Everyday we open our newspapers find out what has happened the day
before, and usually the main story involves some celebrity involved in
controversy on Social Media.
Take the last few weeks for instance - Chancellor George Osbourne
tweeting a picture (or a selfie as its known) of himself enjoying a late
night burger and chips whilst working on the budget reforms. This photo
caused national outrage - the burger in question was a very expensive
burger which is ironic considering that Mr Osbourne was working on
cutting budgets...but lets not get political here.
In this instance we have a highly important political figure who has,
harmlessly in his opinion, posted a picture of himself working late at
the office, which by and large is not an uncommon sight on Twitter. Many
days have I logged onto Twitter (@colin_watt88) and discovered other
IBMers crunching code at their desk, usually accompanied by their food
of choice which will help them power through the next few hours. What
the main difference here is, that the entire UK population won't see the
IBMer devouring a Domino's (other pizza chains are available) or their
McDonalds (other burger chains etc etc). So what Mr Osbourne has been
forced to face are questions over the cost of his burger when there were
nearer burger chains (yes personal choice doesn't matter anymore) and
questions about his ability to carry out his job - the public have lost
confidence in not only Mr Osbourne but in the Government, and the cause
of this? Twitter - a picture on Twitter - something nearly 1 billion
people around the world use every single day. So the question remains:
is Social Media a friend or a foe, lets look at the evidence.
Last summer Netflix CEO Reed Hastings received some good news. The
founder of the US-based video rental and streaming business learned that
the company's subscribers had watched more than one billion hours of
video material in June. This sounds all good - a CEO enthusiastic about
his company and the progress that Netflix had made in it's short time in
existence. Even more good news - Mr Hastings decided to share the news
in a message on his own Facebook page, praising the work of his
colleagues in making the achievement possible. Netflix's share price
increased on the day of the announcement.
AMAZING! We have a CEO enthusiastic about his company, praising his
staff and even more importantly he's being Social! CEO's on Social Media
are a very rare occurrence, of course Ginni Rometty is an avid user of
Social Media especially Connections and has been know to use Twitter to
find out whats going on in the world. Indeed with over 6600 followers on
Twitter, Ginni is certainly more popular than myself online - going by
followers she's about 100 times more popular than me - well she is the
CEO of IBM but she hasn't tweeted yet?! So small steps being made there.
However by-in-large Social Media seems to be neglected by senior
officials in companies, Mr Hastings, on the other side, clearly knows
the demographic of his customers and has used Social Media to Netflix's
advantage.
This asks the question - if Netflix can have it's CEO post happily on
Social Media sites like Facebook and IBM CEO Ginni Rometty utilises the
platform, isn't there a clear advantage to companies using Social Media?
So why don't they?
Well some do - and some do it really well - most companies have hired
professional Social Media Experts who have the job of controlling the
company's image on Social Media - most companies now have a Facebook
page where they can promote their products and hold special giveaways,
enticing new customers to their company. One such company WAS HMV.
We all know that recently HMV went into administration, and nearly
disappeared from the High Street altogether, many thousands of employees
lost their jobs. Long careers over, it wasn't the best time for HMV to
have even more bad publicity but one employee decided to take the
disappointment one step further - unfortunately for HMV it just happened
to be their Social Media Expert.
Below is a list of tweets sent from the Offical HMV account on January 31st 2013:
Ouch - Talk about kicking a man when he's down - HMV certainly took a bit of a HR bash that day.
January 31st is normally infamous in the sporting world as being
Transfer Window Deadline Day - and for lovers and non lovers of football
- Twitter, Facebook and all forms of Social Media become the place
where members of the public create more stories than Roald Dahl. It is
the day where Messi appears in a Tesco in Bracknell (shopping for his
big move to Chelsea) as well as appearing in different petrol stations
from Madrid to Buenos Aires to Glasgow to Bejing - these footballer's
body doubles really enjoy Deadline Day!
However back to Social Media and most importantly HMV and its twitter
meltdown, this all occurred because of poor management of Social Media.
How? Well let me explain!
When a manger hires a new body for their department, they build a
mutual trust with the employee but most importantly, the manager is
aware of the tasks his or her's new employee has responsibility for.
They have responsibilities for the accounts that the new employee has
access to, and most importantly has the authority to over ride any
errors that the new employee will inevitably make. HMV on the other
hand, had one expert who would control it's Social Media platforms such
as Twitter and Facebook and they had a Marketing Director who would
oversee what was being said, but he didn't know how to use it! Yes it's
true the person earning the big bucks for the content coming out of
HMV's Social Media Feeds didn't actually know how to use Social Media,
which inevitably led to a marketing disaster for HMV. One such tweet
from the HMV account actually claims the marketing manager asked if
anyone knew how to delete Twitter. I don't know about you guys, but to
me, this sounds like someone who was out of their depths in this sense.
Fire forward 5 months and HMV is slowly returning back to the High
Street and they have a new marketing director - one who knows how to
over-rule their Social Media accounts and now each tweet is monitored
before it is sent out - 5 months too late for HMV but it does show how
Social Media can be powerful but it has to be correctly controlled, by
the right people!
So have you came to your own conclusion on Social Media yet?
Is it a friend or a foe?
Is it an addiction?
Or simply is it just a phase that will be slowly replaced by another form of communication....
Whatever your answer may be to these questions, there is one definitive
answer - Social Media is here, and I firmly believe we have to embrace
it or fear being left behind. Social Media is no longer seen as a
social, communicative tool but more a very powerful marketing tool and
perhaps even a life necessity. For example there are over 900 million
Facebook Accounts in the world, that's around 1 in 6 people in the world
have a Facebook Account - this figure is perhaps more like 1 in 3 when
you exclude those who are too young for a Facebook Account or simply
have no access to computers. That, is a scary statistic! and what's even
more scary is the fact that, that number is growing day on day!
So Friend or Foe? Well Social Media, you have your ups and your downs,
you are the place where we like to showcase what Santa brought us for
Christmas, where we like to share our happiest moments but you can also
be an evil mistress, being a public gallery for hatred, humiliation and
misfortune but no matter what people say, you're here to stay and the
best thing, we the public can do, is embrace and educate ourselves to
ensure that we make the most out of this wonderful tool. Yes there will
be times when we make mistakes but everyone does, without making a
mistake, how can you know how to do it right?
