Case Study: Brands Winning Social Media

Disclaimer: for those thinking this has been staged, it wasn’t! I am indeed a long term name.com customer but apart from that, I am not even affiliated with them, let alone have any say in the way they run their social media 🙂

Lessons to learn for brands from this (almost real-time) case study?

• Social media is a very real power. People will be talking about you on social media. They will be saying both good and bad things. The only way you can control this conversation is by watching closely and taking part as an equal.
• If you’re only using social media to make official announcements about yourself you’re doing it wrong. Social media is not a press release.
• If you view social media as a sales channel only you’re doing it wrong. As the above proves, there is an opportunity for generating sales via social media – but that opportunity comes as a result of building trust and a positive image via genuine engagement with your existing and potential customers.
• If the person(s) managing social media in your company is detached from the company and its spirit, hardly anything good can come out of it – examples have been plentiful over the last few years.
• But how you run your social media accounts is probably a close reflection of how you run your company, whether you care about your customers, whether your business has a healthy foundation. If there is a conflict inside your company and the social media person is not happy about their job, or you have double standards and they are forced to lie to people over social media channels, nothing good will come out of it. Sooner or later, it will explode (again, examples have been plentiful).
• If you ignore social media you’re doing it wrong. Infact, you’re losing by default.
• Everybody makes mistakes. No matter if you’re big or small. Admit your mistakes, apologise, maybe even make fun of yourselves. In any case, act like a human being talking to another human being, not like a jerk.