You will often hear that doing a bit of brand building on social media is the simplest thing in the world and that anyone can do it.
This is usually “recommended” by two-bit writers who have never even dabbled in trying to build or even maintain a social media brand. In their minds, handling a corporate social media presence is pretty much the same thing as running their super-awesome blogger accounts packed with motivational pictures featuring coffee mugs and Elon Musk quotes.
If this was the case, why would we have companies like Strong Social which help companies and other corporate entities develop social media strategies and keep them out of trouble?
Do not be fooled – it is super easy for companies to get in trouble on social media. In fact, this is our topic of the day, the many different ways in which companies (and not just companies) can ruin their social media brand.
1. Hijacking Tragedy
One of the more noble uses of social media is at times of great tragedy, when people share news and calls for help from affected areas, mobilizing charities and other people who can help and make a difference. Sometimes social media becomes an essential part of historical events such as revolutions.
It is only natural for such moments, which are often tragic, to become the most shared and talked about events on social media at the time.
And if history has taught us anything, it is that there will always be someone callous enough to try and take advantage of such moments for their own benefit.
During the 2011 Revolution in Egypt, famous designer Kenneth Cole shared a tweet in which he insinuated that the uproar in Cairo was all because of his latest collection.
He was probably oblivious of exactly what was going on in Egypt at the time or he thought he was being edgy. At the core of it all, however, was the fact he wanted to cash in on the #Cairo hashtag that was trending at the time. There are no two ways about it. He wanted to cash in on a tragedy; tragedy in the sense that hundreds of people lost their lives during the revolt.
In 2012, there was a shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newport, Connecticut. As everyone was voicing their feelings about the shooting and saying social media prayers for the victims and their families, Kmart decided to go a different way and plug their products as part of their commentary.
This definitely smells of an accident or some kind and we say this only because we cannot imagine a person callous enough to hijack something as horrifying as an elementary school shooting to push their new product.
It seems absolutely unreal that anyone is doing this, but people do. For some reason, they think it is a good idea. This is never a good idea. Even if you think your brand might benefit from piggybacking a trending hashtag, it simply goes against common decency.
In other words, think about what your grandma would say if she found out what you were doing.
2. Selling Too Much
While we are on the subject of using tragedy to flog stuff, we should also acknowledge the fact that brands are often being too salesy on social media anyway.
Sprout Social talked to more than a thousand people this July and they found out that more than half of their respondents thought that the brands they follow post far too many promotions on their social media profiles.
According to the same research, aggressive promotion is also the main reason why people decide to unfollow brands on social media. This is somewhat interesting considering the fact that almost 60% of people start following a brand in order to be informed of promotions.
In essence, people do not mind promotions, but brands need to be careful about how aggressive they are with them. This is complicated by the fact that most people need to see something at least 2 times on social before they make a purchase, though.
Perhaps the solution is to do fewer promotions over longer periods of time. The most important thing to remember is not to overdo them.
3. Miscalculating the Brand
When you work for a specific organization, especially for a longer period of time, you cannot exactly have an unbiased view of it. Even people who worked for the Nazi SS thought that their organization was doing good and that they were the good guy.
(Do not get us wrong, we are not trying to draw parallels between the organizations we will be mentioning in this section of the article with SS. It was just a way to illustrate a point.)
Some brands simply miscalculate how the majority of the world sees them and their social media campaigns have a tendency to backfire on them.
For example, in 2014, the New York Police Department wanted to show their humane and sociable side by asking the public to share photos with the members of the NYPD accompanied by the #myNYPD hashtag. They ended up with innumerable posts showing the members of the NYPD beating up Occupy Wall Street protesters, being put on trial and much more.
McDonald’s had a similar experience when they tried to play the nostalgia card among their customers back in 2012. Namely, they introduced the hashtag #McDStories, hoping that their customers would share their warmest experiences with the fast food chain, perhaps some funny or cool photos.
Nope.
Instead, McDonald’s ended up with horror stories about body parts in their meals, food poisonings and people who lost pounds of weight after giving up on their food. Simply put, they miscalculated what people will share about their McDonald’s experiences.
Before trying to get a hashtag or some other viral campaign rolling, it is essential that brands are honest to themselves and think of the worst things people might say about them. In most cases, this will be the stuff people will post.
It is the way of the internet.
4. Wrong Tone
There is a certain way people do social media. We are talking about private accounts – actual people. These may be public figures, but we are still talking private accounts.
Private accounts tend to be informal and jokey. Often times they adopt certain personalities that work perfectly fine for private accounts. It is the way certain people choose to present themselves on social media.
When brands are in question, this is far more likely to backfire than to work. For instance, would you like to see a social media account of your grandfather’s retirement community make jokes about their residents? Do we really need our bank calling us bae or something like that?
Going back to aforementioned Sprout Social research, the second, third and fourth most annoying things brands do on social media is using slang and jargon, not having any personality, and trying to be funny when they’re not. Moreover, if a people start feeling they would be embarrassed if their friends might see they follow a brand, more than 70% would unfollow a brand.
