FreshNetworks Blog

Image by PhotoGraham via Flickr

Every brand with a Facebook page is at risk of a social media crisis. It could arise from any number of scenarios – from ostensibly innocuous customer complaints to a huge backlash against your perceived values. A brand’s Facebook wall is now often the first stop for anyone wanting to make their fury known, and if word of that fury spreads you may find yourself on the receiving-end of a seemingly endless barrage of complaints.

Knowing how and when to respond is essential and we would always recommend a detailed crisis management plan and escalation policy as a top priority to any company using social media. It is not always appropriate for you to respond to comments online and a good crisis management plan will clearly lay out when you should respond (and how) and when you shouldn’t.

However, in addition to what you do and how your brand responds, the best brands in social media often don’t have to respond at all. Their advocates do it for them. There are always some issues and queries that you will need to respond to (specific details of their account, complaints about your service) but in many cases having other customers to respond instead of you (or as well as you) can be even more powerful.

There can be a temptation to think that only the most lauded brands such as Apple or Gucci have strong advocates, but this is not true. Every brand has advocates, people who are loyal to your brand, products, people or services and will go out of their way to tell others about this. Identifying your advocates is one task, you then need to cultivate and build relationships with them online.

Here are three tips of how you can build relationships with advocates online:

1. Involve them in your product development processes

When we work with advocates for brands, the thing they most often discuss is ideas for the brand. Things they know don’t always work in the product. Ways the product could be improved. Things they have seen that competitors and substitutes do. Advocates are often the people who have the deepest knowledge of your product and want to talk to you about it. If you make it easy for them to do this and give them access to real decision makers at your brand you will build huge social credibility with them.

2. Let them try new products first

Advocates want to try your products and will tell others about them. Whilst giving out endless freebies is not a sustainable or sensible policy, giving samples of products (especially new products) to those who advocate your brand makes sense. They will give you instant and honest feedback, will feel rewarded by getting access to product before anybody else, and will help you to spread the message about your product before its launched.

3. Get to know them

Finally, but most importantly, you need to get to know your advocates. Spend time talking to them and getting to know them so that you can have a conversation with them on a human level. On a Facebook page that we run for pet owners we know the names of our advocates dogs, we chat to them about what their dogs have done at the weekend and know when it is their birthdays. Why? Because we’re genuinely interested in them as people and as dog owners and want to get to know them. If you are to make the most of your advocates you have to be genuinely interested in them and in their lives. This kind of honesty will be clear to them and will mean that you can have a real interaction with them on a human level.

According to Warren Buffet “it takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it”. With the rise of social media it feels like it can take  less than five minutes to potentially damage your online reputation. Here are five cases where social media either created or amplified a potentially damaging situation for a brand:

You’ve probably heard how a Greenpeace attack on Nestle’s business ethics resulted in a social media encounter that damaged Nestle’s reputation worldwide.

Or, more recently, how BP has been facing daily attacks from a fake BP Twitter account about the oil spillage in the Gulf of Mexico. Both situations highlight the importance of online reputation management.

A recent article about social media and online reputation management, published by Director magazine, suggests that businesses are weary of using social media for fear that it’s like “giant focus groups” but with two crucial differences - ”the questions can’t be controlled and the debate takes place in public.”

That’s not to say that businesses should avoid using social media. Quite the opposite in fact, given that the benefits of using social media far outweigh the concerns that organisations have about safeguarding their online reputation. After all, even if your business chooses not to engage in the online conversation, people are talking about your products and services whether you like it or not. Surely it’s far better to acknowledge the presence of these conversations rather than ignoring them to the potential detriment of your business, especially given that any business would be adequtely prepared to enter the world of social media without fear with the right social media strategy and social media policy in place.

In fact, brands who take on board the criticisms they hear on Facebook, Twitter or through social media monitoring, and then try to improve on them, will be the ones who continue to grow and prosper. Every single piece of information that is picked up online, be it good or bad, is a valuable learning. As Twitter co-founder Evan Williams stated, businesses need to work on their “ability to embrace criticism as well as praise” when it comes to social media.

A good example of a brand that has taken Evan’s advice is Domino’s pizza. Instead of cowering in shame or responding angrily to negative online reviews and comments about their products, Dominos pizza met the criticism head on. They made a documentary describing the extent of their problems and the efforts they were making to improve their products and services. They posted the documentary on YouTube, including the fairly harsh responses from a focus group which deemed the pizza “devoid of any flavour”. The cameras then followed the chefs as they made improvements to the pizzas and then asked focus groups to re-test the new and improved version. They also added a completely un-moderated section to their website to allow people to say whatever the hell they liked about the new offering.

