Twitter birds

Here at Network Marketing Towers we know Twitter is a great way to communicate with candidates, clients and generally people in the outside world. We do our best to demonstrate that the company is approachable, current and friendly. However, it can be risky. What seems like a good idea within the cozy confines of the marketing department, office, or even on your couch can sometimes go array once they are released into the ‘twittersphere’ as Waitrose recently found out, almost to its cost! The supermarket invited users on the Twitter platform to complete the tweet “I shop at Waitrose because...” encouraging them to use the hashtag #WaitroseReasons. Unfortunately most replies were rather mocking and not the complimentary comments that the PR department were no doubt hoping for.

Quotes included: "I shop at Waitrose because, Harrods is just too much of a trek mid-week." And "I shop at Waitrose because it makes me feel important”. The tweets soon went viral with replies being re-tweeted hundreds of times. This is just one example of how conversations in social media are quickly taken over by the community. Companies can often do little more than observe and hope that the comments generated don’t create too much negative publicity. Waitrose dealt with it well and kept their reply simple and in good humour: "Thanks for all the genuine and funny #waitrosereasons tweets”. By reacting well they ensured that it became a funny rather than a negative story. You could of course take the view that there is no such thing as bad publicity and this campaign created a huge amount of buzz around the brand and column inches. What ever your view it demonstrates how vital it is to have a solid social media plan in place and that people responsible for your tweets understand how the community works. Be aware too that journalists use Twitter as a source of stories. Anything big on there will soon be talked about on more traditional channels too. Here at Network Marketing we'll be watching our p's and q's but if we transgress our usually strict twitter policies please do forgive us, after all, we are only human....