Social media, our voice, and the power to destroy
Jan 30th
The ability for all of us to publish on the social web — to have a voice — is among the most profound sociological, economic, and political developments of our lifetime. It gives us the power to elevate a little boy from Canada to an international singing superstar or to unite a group of people to tear down a dictatorship.
This democratization of power is the central theme of my new book, Return On Influence. This new power is breathtaking and beautiful. It is inspirational and revolutionary. And, it can be deadly.
We have all seen how social media can be used to bully and destroy. A few months ago on {grow} Leslie Lewis told the story of how her career was destroyed by a social media stalker. A year ago, a student at Rutgers (where I teach) killed himself after Internet humiliation.
Last week, I was also in a position to use social media power to destroy.
My wife had been admitted to a local hospital for a routine procedure. We experienced the usual delays and administrative foul-ups (had wrong name on her bracelet!) that we have come to expect from the medical profession but nothing prepared me for the horror I was about to experience.
When I was called to her recovery room (where she was still asleep), I could not believe my eyes. The room was filthy. The trash can was filled with tubes and debris from another patient’s procedure. There was trash all over the floor — paper, a used drinking straw, and pieces of some strange green organic material. Worst of all, there were drops of blood (not hers!) across the floor. I was disgusted and outraged. These were like the conditions I have heard about from missionary doctors working in a Third World country.
I took out my phone and took both pictures and video to document the mess … with my wife sleeping peacefully in the middle of it. Nobody would believe this.
I finally was able to flag down an attendant and angrily pointed out the problem. Her response was “Oh … I didn’t see that.”
Perhaps you could overlook a clear drinking straw on a white floor, but certainly not bright red blood drops or a trash can overflowing with used plastic tubes.
When the surgeon came in, I explained how repulsed I was … and I was still feeling ill about the unsanitary conditions even after the blood was wiped up (with a wet paper towel). He said that he would report it and that I would be getting a call from the hospital administration.
Twenty-four hours later I had not received a call and I was still seething. My adrenaline was saying “post the video.” Instead, I posted a query on Facebook and asked the world what they would do. The recommendations ranged from “keep it in-house” to “get the media involved.”
I called the patient advocate and reached a voice recording, notifying me that she was only available during certain business hours. I also tried to leave a request through the hospital website but the form was broken and I just got an error message.
Later that day, I received a return call from the patient advocate. She was professional and apologetic and said she would investigate the situation.
Two days after this discussion, my wife got a call of apology from the head of the department and a letter from the patient advocate. And that’s how it stands.
This episode represented the first time in my life that I had a “social media voice” go off in my head … “DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM? I HAVE A VOICE!” I knew that I could have humiliated this hospital on the evening news … maybe even caused an investigation of some kind. Perhaps I should have.
But whether you agree with my decision or not, I hope you will consider this advice: If you ever get into a situation where you can use your social media power to destroy, don’t let adrenaline make the decision for you. That’s how people are getting hurt and humiliated these days.
When I let the adrenaline subside, I thought about the situation and realized that if I went public with this, the most likely outcome would be that some hourly-wage attendant would lose her job. I would probably be hurting a family more than a hospital. That is not what I’m about. That was not the right decision for me.
Every day I see destruction, hate, and viciousness on the web from people who can’t keep their adrenaline in check. The social web is a place of stunning beauty and terrible darkness … just like the human race I suppose.
I’ll open myself and my actions to public scrutiny because this is an important topic we are all likely to face at some point. Did I do enough as a civic duty in this case? What would you do if you were in a position to use social media to destroy?
Learning From Big Social Media Blunders
Jan 18th
By Stanford Smith, Contributing {grow} Columnist
Advertising Age just published its Book of Ten’s issue. In it they chronicle this year’s Top 10 Social Media Blunders. The list is entertaining and disheartening. Entertaining because of the shenanigans and plain idiotic social media mistakes committed by some very smart people. Disheartening because nervous businesses considering social media may unduly focus on the blunders and ignore the benefits.
Today, I’ll take a moment to speculate “why” the blunders happened and how businesses can learn from their less fortunate brethren’s mistakes.
Dropping the “F” Bomb
The Blunder: New Media Strategies employee mistakenly skewers Detroit drivers from the @ChryslerAutos twitter account. Although the tweet was caught and deleted within minutes, the damage to a career and a high-prestige social media account was done. New Media Strategies fired the employee and Chrysler Fired New Media Strategies.
