FreshNetworks Blog

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It’s happened to all of us. We think we’re logged into one account, when actually we’re logged into another. We think we’re sending a Direct Message, when actually we’re sending a a message to the world. Or maybe we just don’t think and regret saying something. Whether you’re an individual or a brand, Tweeting something you shouldn’t have can be a cause of concern, panic and, often, inertia. What should you do? Ignore it? Apologise? Do you risk making things worse?

Here are some simple thoughts to help you decide how you should act and what you should do when that mis-Tweet happens.

So you Tweeted from the wrong account

Maybe you have two accounts – one for a close group of friends and one that is public – or maybe you Tweet on behalf of a brand as well as in a personal capacity. Tweeting from the wrong account is a common occurrence for many people and is easily done. In many cases this won’t be a problem – okay maybe you just told your friends all about some special offer your company has on this week or pointed them to a blog post they probably aren’t interested in, but that doesn’t really matter. Nor does it necessarily matter if you tell your brand’s followers about a football match you are at or what you are watching on TV – as long as these Tweets aren’t hugely inappropriate they reinforce that there is a real person behind this branded account who does real stuff in their real life. In these cases, a simple (possibly humourous) acknowledgement that you sent the Tweet to the wrong place should suffice. And remember to not do it again!

Things become more difficult if you have said something inappropriate to the audience (or just inappropriate per se). If you’ve tweeted something to the world that you meant only for some close friends you need to make sure you delete the message, apologise and apologise to anybody who mentions it or complains to you. If you’re a brand and an employee has done the same then the same rules probably apply: delete the Tweet, apologise and apologise to everybody who mentions it. If you’re a brand you might also want to consider if the employee’s conduct required disciplinary action and it may be worth including this information in your apology Tweet.

So you sent a Direct Message to the world by mistake

A mistake many novice users make and that is also easy to do. Again, there may be no problem here – if the Tweet isn’t offensive to the audience that sees it (and isn’t confidential) then apologise and maybe just leave it. The problem comes when the Tweet isn’t appropriate for everybody to see, and if it was a DM in the first place this is highly likely to be the case. Once something is public others will be retweeting it and mentioning it so you cannot just pretend the Tweet didn’t happen. You can just follow the same process as above: delete the Tweet, apologise and explain to those that mentions it and be more careful in future. You may also choose, especially if you are new to Twitter, to show some humility (“Looks like I’m still getting used to Twitter, doesn’t it…”).

You should also consider what you are using DMs for and what you are saying – maybe what you said was better off Twitter completely.

So you regret something you said on Twitter

Finally, and the most common situation, you say something that you later regret. Maybe you Tweeting something late at night that you wouldn’t say in the cold light of day. Maybe you said something that sounds worse than you meant. Or maybe your conversation should never have been public in the first place. Just as with a mis-Tweet, if you say something you later regret then you can’t just pretend it never happened. People may be retweeting it and mentioning it already. One thing you should consider, however, is whether you making an issue of the regretted Tweet will actually make things worse. Some Tweets (especially those late at night) may go unread and as long as they are misjudged rather than offensive or libelous it may be that you just leave things.

However, in most cases you will need to act. If what you have said is offensive to some of your audience and you regret it you should probably apologise – be open and honest that it was a mistake and you regret it now, contact people directly with the same apology. And then think carefully about how and when you use Twitter.

We all make mistakes and people understand that. But we should think carefully about what we say on any public channel (our personal accounts or a branded account) and think if it would be better to just not say it at all in the first place.

Often hailed as the top travel review aggregation site, TripAdvisor launched as an independent company on December 20th 2011 after separating from parent travel booking company Expedia.

With almost 1 in every 4 UK holidaymakers using Tripadvisor to research their holiday before booking, the success of TripAdvisor is undeniable in terms of SEO value, word-of-mouth and trusted reviews. And the valuation of TripAdvisor at nearly $4bn is testament to its success as a social travel site, highlighting the value of social media for the travel industry.

Although Expedia no longer has the main social arm of their business, this doesn’t mean they’re abandoning social media altogether; quiet the opposite in fact.

In a recent article in Businessweek, Expedia highlighted how it hopes to use the power of  social media to re-design the way people shop for their holidays by incorporating transactions into a marketplace driven by social networks.

With people trusting their friends’ opinions more than that of a company, Expedia is trying to emulate in the travel industry what Amazon has done in the consumer space with regards to personalisation and recommendations.

Expedia’s goal is to make planning the entire trip – from flights to hotel to transportation, to restaurant selections and amusement park tickets – an integrated shopping experience.

For example, say your family is planning a trip to Mexico. After booking flights, your hotel search would incorporate friends’ views on particular properties. If someone from your family had been to a particular restaurant, you’d get their recommendation or caution. And all those Facebook photos that people post after a trip? Expedia want to mine those to help consumers make decisions about their own travels, just as TripAdvisor does with hotel shots its users submit.

In essence, this means your friends, family and social network connections become the equivalent of the traditional ‘bricks-and-mortar‘ travel agent, providing both timely advice and warnings about certain elements of your holiday.

Expedia also plan to harness the power of blogging more effectively too. Expanded posts on travel adventures, supplemented with user reviews and comments, might draw in more travellers. And while they aren’t looking to add a roster of bloggers to its payroll, the company is likely to fund trips for bloggers it deems influential. They they would then use the bloggers’ videos, photos, and writing on the Expedia site, without influencing content.

