THE POSITIVES AND PITFALLS OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN BUSINESS

Social media is such an integral part of our day-to-day lives that it is easy to forget how recently it arrived in them.

In less than a generation, it has become rare to find an individual or business without a digital presence. During the Covid-19 crisis, with people craving social contact, the ability to interact digitally has become a crutch upon which the vast majority of us lean.

Of course, social media is a wonderful way of telling the world about your products and services, either directly through sales-orientated messaging or by telling stories that boost your profile, authority and desirability. 

The relative youth of this method of communicating means, however, that there are still ways in which its impact and reach can carry unexpected and unpleasant personal and commercial implications for anybody who makes an online mistake.

So how can businesses protect themselves and their employees from the negative consequences of getting it badly wrong on social media?

This is an arena where you can win – and lose – big

Recent though the advance of social media has been, in 2020 it is broadly accepted that there are well-known differences between the most popular platforms.

LinkedIn is strictly for business. Facebook is for light-hearted chat with family and friends. Instagram is for pictures. TikTok and Snapchat are for kids. And Twitter? That is a free for all, conducted in the atmosphere of a pub (remember those?) ten minutes before last orders.

So you know not to announce the merger of two financial institutions on TikTok, for instance. And anybody posting an “amusing” cat video on LinkedIn tends to get short shrift.

From a business perspective, however, there are ways in which judicious use of the appropriate platform can bear spectacular fruit. Some leading B2C brands have used Twitter superbly to boost their profile and reputation during the current crisis.

Airbnb, which should have taken a huge hit in lockdown, improved its image by offering free or subsidised lodging to Covid-19 key workers. Netflix launched “Wanna Talk About It?”, an Instagram Live series putting people in touch with mental health experts. Houseparty and Fortnite, meanwhile, combined with a trivia game that boosted both brands. 

However, the risk of making a mis-step and inflicting reputational damage that impacts on the commercial performance is ever-present. There is a colossal irony in the fact that the biggest stock market drop in value in history – $120billion – was suffered by a big beast of the social media world.

That was the eye-watering reverse suffered by Facebook after it failed to protect the private and personal data of more than 87 million people during the Cambridge Analytica scandal, a situation from which it has arguably yet to recover fully.

Where is the day-to-day risk?

Facebook’s travails stand as a global exemplar of reputational damage in a social media context. It shows us that no brand is immune to the consequences of getting it wrong.

Reputation is, after all, a fragile and delicate commodity that can be terminally wrecked by a single word. In the unforgettable case of Ratners, for instance, that word was “crap”.

In the day-to-day world of business, analysis of social media use for our purposes falls into two categories; the content of posts on official company accounts and the words posted by individuals who work for that organisation.

Social media campaigns run by businesses should by now be carefully worded and created to hit a particular sweet spot with a target audience. The content should be crafted to work optimally within your niche and in the eyes of your desired customer.

All that good work can be undone by one careless moment:

• Chrysler sacked its media agency after a tweet in the company name was very rude about the standard of driving in Detroit in 2011;

• Two years later, HMV’s employees live-tweeted their own lay-offs;

• In 2015, a BBC reporter tweeted that the Queen had died before hurriedly claiming it was an obituary rehearsal.

Personal social media accounts can also bring trouble for the individual who owns them and the place they work. Usually the catch-all “Opinions are my own” is enough. Sometimes, though, the momentum of a backlash that goes viral will overwhelm the combined might of four little words.    

How do you and your company mitigate that risk?

Increasing numbers of businesses now have social media policies built into their contracts. These stipulate standards of conduct on business and, crucially, personal accounts.

This is definitely a situation where prevention is better than cure. Being pro-active in the guidance you offer your employees over their social media use is infinitely preferable to trying to leash the wild tiger of a Twitter pile-on if one of your colleagues gets it achingly wrong.

Social media policies should make it very clear what is and what is not acceptable on organisational and personal accounts. That message should be reinforced and discussed with colleagues on a regular basis.

There is an element of common sense here. Any candidate for a senior position now knows that recruiters check social media histories for evidence of inappropriate, offensive or extreme behaviour or opinions. A spell of judicious revision is in order – so why would you not apply the same high standards to your social media presence going forward?

Conclusion: Communication is key

So are social media policies a good idea? Absolutely. The prevalence of social media in the modern business and personal world means that there is always a risk to your business if someone drops a humungous clanger on an official or personal account.

The onus should be on the company to communicate the policy, explain the pitfalls and reinforce the message regularly to reduce the risk of someone making a forgetful blunder that costs the organisation dearly.

It is also a good idea to have a crisis communication plan in place to ensure as far as possible that you can damp down the fire before it gets completely out of control.

At the same time, the individuals who make up that organisation also have a responsibility to post sensibly. If you have to think too long and hard: “Is what I’m about to publish appropriate or not?” you have your answer. In the context of the reputational cost you could inflict on your company, it is definitely better to be safe than sorry.

And yet… we all see on a daily basis evidence that social media is, and will remain, a canvas on which people can create the most fantastic patterns to surprise, entertain and delight their audiences. It is a creative tightrope – but if you can walk it, the rewards can be spectacular. 

If you want to know more, or to enlist the help of a professional copywriter and communications consultant to ensure your social media postings perform the function for which they were designed, please get in touch.