Social Media: A Lesson Learned

March 15 2011, 9:22am

A few weeks ago we encountered our first social media crisis via Twitter and #sachat, a vibrant and active community of student affairs professionals on Twitter. The tweet, which was sent out from OrgSync’s main account and then retweeted by our employees, included the #sachat hashtag and linked to our testimonial video from Tom Murray. A total of 5 tweets were discovered in the #sachat community’s social stream, which caused many of its passionate and vocal members to acknowledge us and indicate a violation of the community’s guidelines (See tweet here). A feeling of intrusion cast over the community members as they repeatedly expressed their dislike of our “Twitter bombing.” The over step was an honest mistake and we sincerely apologize for our actions. However, we are glad #sachat members were quick to catch our attention and address the issue. The reason for such a reaction was because the community felt our tweet was product orientated rather than something that adds value to the community and its members. We chose to write this post to share with you the lessons learned from our actions in Twitter and share ways for you to prevent making a similar mistake in the future. Difference between bombing and sharing

As many of us know, social media is about sharing and engaging in conversation with people that make up your target market and those relevant to your brand. When starting to share information and spark conversations with relevant communities you shouldn’t bombard them with continuous tweets about your product. Although our intentions are to share and spark a dialogue, we sometimes lose track and can’t seem to help ourselves. Know the difference between “Twitter bombing” (a blatant intrusion into a social community) and sharing relevant information.

Employees shouldn’t retweet everything

After this incident, we started to analyze some of our employees Twitter accounts and soon realized that many of them created an account only to retweet everything from OrgSync’s Twitter stream. This method added clutter and noise to Twitter, instead of actually adding value. Allowing employees to use Twitter has its risk, however, having a clearly defined policy and guideline for how to contribute and act on social media, helps employees get a better understanding about how to effectively use these new mediums.

Research and lurk before you implement

Maybe the biggest mistake and pitfall during this event, was not doing enough research to understand how #sachat operates and what the guidelines of their community are. A mistake that I made was discovering these relevant communities without thoroughly examining each of their rules, community behaviors and objectives. When you first get started pursing relevant communities, do your homework and lurk before you start doing anything else.

Develop a social media policy

Policies for all different parts of a company are created, which means a social media one should be present. Proper methods of conduct online, response to mistakes and/or strategies for how to respond during a crisis need to be discussed by not only the marketing department but management as well. Thankfully we had a procedure for handling this incident and are working to develop a structured policy that everyone in the company can follow and refer to.

We obviously haven’t been the only company that has gone through a social media crisis, nor will we be the last. The best part about this experience is the fact that we were able to learn from this mistake, examine the situation, implement new processes and begin developing a better understanding of OrgSync’s social media strategy. Unfortunately, our excitement and passion for OrgSync was presented the wrong way to a community of student affairs professionals we absolutely admire. We hope you will take away some of the lessons we learned and become more prepared than we were. Again, we’d like to send out our deepest apologizes to the entire #sachat community.