“Build a strong online presence.”
“Interact with your audience.”
“Get yourself out there.”
The Internet is awash with mantras like these from Social Media gurus, urging you to make the most of this amazing online phenomenon. But the push for Social Media is so huge that it completely drowns out any advice to be very careful about what you say when you are broadcasting your thoughts to the masses.
That should be common sense, of course. But common sense has a nasty habit of leaving the building when it is most needed, and even the experts who should know better are prone to slipping up.
Just look at what happened to James Andrews (@KeyInfluencer), a Social Media expert from the renowned PR agency Ketchum in Atlanta, who was on his way to Memphis to talk with FedEx about social media. Soon after his plane touched down in Memphis, Andrews posted his thoughts to the increasingly popular mini-blogging site Twitter. This is what he wrote:
“True confession but I’m in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say, ‘I would die if I had to live here.’”
Quite inevitably, somebody at FedEx was following KeyInfluencer’s Twitterings and offence quickly spread throughout the company HQ, including the people he was meant to address on that day, putting KeyInfluencer and Ketchum at odds with one of their multi-million dollar clients.
You can read about the whole saga between this Ketchum employee and FedEx on David Henderson’s post How not to be a key online influencer, so we won’t repeat all the gory details of the case. We just want to quote one key phrase from the reply Andrews got from one of the communications guys at FedEx:
A hazard of social networking is people will read what you write.
Like DUH! But when a supposed guru at a top agency commits such a faux pas, you’d better be watching out too.
There are several things to take away from this story. On the one hand, FedEx (or its employees) gleefully made a big deal of the whole issue, letting what could have been a minor incident (no matter how much offence was taken) turn into a whole online circus in front of the whole world. It’s easy to demonise one guy for a slipup, but then FedEx are the ones who come across as the bad guys in the end. Or maybe they were thinking that any publicity is good publicity and took advantage of the situation? Double bad!
On the other hand, according to David Henderson, Ketchum were very slow to even reply and comment, let alone to contain the situation before it got out of hand. Instead of taking some of the fall for their employee, they buried their heads in the sand and hoped things would go away – something that never happens in cases like these. You would expect such a big name in the PR field to be more capable in the damage containment department.
Actually, maybe it is time to question how much expertise these huge agencies, traditionally used to the offline world, have when it comes to the new and emerging online marketing technologies. It’s no secret that the online marketing landscape is constantly changing, and the bigger you are, the more difficult it can be to keep up, and for everyone in the company to adapt to these changes. Maybe some of the smaller online marketing companies out there are better able to keep on top of the ball and provide you with the expert advice you need as you try and make the best of what the Internet has to offer. Just saying.
And finally, make sure you don’t let such an incident even dent your impression of Social Marketing. If you’re not social marketing yet, what are you waiting for? And if you are, you’ll want to get the most out of it. So here’s some weekend reading for you. Get started with 50 ideas on using Twitter for business, and then jump onto David Henderson’s eBook Media savvy in the Internet era [PDF] to get yourself up to speed.
By the way, you can follow us on Twitter and keep up with what’s going on at www.twitter.com/sortedsites and at www.twitter.com/johnbeckley. See you there!
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It’s getting kind of interesting. Even though relatively nobody knows these SMEs, they’re receiving celebrity treatment when it comes to things they say and do.
I posted about this back in July 2008, in “Freedom of Consequences”. It’s not really clearly explained to people where their privacy ends and their comments become public and easily taken out of context.
As a matter of fact, each post you make, each microblog, especially, has to be a standalone representation of yourself and in this particular case, your company if your online persona is linked to it.
Thanks for pointing me to this article, John. It is so true and good advice that for all the social networks have to be taken into account when promoting an online presence, the fact that what you say in them is there for all to see has to be borne in mind.
In Feb a US journo had an embarrassingly public meltdown and Tweeters went wild with it. It is a mystery why David George-Cosh did not take his tantrum to DM but whether he intended it or not, his name is now part of Twitterdom and he is best known for having gone postal in public.
http://www.switched.com/2009/02/13/twitter-fight-scandalizes-micro-blogosphere