Twitter? Err…
For a person who runs a blog that gets half a million visits a month, and who writes and posts a series of news emails that also have a fairly broad coverage, I am extremely cautious about Twitter and Facebook.
I have been running a Twitter ad programme for a year, and am running a very low-key Facebook experiment for one web site, and I have been asked why? Why be so cautious in one medium, when I face hundreds of thousands in another?
The answer is that with blogs and email lists I really do believe know what I am doing. With Twitter and Facebook I not only have less experience, I am also aware of some of the disasters that have happened this year.
Take McDonalds for example, who ran a Twitter campaign which asked people to share their memories of McDonald’s. The aim was to get all sorts of nice friendly messages up, whereas what they actually got were tales of bad work conditions and food poisoning. A huge own goal in fact.
Then there was ChapStick (a lip gel). They put up an ad on Facebook which many took offence too. Thousands of people wrote in to their Facebook page complaining. Chapstick took down all the complaint notices and instead put this one up…
“We see that not everyone likes our new ad, and please know that we certainly didn’t mean to offend anyone! Our fans and their voices are at the heart of our new advertising campaign, but we know we don’t always get it right. We’ve removed the image and will share a newer ad with our fans soon!
“We apologize that fans have felt like their posts are being deleted and while we never intend to pull anyone’s comments off our wall, we do comply with Facebook guidelines and remove posts that use foul language, have repetitive messaging, those that are considered spam-like (multiple posts from a person within a short period of time) and are menacing to fans and employees.”
The big mistake was the second paragraph – blaming the readers for the firm’s mistake was a worse error than the first one, and caused an even bigger backlash.
Then there is Greenpeace who had campaigned against Volkswagen’s opposition to environmental laws. In response VW posted this.
“We hope you had a fantastic New Year. Do you have any resolutions and what would you like to see us do more of this year?”
This sounded to everyone as if VW had every intention of taking no notice at all of environmental concerns and so it was no real surprise that over 1000 negative comments were received in the next 24 hours.
Then VW made matters worse by not replying to any of them. Instead it posted a statement saying that it does care about the environment, but it really had no effect.
Now my point is that these are huge firms making mega mistakes with using Twitter and Facebook – so I take things cautiously.
But in terms of news-orientated emails and with blogs, eleven years experimentation with this news service and others, and four years with my initial blog have given myself and Hamilton House some confidence that we know what we are doing.
If you would like to discuss how you could utilise email news letters and a blog – and indeed just what works on Twitter without causing difficulties, please do get in touch. There is more about how you can set up your own blog at a very low cost on http://www.hamilton-house.com/blogs Or you can call 01536 399 000.
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Tony Attwood