Social Media Monitoring: It’s not only what someone says, it’s where they say it
Posted by Darren Enta on Fri, Feb 10, 2012
The tales of Social Media blunders by brands in 2011 are well documented. Three that come to mind are: 1) the Chrysler Twitter oops that was more the fault of the marketing company employee who thought it wise to insult the citizens of Detroit; 2) Charlie Sheen, who I realize is not really a brand, but the damage/attention that was the result of what outsiders viewed as a very public meltdown was an interesting examination of the social impact of Twitter; 3) and finally there was the poor choice of comedic timing displayed by Gilbert Gottfried when discussing the Tsunami in Japan, which happened to represent approximately 75% of Aflac’s (the former employer of former spokesman Gottfried) business.
For most of these, the impact was felt financially by companies that had to spend a lot of their PR budget addressing what was being put out by company representatives, spokespeople or in Sheen’s case, the complete rebranding and recasting of a television series. The one commonality is that Social Media matters and it needs to be monitored.
An older Social Media misstep has recently resurfaced. Dave Carroll, possibly better known as the ‘United Breaks Guitar’ guy is back in the news. Mr. Carroll parlayed a poor experience into a YouTube sensation after discovering that United Airlines had broken a guitar he checked. Over eleven million people viewed a video he titled simply “United Breaks Guitars”. Carroll has since been a sought after speaker addressing other companies on improving customer service experiences and how to avoid incidents such as this.
As of last week Carroll has a new “gig” as the spokesperson for the launch of a new site called Gripevine. Gripevine is a site which intends to provide customers the ability to discuss negative experiences and offers companies the opportunity to register in order to be notified when comments about their company or products is posted. The unique aspect in this case is the apparent intent of the site, as opposed to other known “gripe” sites such as complaintsboard.com or ripoffreport.com Gripevine is offering the ability for notification and direct and sometimes discreet engagement. The site is just coming out of its beta version and it’s unclear how much traffic or attention the site will generate. What is clear is the importance of understanding a much older lesson about media in general. Marshall McLuhan famously said: “The medium is the message”. This statement has never been truer, the weight and gravity of at least having the situational awareness of where the discussion about your company or products in the online community (or, more recently in the growing mobile community) is happening is a majority of the battle but will not win you the war.
Think of monitoring as the first line of defense you can set up. After threatening messages pass that defense, what will your company do about it? It is quickly becoming obvious to our customers that you need to have a Reputation Management Plan in place and knowing what was said and where it was said will greatly define what path your company should take to avoid any social media disasters like the ones mentioned at the beginning of this post.
So the question remains, are you aware of where people are talking about your brand? What are you going to do about it?