What’s refreshing about this reaction is that it’s completely transparent and wholly honest. Dominos acknowledged the shortcomings their customers highlighted and made every effort to address the issues.

Even more intelligent is the fact that Dominos clearly thought about their long-term business strategy rather than the immediate need to quell any negative comments. They openly addressed the issues that their customers were complaining about so that these same people would  spread word of their proactive response via the same fast-spreading medium. In other words, if you act on negative comments and turn them into positive experiences then the people who you’ve listened to are likely to become your biggest advocates and will start doing your marketing work on your behalf.

To find out more about manging your reputation online and responding to criticism come to B2B Marketing’s seminar about online reputation management.

In today’s world, online PR isn’t just about coverage from professional magazines and media sources. Brands also get coverage from the user-generated content that exists on blogs, forums, online communities and by using the other social media tools that are at their disposal.

This increase in online content can help with search engine rankings, website traffic and the spread of word-of-mouth. It can also help businesses get a better understanding about what their customers are saying, be it positive or negative. In fact, the online conversation should be monitored closely so that if any negativity occurs it can be detected,  qualified and responded to in the appropriate manner to ensure the reputation of a brand is not damaged.

But just how do you manage a brand when people are talking on multiple online platforms all around the world? And how do you use the social web to increase your visibility and coverage?

In June we’re sponsoring an Online PR seminar which will help you learn how to use social media as part of your online PR strategy.

Organised by B2B Marketing , the seminar will teach you how to:

• Develop a ‘push’ strategy so you can better manage your brand’s reputation and influence market opinion.
• Monitor online conversations so you can engage your audience and develop strategies to manage your reputation online.
• Increase your visibility on search engines so you can drive more relevant and better quality traffic to your website.
• Understand how to use social media monitoring monitoring tools to track media coverage and measure ROI.

One of our directors, Charlie Osmond, will cover how to develop a social media strategy to support PR activity. He’ll also cover how to use social media monitoring tools to track media coverage and help maintain your reputation online.

Other speakers at the seminar include Melanie Seasons and Charley Hayes from Online Fire and Sam Dorney from IAS B2B Marketing.

Book your place here or call +44 (0)20 7438 1379.

Trojan Horse from shutterstock

A post on the econsultancy blog this week told the story of Jason Calacanis’ iPad hoax. This is the most recent example of social media spreading lies at pace.

The viral potential of social media makes it a powerful tool for seeding and rapidly diseminating information. Sometimes that information is accurate and sometimes inaccurate. And it’s a sad indictment of human gullibility that messages originating from a seemingly respected source are too often believed first and questioned second.

There are also numerous examples which show that well-packaged information, shared on social networks, can make patently false statistics seem plausible.

Below are two videos that did the rounds last year. Thanks to good production skills, the videos appear to be professional and as a result they were believed by far too many people. The first video is pretty harmless – a riff on the Did You Know video mixed in with a little Social Media Evolution.

Did You Know 4.0

The second video is more worrying. It’s a politically motivated anti-muslim film that masquerades as balanced (it was apparently uploaded by “firendsofmuslim”). However it is highly charged and many of the key statistics are false.
Muslim Demographics

Sure, it’s the message, not the medium that is the real issue here. And social media ought to be capable of quashing the incorrect information, fallicies and hoaxes just as it lets them propagate in the first place. The online community from Snopes is a great example of social-media-driven crowdsourced fact checking.

And, I’m glad to say there were a few responses to the Muslim Demographics video that tried to set the record straight. For example, BBC Radio4′s More or Less team probed (as they always do) the claims in more detail and posted the following response to clarify inaccuracies.

Muslim Demographics: the truth

Yet there is still reason for concern. Over 11million people watched the sensationalist version and only a few thousand saw the responses. I think the makers of this video have achieved their aim. They successfully used social media marketing to spread anti-muslim feeling and distrust.

Traditional v’s Social Media
But we live in a world of dodgy dossiers. Just because social media can spread lies, does that mean we’d have been better off sticking with traditional media?

Traditional mass media does have a reputation to protect: newspapers may have built up their brand equity over decades, they face a higher risk of lawsuits and have to answer to ombudsmen, shareholders and advertiser pressure.  Compare that to an upstart video-jockey with a good idea for making a splash and you can see that there is a lot less to lose.