Think before you tweet
Look before you tweet...
Social Media – everyone’s talking about it. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube make the headlines on a daily basis – for positive and negative reasons. The vast majority of businesses, organisations and community groups have Twitter feeds, Facebook fan pages, LinkedIn profiles or other forms of social media engagement.
However, social media strategy is still somewhat baffling for many businesses, big and small, and social media campaigns remain complex to analyse – the concept of achieving positive ROI from investment in social media is quite alien to many brand owners. The ‘now’ factor of social media is also something many businesses have yet to master – recently Vodafone were forced to apologise, profusely and repeatedly, after a homophobic tweet was sent on their official account by a member of their team.
As soon as it was spotted, the tweet was deleted, but not before it had been screengrabbed, retweeted and repeated across the internet. With social media, someone, somewhere, is always watching, and it’s impossible to cover something tweeted or blogged by mistake because the chances are, someone will have seen your errant message and, especially if it’s juicy, inappropriate or downright offensive, chances are, they’re going to repeat it.
The most important thing when using social media to interact with clients and potential clients is to take a moment to think. Like sending a drunken text message to an old flame, what seems like a good idea in the heat of the moment may not in fact be as fabulous/funny as you think. So before tweeting, pause a moment. Would you say what you’re about to say if your client was sitting in the office in front of you? Would you stand up and say it to a room full of people? And is it on brand with your company’s profile?
Of course, whoever is looking after your social media campaign is only human, and mistakes will happen. Whether it’s in the form of an innocuous typo or missing link, or tweeting to the wrong account if you manage more than one, or if it’s something a little more serious, such as a disgruntled employee, bad joke or hacked account, there’s only one thing you can do: acknowledge that the mistake has happened.
Trying to cover it up will, in the long run, have a more negative effect on your brand or business. If necessary, apologise. Like Vodafone, if the breach is serious enough, issue a short statement distancing yourself from the offensive message and reassuring your followers that the matter is being dealt with.
Vodafone were also subjects of a – slightly less reported – positive social media story last month, which showed how companies can use social media to interact with customers, investigate and help solve their problems. Popular Conservative blogger Iain Dale went straight to his blog to report his horror when he received a monthly mobile bill of £2,500 from Vodafone. The blog post was instantly tweeted and repeated to friends and followers of Iain on Facebook.
Iain’s tweet was spotted by Vodafone’s web relations team, who undertook a month long investigation and, after concluding that UberTwitter was the most likely culprit, Vodafone waved the charges – totaling £5,400 after the same thing happened for a second month. They even changed his tariff to a better deal, saving him more money. Result? One very satisfied customer, who promptly blogged, tweeted and Facebooked his gratitude.
Social media platforms enable you to interact with your clients like never before. Complaints, queries and praise can be handled in real time, and if the result is a positive outcome for your client, the chances are you’ll get some positive publicity across the social networks in return.
The key things to remember are to reply promptly to queries, offer to contact customers with problems directly to resolve them, to acknowledge any mistakes as soon as they are noticed and apologise if necessary, and above all, think before you tweet – and make sure your employees are doing the same.
Click the following link to read Iain Dale’s positive social media customer service experience.
