake, she followed up with the tweet “Rogue tweet frm @RedCross due to my inability to use hootsuite… I wasn’t actually #gettingslizzard but just excited! #howembarassing”.
At this point the Red Cross also acknowledged the mistake and deleted the tweet. It acknowledges it has done so and says: “We’ve deleted the rogue tweet but rest assured the Red Cross is sober and we’ve confiscated the keys”.
Following the quick reaction and good humour of the Red Cross, beer company Dogfish Head, which was mentioned in the original tweet, tweeted its followers to donate to the Red Cross, resulting in a cross promotion for the companies. The Twitter community also responded positively, with many users pledging their support for the Red Cross, donating to the charity and praising their response.
Griffin says despite the often critical nature of social media users, people understand mistakes happen, but to avoid such mistakes, employees should have two Twitter apps rather than using a program such as Hootsuite.
“People who manage both personal and professional accounts should consider having two Twitter apps, rather than just having check boxes. Even then, mistakes will always happen, but I think that makes it a little bit easier,” he says.
