All posts in Social Media

5 Things to Avoid During a Social Media Explosion

by Simon on March 27, 2010 in Social Media, Web Thoughts with 1 Comment

The spotlight turned back on to social media management recently following the way that Nestle handled the ‘social media explosion’ that occurred on their Facebook Page. Greenpeace created a video about Nestle’s use of palm oil in Kit Kat’s and how it directly endangered the lives of orangutans. This video quickly went viral after it was removed from YouTube and the main focal point for the public’s rage was the Nestle Facebook Page.

Below are 5 things to avoid doing when the going gets tough.

1. Moderation

Don’t delete peoples comments, unless they are totally irrelevant or break the terms of use of the environment you are in. On Facebook there is a Report function that might be advisable to call upon rather than deleting a comment. The removal of comments is both frustrating (for posters) and confusing (for readers).

2. Composure

Remain calm and collected, don’t rise to any comments that are obviously posted to generate a reaction. Never reply in anger.

3. Change

Resist the urge to edit or tweak your original statement, treat a post in social media like you would a blog and use strike-throughs and updates to modify a message.

4. Haste

The immediate reaction to a social media onslaught on your Facebook Page or Blog is to quickly reply to each comment or query. The danger here is that the quality of your message will be effected. Slow down and where possible compose responses that meet the needs of a number of commenter’s into a single reply.

5. Abandon Ship

I’ve seen on more than one occasion a brand’s Facebook Page that has been abandoned after an explosion. If the situation is not managed well the community of ‘fans’ that remain may be very jaded and any communication that the brand communicates might be met with negativity. The only way to resolve this would be to back track and clearly address the root cause of the original problem and hopefully move forward from there.

I hope you’ve found these 5 pieces of advice useful and it would be great to have any additional words of wisdom added in the comments below…

Facebook Mail to rule the webmail world?

by Simon on February 6, 2010 in E-Mail, Social Media with No comments

When was the last time you logged into your Hotmail account? Not recently I would imagine…Facebook’s latest project is looking to make your Hotmail holiday a permanent thing.

TechCrunch has released details of a project codenamed ‘Titan’ that may well change the face of e-mail marketing. Facebook are planning to launch a full functional email solution much akin to Gmail or Hotmail in the coming months. So what will it include?

Access from the walled garden of Facebook or via POP/IMAP (Outlook/Express/Live Mail can be used to read your email.)
A unique @facebook.com email address. Probably based on your Vanity URL

The quick win could be for Facebook to utilise it’s Microsoft connections and base their email solution on Hotmail, but knowing Facebook they are going to develop this themselves.

If they do develop something unique to themselves from the ground-up then we could have a whole new email client to deal with – more testing of e-mail rendering and spam scoring is guaranteed…

So where does this fit in the webmail landscape? I think Gmail has a hardcore, committed following that love the labelling, organisation and simplicity of the conversation based layout. The big threat ironically could be to Microsoft and it’s Hotmail solution. This has become a spam filled webmail system that people are using as a rubbish bin for unwanted email. If a new solution was introduced that offered better spam control, a great user-interface and was hosted on a website you visited almost daily then I think the winner is clear to see.

This project is one that all digital marketers will have to watch closely.

Read more about this at AllFacebook in their 5 Features Facebook Should Add To Their New Email Product