Why It Happened: The scuttlebutt is that this employee managed his personal and client accounts with the same Twitter management tool. A small lapse in attention easily took his personal tweet and broadcasted it to the world.
Suggestion:
Set a firm policy that personal tweeting should not happen from a company sponsored and administered tool like Hootsuite. Since a mis-tweet could be dire, companies should also consider restricting tweeting from company computers.
Kenneth Cole and the Arab Spring
The Blunder: Kenneth Cole jumped on the Arab Spring news story with a less than elegant tweet:
“Millions are in uproar in #Cairo, Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online”
Why It Happened: Creativity got in the way of common sense. Politics, religion, and um… revolution are incendiary topic that should be handled with care.
Suggestion:
The same conversation rules that work at the bar and family dinners should be applied here. Provocative advertising can get you attention but ultimately it can backfire. Since the risk is often disproportionate to the benefit, it’s better to dig a little deeper for a social play that has more legs and less risk.
Qantas and #QantasLuxury
The Blunder: Bad luck and horrible timing led to the launch of Twitter Contest that asked followers to detail their dream luxury in flight experience. The problem was that the day before union talks had broken down and customers were still upset about a fleet shutdown that disrupted travel plans for thousands.
Why It Happened:
Operations, Customer Service, Marketing, and Social Media weren’t talking. A open-eyed review of social sentiment and actual conversations would have given the social team a heads-up that they were poking a hornet’s nest.
Suggestion:
Invest in a social media monitoring tool that gives real-time and accurate reports on what your community is saying about your brand. Any major social initiative should have a go, no-go, checkoff that polls customer service and operation.
A Face Full of Tomato Sauce
The Blunder: The folks at Ragu stepped in it when they tried to joke about dads lack of kitchen expertise. Ragu’s mistake was creating a video with moms spouting off about their kitchen-illiterate husbands. Not-funny and the Dads blogged en-masse about Ragu’s faux-pas.
Why It Happened: The problem is that Ragu missed a growing movement of dads who are kitchen, diaper, laundry, and bed-time story ninjas. The social web is packed with these interest and lifestyle based interest groups. A simple search would have uncovered the CC Chapman’s of the world and averted the PR misstep.
Suggestion:
Use social networks to monitor the pulse of your customers. A simple poll on Facebook can offer clues to how a marketing campaign, new product launch or price change could be perceived. Which leads to…
Netflix and Qwikster
The Blunder: Netflix decided to raise its prices without talking to their customers first. Next they confused everyone by spinning off their DVD rental into another brand, Qwikster, but failed to secure the Twitter username @Qwikster. The Twitter handle was scooped up by a loser who had a talent for bashing Netflix. The cost of this particular blunder was 800,000 lost subscribers or $192 million in $20/month subscriber fees.
Why It Happened:
Netflix is a savvy online player. On this one they forgot that they had an open channel to poll their most fanatic subscribers. Simply asking them how they would react to the changes would have revealed the gaping holes in their strategy. Ignoring these people created a firestorm that couldn’t be contained.
Suggestion:
Remember that “dialogue” is a competitive weapon. Facebook, Twitter are free to use and incredibly valuable for gathering opinons and soliciting support for company initiatives. It’s a good idea to add “social focus groups” to the traditional customer research done before the roll-out of any new product or service.
5 More Examples
Advertising Age did a terrific job at compiling and profiling these blunders. Read 5 more here.
I’m curious about your perspective on what went wrong with Quantas, Ragu, Netflix, Kenneth Cole, and New Media Strategies. Talk to me in the comments below.
Contributing Columnist Stanford Smith obsesses about how to get passionate people’s blogs noticed and promoted at Pushing Social, except when he’s chasing large mouth bass!
Why Social Media Blogging is Corrupt
Mar 16th
I met a young blogger the other day who reported to me that one of his posts (attributed) had been used in the promotional client newsletter of one of the A-List bloggers, in fact probably the most famous blogger around. He was thrilled and hopeful that this fella’s vast audience might find their way to his own blog.
“Did he ask you if he could use your content?” I asked.
“No,” the young man replied.
“So a fellow blogger — and technically your direct competitor — stole your original content to use in marketing materials aimed at promoting his company and increasing his own sales?”