It is quite obvious how important it is to find the right tone when doing a social media brand. Unfortunately, not everyone is capable of doing this and it is often better to hire a pro than to try and stumble across the right brand tone on social media.
5. Pure Ignorance
While being somewhat ignorant about certain things can sometimes be funny, when a certain brand is being ignorant on social media, it only makes it seem unprofessional and run by halfwits.
In 2014, Delta Airlines, a brand that should stand for professionalism or, at least, basic knowledge of geography posted a tweet following the World Cup victory of the American team over Ghana’s national team. Their tweet included a picture of the Statue of Liberty with the number 2 over it and a photo of a giraffe at sunset with the number 1 over it, indicating the end result.
The problem?
There are no giraffes in Ghana. Never were. In essence, Delta Airlines said that all of the Africa is the same and that it is still more or less Lion King over there. This is ignorance that comes dangerously close to racism light. The worst thing is that all it would have taken was a few minutes on Wikipedia.
That same year, American Apparel flaunted a lack of any historical knowledge by celebrating 4th of July with a photo of the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion on Tumblr.
Okay, so perhaps the person who posted this on Tumblr wasn’t around when the Challenger exploded, but you have to check your photo sources. When something like Space Shuttle Explosion comes up during your source investigation, you take a pause and do a bit more investigating.
We live in an age where information is, if anything, overabundant. A single Google search will provide you with tomes of information on pretty much anything. There is absolutely no excuse for offending people or sounding ignorant just because you couldn’t be bothered to Google something.
6. Utter Carelessness
There is this huge discord between how seriously brands take social media and the amount of care they put into running their social media profiles. More often than not, handling social media falls in the hands of interns who don’t know the first thing about using different kinds of social media.
Red Cross learned not to do this when one of their employees tweeted about getting “slizzerd” (drunk). They did recover gracefully from this faux pas, but you can rest assured they decided to have a tighter reign over their social media accounts. US Airways tweeted an insanely inappropriate photo as a response to one of their customers in 2014 and it got tons of attention. Negative attention, of course.
In 2013, HMV’s official Twitter account started tweeting about mass firings by administrators that took over the company. Apparently, they did not think of taking over the social media accounts before starting to lay people off and it didn’t go well.
We could list examples of carelessness on social media till we are blue in the face, but it all comes down to one or two reasons – either someone is drunk or they aren’t taking social media seriously enough. The good news is that this is remedied easily.
Adopting a social media policy or simply paying a tad more attention to the brand’s social media accounts takes care of most of this.
7. Being Inconsistent
There is a number of facets to being consistent on social media and for brands’ presence on social, consistency can truly be one of those things that make or break a brand.
This will start with a visual identity that should be consistent across the various social networks. It comes as no surprise that some of the world’s biggest brands are doing amazing work in this regard, as is pointed out in this great article on HubSpot. As you can see, these brands do more than just repeat the color palette. They evoke the same emotional response, which is always at the core of a brand’s identity according to many brand developers.
Consistency also entails the unity of the message. If a brand wishes to paint itself as an expert in the field, someone reliable that the customers can trust, they will need to refrain from lighthearted tweets and jokey Instagram posts. If a brand prides itself on providing luxury service, it should not post promotions about $10 discounts.
In addition to this, consistency also means being regular on social media. Once again, we go back to the Sprout Social research which shows that 18% of the people involved in the study unfollowed brands because they were too quiet. We have all seen this – brands that post something every two months, usually something salesy.
Consistency is a must in the world of brand social media.
8. Poor Interaction
At the core of every social media outlet is interaction. The initial idea behind every social network was enabling people to interact with each other. Brands simply jumped into the whole thing because that’s where their customers are. The worst thing is that they often forget about this interactive nature of social media that they invaded so cruelly.
According to Social Sprout, people wish to communicate with brands on social media. A quarter of people who were involved in their study said that they followed a brand in order to communicate with them. About the same percentage of them said that brands not replying to their messages is something that annoys them on social media. Finally, about 15% said that not getting replies caused them to unfollow certain brands on social media.
These numbers make it very clear that you simply have to interact with your followers and pay attention to what they are saying. If they contact you with a genuine inquiry, take time to answer them and make them feel like the valued customer that they are.
9. Being Racist
It feels silly even having to mention this, but as a few examples from the last few years have taught us, there will always be a need to remind people not to be racist.
Believe it or not, MTV Australia tweeted this during this year’s Golden Globes.
This actually happened. This is not a joke.
Don’t be racist on social media.
Closing Word
Some of these 9 missteps are more likely to outright destroy your brand than others, but all of them will be more than harmful.
The good thing is that with a bit of common sense and a few seconds before any post, you will be able to avoid all of them.
Of course, if you can think of any other ways in which brands can commit social media seppuku, make sure to let us know.
Nate Vickery is a business consultant and a blogger mostly focused on researching and implementing latest trends in marketing and management for small business and startups. Nate is also an editor at a business-oriented website – Bizzmarkblog.com.
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