If you are a business and you have someone, like a social media coordinator, doing your social media for you; you need to do it right. It’s not amateur hour. You need to make sure that the person who is doing your social media is doing a good job.
Here is why. People are watching what is happening on your social media applications like Twitter and Facebook. How do I know this? I just received an Email from @Kalena discussing how McDonald’s was dropping the ball big time in New Zealand. Kalena goes on to talk about how McDonald’s used the #eqnz to spam followers who were searching updates from the New Zealand earth quake. She even commented on mis-spellings that were present. Now I know that no one is perfect, and stuff does happen. But there was only 6 tweets out there and McDonald’s has managed to upset a lot of people quickly.
You simply have to strive to be the best you can be; and use spell check. You also have to be interesting. And you don’t want to come across to your audience as a spammer.
As a business, you need to get the right person doing your social media for you. Some one who knows the culture of the area, so that you don’t upset people needlessly. They need to be innovative as well. And by the way, I did not see any engagement with anyone yet on the @MaccasNZ Twitter page. I hope McDonald’s realizes that social media requires engagement with others. Standing on a soap box isn’t going to cut the mustard.
So what can we learn:
- First of all, McDonald’s is not a bad guy. Social media is new to many of us. But we still have to strive to do it well.
- Secondly, we had better know the area where we are doing our social media. A wrong choice of words can upset people.
- Thirdly, we should never spam hashtages (#) to promote our brand.
- Lastly, we need to think before we send the message out. I ponder over my messages and ask myself what impact will they have.
Have I dropped the ball a few times. You bet I have. But it does not give me the option to be sloppy or hurtful. I need to be professional at all times. We all do.
Wow, I had NO idea McDonald’s had done that…but I guess that sort of makes sense living in US. I think you hit the nail on the head yet again. You can’t just throw anybody onto your social media duties. I don’t think it takes a genius or rocket scientist, but it does take an educated individual who understands people, your company, and what it’ll take to make the two passionate about each other. It’s definitely not easy, takes a lot of years to fine tune that, but as we saw in your McD’s example, some stuff just isn’t excusable.
@JMattHicks I have noticed that they have acknowledged their mistake and are trying to move on. Good lesson for all businesses to learn and be careful about. Thanks for the comment.Jeremy.