Wednesday

7 social media lessons from Nestle's Facebook missteps

Just wanted to share this post from Ragan.com's top 5 stories on social media.

In this case study Nestle doesn't get that they no longer own or control their brand.
Your brand now is the top 10 results in Google when your customer searches your company name or your product name.

The issue and online conversation was around Nestle using palm oil in its products and palm oil being linked to environmental harm. Nestle's response was to tell people not to post their logos.

One commenter sums it up: "It’s not OK for people to use altered versions of your logos but it’s OK for you to alter the face of Indonesian rainforests? Wow!"

In the post, Ragan.com provides 7 really good lessons that any professional communicator needs to know and ensure their executives or clients know.

To sum them up:
  • You need to listen and understand both the issue and the tools before jumping in.
  • It's a conversation and sharing of ideas with your clients, it's not one-way (push) like traditional advertising.
  • You need to give up control of the message and take the good with the bad. You're not going to please everyone and there will be bad feedback.
  • It will require time commitment and dedicated resources (people) to follow, listen and participate in the conversations.

1 comment:

Mangled said...

Reminds me of a bad move by Skittles a years or two ago. They decided to post a live Twitter feed onto their home page. The feed showed tweets that mentioned "skittles". What they ended up with was a lot of profanity and people cutting down the company (on their home page no less). I think the feed lasted less than a day. Gutsy move but a huge fail.