Social Media Gaffe? Here’s How to Handle It

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012

We all make mistakes. This is obviously true. Yet most of our mistakes are not seen by thousands of people ready to critique your every move… unless you’re handling a brand’s social media profiles. Then you’re in trouble. Any mistake you make can end in negative comments, a bruised ego, and possibly an updated resume. This is especially true with any mistake-posts with content inaccuracies, inappropriateness, wrong-account obviousness, or even bad language.

However when looking at recent social media mistakes and their respective responses, I learned an important lesson in social media – mistakes happen, and that’s okay.

I mean, think about it. Social media is just a bunch of people connecting with one another. No matter if it’s a company account, school account, building account, fake celebrity account, etc., there is always a human driving these social media interactions. Social media is essentially human nature in digital form. Just as you see love, humor, camaraderie, hate, and accomplishment, you see mistakes.

So if you’re a company or brand that just made a social media mistake, don’t worry about it! There are certain things you can do to make up for the mistake and smooth things over with your followers. In short, do the same things you would do if you made a mistake in the physical world:

Own Up

Take a lesson from Major League Baseball (I’m serious) and their recent steroid scandal from a few years back. As we all know at this point, a whole bunch of people did steroids in the early 2000’s. A lot of home runs were hit and a lot of biceps were flexed. However, through recent developments, some steroid users have been all but forgiven while other users are still looked upon as villains to the game. Why? Because the players who owned up (i.e. Andy Petite) are seen as human beings and treated with respect, while players who still deny it to this day (i.e. Barry Bonds) are seen as something even worse… phonies who lied to fans.

I could also use an example of a certain congressman whose last name rhymes with beaner. But I will refrain.

All in all, the lesson here is that when a mistake is made be sure to own up immediately and apologize. I guarantee you that if you do this, you will have a much easier time earning forgiveness from your followers.

Make light of the situation

I saw a tweet-mistake awhile ago that was handled perfectly. The Smithsonian Museum’s twitter account accidentally double posted (seen as quite the amateur move to some) in the middle of the day. Soon after they sent out this tweet.

Not only did I forgive them for the slight annoyance, I also enjoyed the little chuckle I got out of it. As a follower, I felt even more connected to their social media efforts. Well played museum peeps!

Use the Attention for Good

You can even allow your mistake to help others. Take the Red Cross’s #gettngslizzered mistake from a little while back as a great example. The person behind their twitter account accidentally sent out this tweet to 268,000 people:

BIG mistake! A terrible twitter mishap for one of the most prestigious organizations in the world. I cannot even fathom what was going through the mind of the person who sent out this tweet. If it was me, I might’ve considered changing my name to Svetlana Gorbev and becoming an aspiring gymnastics coach from Slovenia.

But through all the chaos came great clarity in handling this unfortunate situation. The Red Cross pulled off the ultimate combo – owning up to the mistake with a touch of humor!

Twitter nation loved the response. So much so that a blood drive and fundraiser was started using the hashtag #gettngslizzered and the beer company mentioned , Dogfish Head, even decided to get involved!

I love happy endings.

Conclusion

Showing human traits in your social media efforts is always a good idea. This is especially true when any mistake are made as people can relate to mistakes very easily. As long as the mistake reaction is handled correctly by the guilty tweeters, everything will be perfectly fine and your fans will simply laugh and move on down the twitter/facebook stream. That is, unless you’re this guy:

Ouch. No comment about this one.

The Best Approach To a Successful Blogger Outreach Campaign

Tuesday, January 17th, 2012

Brands and agencies have their blogger outreach approach all wrong. I have been on both ends of the spectrum (Both as a blogger and an agency guy) and I know this to be a fact. They rarely put in the research, time and thoughtfulness necessary in developing a positive blogger outreach campaign. So much so that it makes me cringe, and it probably even makes the bloggers themselves bang on their table in annoyance, resulting in milk being spilled all over their desks…

and believe me, spilling milk on your desk is never fun. Never.

Above all else, a successful outreach program takes lots of patience and engagement. It takes time. Here is what I believe to be the best approach to blogger outreach.

First Step: Research

You have to research and target the blogs that are relevant to your business and its overall mission. Poorly targeted outreach campaigns are a huge waste of time for everyone involved. Additionally, it’s important to research the details of blogs – topics of content, content type, interactions, specific posts, stories, etc – because it’s a great way to get the conversation going with the blogger… which is why I believe it’s worth spending more time researching a smaller number of blogs more thoroughly, rather than going for a larger list of bloggers who are unlikely to be interested.

Here are four great websites to start your blogger search.

Alltop – Categorizes all the top blogs on the web based on several categories
Google Blogsearch – Provides relevant search results from millions of feed-enabled blogs
Twitter Search – Find bloggers by what they tweet about.
Postrank Topics – Search by topic.

Step 2: Engage

Once you have a solid list of blogs, and are confident in their respective communities, it is now time to engage. This will take time but it will go a long way to give your outreach program its best chance at success.

