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No. There’s no TGIF for your Social Media Monitoring team. It’s ON DUTY, 24/7, 365. That all the time, all of the time folks. This is one of the lessons learned from last months cyber activism attack on Nestlé’s Facebook page.
To summarize; Greenpeace took issue with Nestlé’s use of palm-oil as a key ingredient in many of its products, among others, the well known Kit Kat chocolate bar (Have A Break, Have A Kit Kat). The need for cheep palm oil drives deforestation and destroys carbon rich landscapes. Specifically, burning of rain-forests and peatlands to clear land for palm oil production releases significant amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere while disrupting wildlife habitats.
Enter the Greenpeace viral video campaign: A 60 second video clip is posted to YouTube showed an office worker having a Kit Kat break. Opening the chocolate wrapper, he finds an orang-utan finger inside. Message; give the orang-utan a break, stop Nestlé buying palm oil from companies that destroy the rainforests.
Nestlé’s response? Notifying YouTube that the visual identity of their brand had been infringed by Greenpeace. Effect: The video is taken down and supporters of Greenpeace feel censored. Next, they upload the video to other social media sharing sites. What’s more, rather than being discussed on blogs, activists now move the debate on Nestlé’s reponse to their own Facebook page. But wait, its Friday! There are places to go, things to do, people to meet… for Nestlé’s social media monitoring team.
Meanwhile angry comments flooded the Nestlé Facebook page. Response to criticism was slow, and when it came, it was reactive, focusing on defining rules for the discussion participants, rather than addressing the issues raised. The forum participants only got more agitated and soon enough, the discussion moved beyond the Greenpeace activists community, attracting mainstream and environmentally conscious Facebook users.
Lesson; When negative reactions surface, your social media monitoring team has to catch it. A wait and see attitude will only leave you to respond with reactions and that’s no way to show initiative. Early on in this controversy Nestlé did for example announce that it was ending its relationship with the palm oil supplier in question. However stuck with an seemingly inexperienced (and unprofessional) social media team, Nestlé got caught in a reactive response pattern, letting this announcement drift by without barely making a dent in the discussion boards.
Conclusion; If you encourage people to interact with your company through social media, you have to be there and be prepared to respond when the s#*t hits the fan… Social media is a two way street, so you can’t choose just to include the positive and sensor the negative. AND; There’s no TGIF for a social media team with a job to do. Social media monitoring tools were created for a reason, do not ignore them just because there’s a weekend coming up…
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