We’re now quite used to getting end of the year round-ups of social media faux pas – and they serve a worthy purpose, providing object lessons in what not to do, as well as a bit of gentle schadenfraude, which is never a bad thing…
Here at Canverse we’ve decided not to wait till the year-end to trawl across the business social media landscape to find you likely candidates to be bestowed with the ignominious title of social media ‘fail of the month’.
January’s prime candidate has to be HMV. We tweeted about this very story when it broke. But it got us thinking there was more to say about it.
Already suffering the indignity of its near demise from the high street, Britain’s once most popular music retailer began sacking staff on January 31, with the minimum of notice. 190 members of staff were made redundant and one ex-staffer likened it to the “mass execution, of loyal employees who love the brand.”
How do we know? Well, because the staff in question told us – us and anyone else trawling Twitter (then soon, pretty much everywhere on the web), that is.
Like a social media mutiny on the sinking good ship HMV, desperate staffers managed to commandeer the firm’s official Twitter account and began broadcasting a minute-by-minute account of dismissals.
The actual tweets have since been deleted from Twitter, but screen grabs were published beforehand here among other media outlets.
The only conclusion to be drawn from a business point of view is that in the midst of the chaos visited upon HMV and its subsequent fight for survival over the last quarter, the former high street giant did not consider its social media channel to be one of its most important assets – until it was taken over by a rebel crew.
Many a successful military coup d’etat began with a similar takeover of the state broadcasting service.
While HMV’s fail appears marginally less extreme in comparison, there’s a lesson in there for all businesses: make sure you have a steadfast, legally binding social media policy running through your communications strategy (outlining who can say what on your company’s behalf and when) and stick to it.
And communicate very clearly what a breach of that policy will mean for any flouters.
If HMV survives it corporate woes to return to the retail world in some guise, what’s the wager it’ll think differently about the power of social media next time time around?