Now what I mean when I say ‘engage,” is that it is now time to read the content of the targeted blogs and join the respective communities’ conversations as much as possible. This can be done in many ways – blog post comments, Facebook comments, Facebook likes, twitter mentions, retweets, etc. – anything that shows you are interested in your targeted bloggers’ content. This will not only allow the blogger to become familiar with you (trust me, bloggers see everything when it comes to their content and followers) but will also instill trust in them, which will come in handy when you reach out to the blogger. To successfully interact, it’s important to like/follow all of bloggers’ social media profiles and stay current with recent posts. The best way I have found to stay on top of new postings is to set up a Google Reader of all the targeted blogs, and check the reader each day to see if new posts have been published.

Step 3: Outreach

*I would recommend that you consistently engage with your targeted bloggers for a month before reaching out to them. This will give them time to become familiar and comfortable with you and/or your company.

When you’re ready to begin your outreach to the bloggers, make sure to make the initial email personable, honest, and as short as possible. It’s important to make the blogger know that the email was designed just for them. While this particular example is a very cool way to reach out to bloggers, as long as you mention certain content (posts, pictures, conversations on the blog, etc.) that are relevant to your company, you should be just fine… assuming the blogger already knows you interact with their respective site.

While some believe it’s best to immediately pitch the blogger with your incentives and partnership ideas in the initial email outreach, I have found it best to do so in your second, follow up email. I think the first email should be short and to the point (about 5-7 sentences), leaving out the details, with the purpose of:

Introducing yourself and your activity to the blog
Bringing up specific posts or stories you enjoyed
Introducing your company and how it relates to the blog’s community
Making it known that you are interested in working with the blogger
Letting the blogger know that you can send more details, if they’re interested, in a follow-up email

The second email should get into the more nitty-gritty of your partnership ideas.

If your outreach attempt is successful, make sure to continue contacting the blogger on a consistent basis via email or social media interactions. Even if you don’t have an incentive or plan of action, it’s still good to reach out to them consistently so that they don’t forget about you and the value your partnership is giving them/can provide them.

Here at FaceTime Strategy we like to take this approach with any blogger outreach campaign we execute. The results are clear. To make any significant impact with a blogger campaign, it takes time and patience to earn impactful relationships with influential bloggers.

How Not to Market to Jane

Tuesday, May 10th, 2011

AdMerica, the AAF’s national conference that’s basically the Mecca of all industry events, features a panel this year on marketing to women. Aptly titled, “We’re Not From Venus”, the AdMerica panel will feature reps from Martha Stewart, JCPenney and Hispanic-focused ad agency Cassanova Pendrill.

As women, we’re probably marketed to on an hourly basis. From the time we hit junior high to the time we hit our grave, the products we introduce into our daily lives are the end-result of billions of dollars in psychographic research and gender-specific marketing. Shifting age groups will eventually just require a shift in branding. From Lip Smackers to lipstick, lingerie to Spanx. Most likely, the same company that sold us our first tube of acne-fighting cream will also want to sell us our first tub of wrinkle cream.

(more…)

Top 10 Baby Boomer Myths

Monday, February 7th, 2011

Everybody knows baby boomers are wealthy and retiring early, right? Wrong, according to a new study from the AARP, whose Mark Kitchens visits TODAY to shatter those and other boomer myths.  Top 10 Baby Boomer Myths

Integrating Marketing Communications

Monday, November 1st, 2010

In the land of agency buzz words, ‘Integrated Marketing’ is king – but how many companies understand what it’s supposed to mean? In much the same way that many business executives consider the company logo to be the company brand, there is a great deal of confusion on the subject of how to actually “integrate” the marketing. To integrate marketing communications means designing a messaging campaign to be effective in multiple mediums and ideally promote each in a synergistic way so as to surround a consumer or prospect with your campaign when and where they are of a mind to engage with you.

An article in a magazine references your viral video that links the consumer to a microsite for additional information and a coupon that they redeem in-store where they see a mobile promotion linking them to your social network site and info on new products to try and perhaps an invitation to a local event, sponsored by your products.  

Integrating marketing communications can be difficult to do – it involves managing a number of different media channels, schedules, formats and platforms – but done right, the effect is a dramatic ‘omni-presence’ for your brand and message that can cut through the clutter of daily noise and feel like a personal, relevant experience for those minds, hearts and wallets you want to reach.

What IS Experiential Marketing

Friday, October 8th, 2010

When I first heard the term Experiential marketing, I was not impressed. Coming from a background of traditional advertising and direct marketing, I found the term to be presumptuous – isn’t all good advertising and marketing ‘experiential’ after all? Turns out, I was getting caught up in the symantics. Experiential marketing isn’t a practice meant to deny that all customer communications evoke an experience of some kind (whether that’s passively watching a TV commercial or opening a letter). XM (as it’s often referred to) is meant to denote marketing activities that leverage the aspect of in-person communication (ie, events, tradeshows, street ambassadors, on-premise sampling, etc). And as we evolve to an ever-more digital customer engagement model, Experiential marketing has an important role to play. XM helps personify a brand in ways an email simply can’t – it literally puts a “face with a name”, thus adding a very tactile relationship element to any brand campaign. Humans are tactile creatures by nature, we like to see, hear, touch and smell things – that’s why the demise of brick-and-mortar retail stores is grossly exaggerated – we like to handle a product before pulling out our hard earned cash to buy it. Clearly, there are exceptions (how can you ‘handle’’ a music track?), but for Consumer Packaged Goods, creating an event for consumers to experience the product is simply smart marketing strategy.