Social Media in business terms is all about online reputation. Projecting a transparent, modern approachable image, with a fine balance of promotion and relevant content aimed at your target market.
You will never please people all of the time. As long as you are open and honest, making a genuine attempt to resolve issues if and when they do go wrong, then reputation wise, you can't go too far wrong. Or can you?
Unless of course you set up that Social Media page in a wave of optimistic enthusiasm, then for whatever reason, it doesn't go as well as expected, or you get side tracked onto something else.
All of a sudden, you now have a big hole in your social media and online reputation strategy, as that unloved and unmanaged page becomes the target of possible abuse.
An example of this is the Facebook page for Sheffield City Council, last updated on the 29th June 2012.
Maybe this is a classic large organisation example of a poor handover, or the marketing person left un-expectantly and no one checked to see what they were working on.
Either way, in their absence is a slowly rising sea of abuse, and a building stream of negative feedback.
.Gov sites such as Councils are easy targets, so it’s more important for them to be closely monitored, but it does show the risk of abandoning those half-hearted or unloved social media projects.
I guess the moral of the story is if you are going to give up on a social media outlet, or are no longer able to resource, then remove/delete/suspend it, and protect that valuable online commodity, reputation!
Anyone else have any Social Media horror stories or have any examples they can share?