So what can other travel brands learn from Expedia? Given that there’s ever-growing research to support the fact that social media impacts holiday choices, travel and leisure brands need to think about their social media strategy and how effective it is at actually delivering value to their company. Still in its infancy, Expedia is really only focusing on two key areas of social media – customer ratings and reviews and influencer marketing through their proposed blogger programme. Travel and leisure brands would do well to follow Expedia’s example and to focus efforts on the specific areas of social media give real business benefits.

Brands and businesses are trying, more and more, to engage Chinese audiences online, particularly consumer and FMCG brands.

Recently, Reckitt Benckiser cleaning and disinfectant brand Dettol carried out a social media campaign in China to demonstrate that influencer marketing and word-of-mouth can be successful not just for the likes of Pepsi and Coca-Cola, but also for more mundane, household brands that appear in weekly shopping baskets.

The campaign helped to increase sales of Dettol products in Nanjing by 86% in comparison to the pre-campaign average.

Here’s a quick case study overview of Dettol’s social media/word of mouth campaign in China:

From the Top 10 viral advertising campaigns, to the Top 10 marketing moments of 2011, the “Top 10 season” is definitely in full swing, so we thought we’d jump on the bandwagon and look at the Top 10 social media blog posts from 2011 on our blog.

1. 15 essential articles for online community managers
2. 23 social media collaboration platforms
3. Google+: A social networking site or the future of search engine marketing?
4. Tips from the team behind the UK’s third most engaging Facebook page
5. How do different age groups interact across the social web?
6. Coca-Cola cut ad spend by 6.6% and invest more in social media
7. Why retailer Tesco bought a social media company
8. The social media landscape in 2011 – an infographic
9. Forrester report: how companies listen and engage with social media
10. 6 tips for using social media as a customer service channel

While our top 10 social media blog posts list is based on the most shared blog posts, other favourites from the team include:

• Why people don’t want to create content for your brand
• Social media management tools wiki/list
• Brands need to use social media strategically, not get advice from gurus
• What are your social media photo rights? Image T&Cs examined
• Calling all brands: stop counting Facebook “likes” and build deeper engagement instead

As well as the free guides we launched on our blog:

• How to measure Twitter (using the API)
• How to secure your brand name on China’s Twitter, Sina Weibo
• Report: The growth, current use and future direction of LinkedIn

We hope you enjoy re-reading these posts and that they help to remind you of what an interesting year 2011 has been for social media.

Earlier this month I attended a lecture by Nik Gowing, BBC World News anchor for the channel’s flagship news programme, The Hub, which reports on global news.

The theme of the lecture was about the compression of world events as a result of the power of social media and mobile communications, followed by an (as yet unresolved) discussion about who controls information power in the world of social and mobile communication.

Gowing showed how social networks, multiple mobile phone bearing witnesses, video and photographic images shared to the web have become serious challenges to those in positions of power – ie, governments and global corporations.

Gowing described how disconnected systems are in place to deal with sudden comms or social media crises both within corporations and governments, pointing out their inadequacy in dealing with the new information landscape. He referred to this situation as  ’the tyranny of real time’, making power in today’s world both vulnerable and brittle.

For example, during the Millbank Tower riots in November 2011, the BBC news teams used video footage and Twitter reports from protestors to assemble the news story as it appeared, before the news crews could get on location to film.

Another example cited by Gowing was that of Zoltan Bakonyi, CEO of Mal Rt, the Hungarian Aluminium firm whose damaged silos spilled red toxic sludge into the local towns and countryside in October 2010. Because social media spread the message about what had happened, with reports, video footage and online comments appearing so quickly, Bakonyi was arrested within days of the toxic spillage:

With decades of experience in journalism behind him, Gowing also noted a shift in people’s behaviour because of the rise of mobile phones and social media. During natural disasters, riots or acts of terror, people immediately reach for their mobile phones and begin filming events as they unfold before them. This was evidenced widely during the Japanese Tsunami this year: for days and weeks afterwards new footage appeared from people who had filmed the events unfolding at great personal risk:

Asked whether he believed this was in an effort to gain money for their coverage, Gowing pointed out that the BBC seldom pays for such footage. He believes (as do we) that people are not so motivated by money as by the desire to share their experiences.

Key social and mobile learnings from the session

One of the biggest take-aways from the presentation was the sense that businesses and governments are ill prepared to deal with the massively reduced time between an event and mass public awareness.

Even news teams, better equipped than any corporate organisation to receive, interpret, fact check and then publish accurate information often struggle to keep up.

The challenge for organisations responding to events, especially comms crises, is the mediation, authentication and prioritisation of a massive volume of information. The reality is that organisations in 2011, from the UK government to BP, have failed to have put systems in place to respond appropriately to sudden, massive public awareness of an incident.

To Gowing, the brittleness of power in a digitally alert world is from the sudden deficit in legitimacy of power created when information spreads rapidly during a comms or social media crisis. Information is power; if organisations don’t have enough when they’re under the spotlight they look weak.

Ultimately, the corporate and government perception of “media” must shift. Media can no longer be controlled or managed. The media that exists today lies in the hands of 4Bn mobile phone users – essentially a public information space.

Although Gowing has been spreading this message for two years, organisations over the last year have failed to be ready for real-time information. The wisest ones looking ahead to 2012 will be asking whether they could have survived the big news stories of 2011 unscathed.

Here are 4 key questions organisations should be asking:

• How are we monitoring the public information space to we know what’s being said as quickly as the public?
• How many hours from news breaking to the first press questions do we have to brief senior people?
• What are competitors spending and what infrastructure are they building to deal with comms crises?
• How are brands and businesses safeguarding their online reputation on an ongoing basis?