“Yes, I guess so,” he said with decidely less enthusiasm.
“Has he had any contact with you at all?”
“No.”
“Do you think he even knows who you are?”
“I don’t think so.”
This really happened and I see these scenarios played out almost daily.
I have been in the corporate world a long time and I have to tell you, in any business other than blogging, what happened in this situation would probably result in a court case. I didn’t name names because the practice illustrated here is commonplace among social media bloggers.
Now I know there are certain potential benefits of exposure through the article link that can help this young blogger. But the senior blogger in question should know better and be more professional than simply using another writer’s original work without even the courtesy of asking for permission to re-print.
What is it about the social web that makes people think they have the right to use the work of others without even a common “please” or “thank you?” — let alone (gasp) COMPENSATING us for our work? This is simply arrogance and greed that is out of control. They are giving their fellow professionals less credit than they would give to a $2 stock photo.
The sad part is, I think the entire social web is becoming numb to the fact that this whole system is corrupt.
It reminds me of the time I visited a developing country … a nation run by thugs. The citizens had been immersed in corruption for so long, they had forgotten what free enterprise was supposed to be like. The children looked up to and emulated the crooks because they didn’t know any other way.
A few weeks ago I wrote about the broken economics of blogging. Business “professionals” stealing content for their personal gain is another symptom of a lack of leadership in this space. It’s like some of these bloggers are school yard bullies picking though everybody’s lunch instead of acting like leaders who should be inspiring, mentoring and creating an inclusive business model.
I don’t have any problem with a news feed aggregating content and I’ve never refused somebody’s request to use my content for their own private newsletter. But it seems like reasonable business professionals would have the courtesy and good sense to at least ASK to use a writer’s work before publishing it as valued-added content for their customers. The social web has been overrun with an entitlement mentality that views any copywritten, original content as something that can be freely re-purposed for private commercial gain.
What’s your take on this? Aren’t you getting fed up with these bullying business practices … or are you comfortably numb?
Did Mashable cross a line?
Jun 29th
Yesterday, something happened on Mashable which illustrates one of the biggest threats to the social web, to business, and maybe even democracy. I’m really interested to see what you have to say about this incident. Let’s start with the lead paragraph from their post:
The Italian Windows website “Windowsette” somehow managed to get a hold of a super-secret, highly confidential PowerPoint presentation outlining many of Microsoft’s goals and plans for Windows 8. Apparently this sensitive data (complete with UNDER NDA watermarks) was just found sitting around the Internet.
If you haven’t been around the corporate world, NDA stands for “non-disclosure agreement.” This means that whoever had these slides had signed a legal document to keep them secret.
The Windowsette site said it learned of this leak from “Andrea Martinelli.” I have no idea who that is but it seems unlikely she just found secret internal Microsoft documents “sitting around the Internet.”
So here are the questions I have for you:
- Mashable has become the journal of record for the social web. Maybe they’ve been trained as journalists, maybe they’re not. Does that make a difference?
- Is it ethical for them to publish a “super-secret, highly confidential” internal document that could be extremely damaging to Microsoft?
- Is it responsible to report on a document whose source was a single associate of an obscure website in Italy? How can we even know these slides are real? Isn’t it easy to create official-looking PowerPoint slides?
- The Mashable post was tweeted almost 1,000 times and included in about 500 Facebook sites. For many people, this article has become “the news.” What are the implications when non-journalists create the news?
I’ll tip my hand here and say that my undergrad was in journalism and I believe this institution is essential to democracy. What’s going on in most blogs today is not journalism. Usually that’s OK. But with the dramatic decline of the traditional press, whatever we have left on blogs is going to become our de facto news of record. Like Mashable.
In the end, this incident will have a shelf life of about one day and it’s easy to let a big company like Microsoft be our target. But what if this unsubstantiated piece of news was about your secret new product development? Your company? Your congressman? A terrorist threat in your community?
What if it was about you?
Subscribe
Welcome to {grow}
You’re in marketing for one reason: Grow.
Grow your company, reputation, customers, impact, profits. Grow yourself. This is a community that will help. It will stretch your mind, connect you to fascinating people, and provide some fun along the way. I am so glad you’re here.
-Mark SchaeferFollow Mark
Groups We Believe In
Legal implications