With Halloween already becoming a distant memory we will all have packed away our ghoulish costumes for another year. Sadly, this isn’t the case in the business world as they have to suffer a degree of horror all year round, particularly in the world of social media. Many have discovered to their chagrin just how black the dark side of social media really can be and the results of those public outcries can be very hard to come back from. Here are some right clangers you may or may not have been aware of.

The wrong way to promote your service

4AutoInsuranceQuote pride themselves on being on the cutting edge of providing the best auto insurance quotes online, shame they didn’t read the dictionary for the meanings of tact and diplomacy. The entertainment world was rocked in November 2013 when it was announced that the Fast and Furious actor Paul Walker had died in a horrific car crash. While everyone was in mourning this company decided it would be a good idea, the day following the crash, to post on Twitter that they hoped he had auto insurance, even posting directly on Walker’s own Twitter. Not content with that they went on to post the same question on numerous media sites. The public backlash was of epic proportion and rightly so, some so called digital marketing guru deserved a kick in the pants for that clanger.

Mayday!

One side of social media which has taken off big style is ‘complaintvertising’ where users who haven’t received satisfaction from the companies themselves buy advertising space on Facebook, Twitter etc in order to air their grievances and taunt brands. BA discovered the power of this when a hair care entrepreneur from Chicago used the Twitter self-service advertising platform to post a Tweet, which was featured, declaring “Don’t fly @British_Airways their customer service is horrendous”. He and his father had flown business class to Paris with BA and the company had lost dad’s luggage. When they failed to respond to his complaints he took the matter into his own hands. The ad cost $1000 and was viewed by over 50,000 Twitter followers in the US and UK where the ad was promoted.

Auto-Tweet Nightmare

Most corporations who Tweet seemingly constantly have auto tweets set up in advance and set to post at regular intervals. The failure to check these auto tweets proved to be extremely costly for Tesco. When the horse meat scandal broke and it was the only news in the media one of the supermarket giants auto tweets said that “It’s sleepy time so we’re off to hit the hay”. The complaints flowed in in their thousands and Tesco were forced to respond with an apology that the tweet had been scheduled before the situation had come to light and it was never their intention to make light of it. The following day several full page adds appeared in the national dailies apologising for the ‘unacceptable situation’ and vowing that the company would never make that mistake again.

Time those Q & A’s

Live ‘tweet ups’ where company CEO’s take part in the social media equivalent of a question and answer service are hugely popular as a way of raising the profile of a company and making it seem human. Timing of these is key and needs to be strictly managed, they should not be held on the day a company has announced a 10% price hike as British Gas did. Customer Services Director Bert Pijls was the unfortunate soul hosting this tweet up and you have to wonder who was behind this social marketing strategy and whether it was done on purpose.