The Olympics is now coming to a close and social media has played a huge role in a partaking athlete’s brand protection. A great video I found that was shared by Mashable shows spectators giving their views on Social Media and Olympic Athletes, with one quite rightly saying “Everything is hitting Twitter before it hits the news”.
With Usain Bolt’s twitter following increasing by over 300,000 from the beginning of the Olympics to this date, he has not only protected himself and his brand, but he has also gained a lot of support. Why? Because people like him.
For your business to have a successful Social Media presence, people need to like what you do. This isn’t to say you won’t receive negative comments however; you need to deal with this in the right way. British Diver Tom Daley is a prime example of this. After receiving malicious tweets from one of his followers, he reported this to the police who then arrested the culprit.
Another example is glass repair company Auto Glass. I noticed on one of my colleagues twitter timeline that there were a lot of negative comments towards this company. After reading through the conversation between Auto Glass and my colleague, I then realised where they had gone wrong. Rather than actually apologising from the beginning, they spent around four tweets trying to justify their unacceptable service. In the end however, Auto Glass called my colleague and offered a full refund on the repair for the inconvenience. Once something is out in Social Media, it cannot be taken back. Regardless of the end result, this case will have damaged the reputation of Auto Glass as it was not dealt with in a swift manner.
It has been suggested that only 31% of Social Media complaints actually receive a response. In my eyes, this is not good enough. As soon as you see a negative comment about yourself or your brand you need to address it straight away. If you are struggling to monitor the chatter around your business in Social Media, you should use Social Mention Alerts.
To make sure that I protect my Business Gloople and my brand Warren Knight I use various tools. Along with Social Mention, I also use Google Alerts and specifically for Twitter; Twilert.
Protecting your brand is crucial, especially on Social Media where freedom of speech can damage a business’s reputation.
I would love to hear about your good, or bad experiences with companies that operate on Social Media.
Hi Warren, great blog and thanks for suggesting to reply to negative comments straight away. This can sometimes be forgotten!
It is so important to address the negative comments straight away as it can really affect your brands identity.