The business community is wringing its proverbial hands over social media. How do we harness it to market our products? What if we publish a blog or Facebook site and people say mean things about our products. HR is thinking about whether to allow employees to use social media at work. What if an employee disparages the company? What if an employee harasses another employee?
Yeah, what if.
What if an employee stands in Times Square holding a placard that says “Company X sucks”? What if an employee punches a coworker?
Social media tools are very powerful. They allow us (theoretically) to reach millions of people. (Though most Facebook posts, tweets, YouTube videos are seen by very few people because they aren’t interesting.) But yeah, they are powerful. But it’s not like they suddenly gave us the power to do mean things to other people, to speak negatively about the company, to harass coworkers.
People were always doing that. With other tools.
You just didn’t know about it.
So what do you prefer? The good ole days when employees were disparaging you and you didn’t know about it and therefore couldn’t do anything about it, or the social media world where you get to see what’s going on and address the feedback?
Don’t you think it’s a little weird to prefer not knowing?
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Intriguing post… Are you implying that many companies and the people involved would prefer not to know about negative comments posed against them?
If so, I would argue that they do want this feedback. They desperately want this feedback. In fact, they pay research companies a lot of money for precisely this type of feedback.
I think the “proverbial hand-wringing” over social media lies in the fact that companies have far less control over what is said about their brands now that consumers have such a powerful voice. However, it’s not that they don’t want to know what these people have to say, it’s just that they don’t want EVERYONE ELSE to know. They just don’t want other consumers and prospective customers to be exposed to negative slander surrounding their brands…. and for good reason…
Great comment! Thanks.
I’m not really sure that companies want this open feedback. Their behavior suggests otherwise. They don’t really listen to social media and they don’t tend to do anything much about it when they do hear. Yes, companies spend a lot on market research. But, like everything else they do, it’s all about their control. They get answers to questions that they ask. The questions are often based on all sorts of bad assumptions or, they’re just not designed to elicit answers that don’t fit their world view. Having sat in many focus groups, having read reams of market research data, I am quite confident that market research is nothing but an exercise in confirming the company’s perspective.
But social media? Ah, that is an entirely different matter. There, consumers have the power. They can say whatever they want. Unlike a focus group or a quant study, they are not there for the company. They are there for themselves. They speak when they have something they want to say. It’s about their agenda not the company’s. This is actually the way the world has always worked. There was a brief blip in history when companies could spout bullshit on TV and poorly informed yokels would sop it up. Those days are coming to an end. And human nature is reasserting itself.
This can be a very good thing if companies stop trying to fight it. It’s a good thing that people are out there sharing their opinions and discussing brands. Now companies get real feedback. Not only from a solitary consumer but from communities that kick issues and feedback around amongst themselves. Companies can participate in these conversations. They can add value to the conversations. Like any human conversation, if the company is wrong it has an opportunity to apologize and fix its behavior. Consumers do not expect perfection. They expect humanity. The problem is that companies – and yes, often the people that run them – are not human. They do not give a shit about anything but themselves. They do not want to address negative feedback. That’s hard work. The payback is uncertain. It’s messy. They just want to push whatever crap they’re trying to sell and make their number.
If that’s your agenda, the existence of social media is a nightmare. But if you want to make, market and sell awesome products then social media are your best friend.
I wholeheartedly agree with most of what you said, but I simply have a more positive take on companies. Maybe I’m Pollyanna’s long lost cousin… Maybe I’ve just been lucky enough to work for companies with good people who actually care…
In any case, a lot of market research now scans social media to determine both positively and negatively charged share of brand buzz from Twitter, Facebook, blogs, forums, etc. Crawlers are set up to identify the brand name and verbatims are amassed and coded to see what people are actually saying.
Furthermore, there are many examples of brands listening, and even responding, to customers’ comments gleaned from such online social sources. Tropicana responded to complaints about their 2009 repackaging and actually reverted back to their original package design because of this feedback. Just last month, when somebody tweeted “AAAHHHH Im outta wheat thins… Mi life is officially over!”, Nabisco drove to her house with a lifetime supply of the product.
I think some brands have ears, and even hearts, after all.
I agree with you that some companies do listen. I don’t want to make this an all or nothing discussion. But I think it is more true to say that most companies are still living in their own echo chamber than to say that most companies truly listen and engage with their consumers.
The Nabisco story is a PR stunt. I think it’s probably a good one. But engaging with your consumers is not, primarily, about giving them free stuff. That’s not very smart business. It’s not even very clever marketing. Clever marketing is about making consumers actually want to pay for your product. What might have been more appropriate is for Nabisco to help the consumer figure out how to not run out in the future: via auto-replenishment, through an app or widget that would remind him or her to go to the store, with a carton that could sense when it was low and alert the consumer…
As for Tropicana: Did they listen to social media buzz or did they listen to their bottom line?
Check out this article.
Either way, I’m glad some companies and doing this at all. But I suspect if you look at their marketing resources you will find they are still overwhelmingly deployed towards efforts that talk at consumers not with consumers.
BTW, I do not agree that brands have ears or hearts. Some people do. Brands do not. There are plenty of people who care at many companies. This has never been the problem. The problem, in my opinion, is that the machinery of large organizations is designed to produce short-term profits, not innovation or greatness.
I hope and expect this will change. People are starting to demand it.
Thank you for your continued engagement in this conversation!
So we agree that some brands do listen and, of those, some do react. Of course, some still don’t. As social media is relatively new, there are bound to be laggards that haven’t yet caught on.
As for my anthropomorphic use of the words “ears” and “hearts”, this was mere metaphor used to denote listening and caring.
So it seems our viewpoints have somewhat converged…
I eagerly await the next instance in which you write a post averring a thesis with which I disagree. (I hope you take my affinity for argumentation not as belligerence but rather as a testament to the thought-provoking nature of your blog.)
Thanks so much! I enjoy and share your affinity for argumentation. Somewhere along the line, people lost the distinction between the conflict of ideas and the conflict of people. I love the former. I dislike the latter. So keep it coming!