Last week @VodafoneUK had to deal with an embarrassing tweet incident. This prompted the Guardian to write a list of Top 5 Twitter gaffes. Having a look at the list we spotted only one of the five could’ve been prevented by moderation (The Telegraph’s #budget twitterfall), two resulted in actual fines for the tweeting offender (Footballer Darren Bent and Mark Cuban owner of the Dallas Cowboys), and one resulted in a reputation issue (Australian Cricketer Philip Hughes revealed he’d been dropped from the Ashes team before official announcements).
We recently conducted some research into social media concerns amongst blue chip brands which is soon to be released but a sneak peek indicated:
16% of brands surveyed think employee misuse poses the greatest risk to their brand from social media usage
An overwhelming 79% thought damage to their brand’s reputation is a bigger risk for their brand than an actual lawsuit
In general over half (51%) felt the risk to their brand in using external social media sites like Twitter and Facebook was Low
The Vodafone incident was unfortunate but not isolated. It’s obvious to say but all companies using social media should have an employee best practice and policy in place – in this case it’s been suggested that the breach resulted from an unattended PC logged in to the @vodafoneUK account.
In fact if there’s one learning from the incident it was how Vodafone dealt with the issue afterwards, they responded extremely well, but the multiple@ tweets to each and every person discussing the incident was probably a little overkill. But perhaps we should applaud they wanted to personally apologise to each and every customer?
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