The Advantages and Disadvantages of Facebook and Twitter

Facebook and Twitter look like they are here to stay. Like it or hate it, the sooner you understand it, the sooner you can make an educated decision on whether to use it for your business. As with anything there are advantages and disadvantages to using Facebook and Twitter and we’ve covered some below so please read on…

The good news is that Facebook and Twitter can help to build your brand, expand your client base and develop your great reputation! It can also be a very cost effective way of marketing your business and increasing your bottom line. However a disadvantage of the two is that you open your business up to the online public and expose yourself to all sorts of risk. You have to plan for a public who may be unhappy with your product or service, yet happy to tweet and leave negative comments on your Facebook page.

Fear not this can be controlled. The answer is not to never begin a Facebook page or Twitter account for your business; there are other risks with making that decision we will cover in a moment; it is to embrace the experience and turn it around. Really! Negative posts can be controlled, managed and turned into a positive experience for both your business and your customers.

Car company, Toyota is a great example.

Suffering public humiliation and considerable damage to their brand due to problems with one of their vehicle lines, (Washington Post - "After months of bad publicity involving cars that can accelerate out of control") Toyota was at a loss as to how to contain the situation. (As you know, the media don’t always print what we would like them to!) They then made the brave decision to use Facebook as the platform to engage their customers and do some damage control. Why would Toyota do this?  Using Facebook they now had a platform on which they could “tell their story”, in their own words, without the media hype. They could also engage with their customers globally and reduce the need for support or complaint lines where they answer the same questions repeatedly for 1.5 million people.

Their Facebook followers were all able to read and share Toyota’s answers in response to the malfunction collectively, in real time. Their customers were sated, as answers were immediate and solutions provided. By engaging their customers in this way, Toyota turned an impossible situation in to a positive situation and began to claw back their battered reputation.

Now had they not addressed the situation using Facebook, decided not to have a presence, to stay in the past and ignore Facebook and Twitter, the following may have happened…

If you don’t claim your name on Facebook and Twitter there is a real possibility that someone else will. You might say, so what? Well let us learn from another company’s mistake.

ExxonMobil experienced a huge learning curve when a member of the public, Janet, claimed their name on Twitter. Janet gathered followers and began tweeting to her hearts content, answering questions related to ExxonMobil and having a wonderful time. As you can imagine this posed a huge threat to ExxonMobil’s reputation, to say the least. Janet then proceeded to ignore any attempt to contact her from ExxonMobil. Long story short, it was a lengthy process to convince Janet to surrender the name to ExxonMobil and an extensive amount of damage control had to be instigated at who knows what cost.

Unfortunately this is not an isolated case, brand-jacking, as it is known, has happened to many well known companies. Even some politicians and personalities have had their name hijacked on Facebook and Twitter. However before you jump over to Facebook and Twitter to claim your name, you had better read on…

We don’t want to alarm you, however claiming your name is just the first step and it can open you up to all sorts of feedback from your uncensored public! Now you need to manage it. Harvey Norman, Vodafone and Pampers Nappies are great examples of social media jumping up to bite you as a result of poor management.

Each company decided to ignore comments posted and as a result the public had free reign to say what they liked about them and unfortunately in these cases it wasn’t positive.

Lets take a quick look at Harvey Norman. Literally thousands of angry comments were posted on their Facebook page and across Twitter, as a backlash to comments owner, Gerry Norman, had made on the news the previous evening. All were ignored by Harvey Norman. It steadily grew out of control with personal attacks on Mr Norman, curse words and finally people posting comparison prices. Here’s just one of the comments: “this Canon product costs $1349 at Harvey Norman but $698 from an Aussie online retailer with the same gst and duty as Harvey Norman.” Ouch!

It is bad enough that comments we not policed, however can you imagine what would have happened if someone else had claimed their name and started posting without their control?

I guess what we are trying to say is FACEBOOK and TWITTER are here to stay and you need to understand it and how to manage it in all situations. All of these companies, and lets face it, many other companies and businesses today, don’t understand the power that the online public has over their brand and reputation.

WAIT! Don’t let the above scare you off! We haven’t covered the advantages of Facebook and Twitter much yet?

Facebook have over 5 million members tipped to be 1 billion within months, Twitter over 200 million.

Australia has in excess of 9 million Facebookers and is growing fast. But wait, is that 9 million kids? Nope. The average Australian Facebooker is 35 years old! Guess where all your customers are? That’s right, on Facebook. Did you know the average Australian Facebooker spends a minimum of 8 hours a month on Facebook? That’s two hours a week, or half an hour a day, four days a week. So what if you could place your business in front of prospective clients, for half an hour a day, four days a week? As a marketer I’d stay that would be awesome!

Tried Facebook and Twitter and feel like you failed?

Many people feel like they’re failing miserably trying to market their business on Facebook and Twitter. So why are they failing? At a guess, they may not know the tricks, tips and techniques to Facebook and Twitter that lead to success. “You don’t know, what you don’t know.”

It’s a whole new ball game with different rules and winning strategies to learn and the sooner you wrap your head around it the better.  Fear not, it can be easy, you just need “the know how”.

Stay tuned for our next post or better give us a call and we’ll get you well on your way to mastering Facebook and Twitter for your business.

2011 - The Year of Facebook for Business

An awesome, exciting and very, very happy New Year 2011 to all our clients, old friends and new. We have been back at work considering the year ahead and have decided it is going to be an exciting one for all of us in marketing and that includes you. If you are in business, then you are in marketing.

We have been reviewing what we have achieved in 2010 and frankly it has been mind blowing. Social media is the direction marketing has been heading in for the past couple of years (if not more!) and we have been studying it intensely in 2010. It is an ever changing and exciting environment and we plan to continue to study social media in 2011 so we can pass on all that we know to our clients.

Facebook is the buzzword for 2011. If you are in business and don’t have a Facebook business page, then you really should look into it. It is a fantastic cost effective marketing tool, which many businesses haven’t considered yet, so why not be one of the first in your field and trump the competition?

As with anything marketing, there is a right and a wrong way to go about Facebook and the many social media tools which can help you grow your fan base. If you feel you need help pick up the phone or drop us an email.

In the meantime why don’t you “like” us on Facebook and see what we do.

http://www.facebook.com/emotemarketing

emote was awarded the opportunity to be part of history in 2009. We designed the livery for the first Royal Flying Doctor Service medical jet, in Australia.

Rio Tinto Life Flight Jet was an exciting project beginning with four designs which were put to employee vote within Rio Tinto and the Royal Flying Doctor Service. The above design won hands down in both companies.

We went through quite the learning curve. We had never designed livery for a jet and discovered many considerations to be contemplated. For instance, you should avoid painting a jet the colour red. It doesn’t weather well (fades) and the up keep is constant. White is also more cost effective as most planes start white in colour.

A special paint is used on certain areas of a jet so as not to throw off navigation equipment, however it is best to avoid painting these areas altogether if possible. Our information may not be completely correct, however it is what we were led to believe when liaising with jet operators involved in the project and we certainly didn’t want to be responsible for throwing the jet off course with a red stripe in the wrong place!

Fortunately the winning design proved both popular and viable and the Rio Tinto Life Flight Jet for the Royal Flying Doctor Service was successfully launched in Perth on the 14 October, 2009.