Kristy Bolsinger wrote a great post on her blog about a Seattle radio station’s foot-in-mouth Twitter incident. I’ve stolen (er, I mean “borrowed”) her screen capture and displayed it below:
Yikes. 107.7 isn’t extremist talk radio, it’s an alternative rock station. Regardless of the opinions of the person handling the Twitter account, he or she shouldn’t mix this sort of content into the corporate presence. When you think of 107.7, they probably don’t want you to associate them with politics or racism; rather, I’m guessing they’d prefer that you envision alternative rock, good music, fun DJs, etc.
Kristy mentioned in her post that the station blamed the tweet on a hack, which she doesn’t buy and I don’t either. Regardless of the excuse, however, there’s definitely a lesson to be learned from this situation. When managing your brand’s presence online, you need to separate your personal opinion from your company’s and instead adopt a corporate view/mentality. I don’t tweet about who I voted for from the 10e20 Twitter account because 10e20 isn’t about me and my political preferences, it’s about Internet marketing and business. Maybe the dude running the Nickelodeon Twitter account watched a really good porno the night before; that doesn’t mean he should tweet “Watched some epic pr0n last night!!1″ from the NickelodeonTV account. Just because Bob the Intern (or Jennifer the DJ, or whoever operates the account) has an opinion on racial profiling doesn’t mean he or she should share it from the 107.7 Twitter account s/he’s in charge of running — that sort of content should be reserved for one’s personal account, or, better yet, in-person interaction with family and friends (remember that? I vaguely do…).
It can be hard to make a corporate brand “personable” without being too opinionated, but that’s exactly what most brands need to do. Provide humanizing commentary (“We are really excited for the new year!”) and interact with your followers and fans, but avoid extreme opinions on sensitive subjects. That’s not to say a fashion brand can’t say that they think gaucho pants are horribly dated and that pink is this spring’s hot color. Opinions are great and encourage discussion and interaction when they’re relevant, appropriate and pertain to your industry, but when you’re managing your brand’s online reputation you need to know what not to say and when to stay out of a conversation. It’s better to stay silent and have no opinion than to butt in with a viewpoint that your customers may find surprising or offensive.
Obviously, there are exceptions to this rule. If your brand is successful because it’s controversial, having an extreme opinion is probably more favorable than being quiet. However, for most brands it’s wiser to pick vanilla at the Controversial Flavors store, as it’ll save them from a painful reputation management headache in the future.
3 Comments
Yup. Looks like a classic case of "let the newest, youngest, least business-experienced but web-savvy person do the social media stuff".
I just hope the tweeter gets a reality check, and not just a final paycheck or a new assignment.
Yeah, I wonder what happened with the account manager.
I will definitely be keeping an eye on their account in the near future. So far they've gone a few days since apology with only one tweet which was extremely relevant to their brand. I'd be willing to bet they will be quite careful for some time. It's a shame watching a brand fall victim to poorly placed responsibility. As I said in a tweet about it…You have an entire brand in your hands when tweeting under that account. That's a big deal. It needs to be treated as such.