Do this, not that…

A colleague of mine sent this to me recently regarding what some brands are doing with their efforts in social media.

“This post started to be written in my mind some weeks ago when Susan (@buzzedition) told the world that she was giving up on her HP for a Apple Macintosh. Incredibly, as far as I know, no computer brand or even Apple jumped on this business opportunity to offer Susan the best deal. She was ready to buy. She publicly announced that intention. She had credit card in hand. And no one came forward to say “Hey, I’ll sell you one and here’s why you should buy from me.” A few days later, I was exchanging a few tweets with UK’s PC Advisor editor that was preparing to write a review on smartphones. When I asked her if she had the new Nokia N900 on the list, she told me that she had contacted Nokia, they had promised to send her one N900 and never got back to her. I was (again) very surprised that no Nokia representative immediately jumped on this opportunity to make it right via Twitter. For those who aren’t familiar, “PC Advisor” ranks as the global number three tech media site for UK traffic.

Another example relates to the Flip camera.  My good friend, Shelly (@shellykramer) has complained, on a number of occasions that her beloved Flip camera unexpectedly quit working. She’s been a huge brand advocate for the Flip during the course of the past year, especially on Twitter. She’s talked about her love for the Flip cam and what a terrific addition it is for the “tool set” that  small business owners should have and should be using in their marketing efforts. The fact that Flip hasn’t been paying attention simply amazes me.  Kodak is paying attention. At the recent 140Conference in Los Angeles, they made sure to put one of their new Zi8 cameras squarely in Shelly’s hands.  Funny thing, she tweets about the Zi8 camera and publicly laments that it’s not as user friendly as her beloved Flip.

Both of these examples are clear cut cases of brands just not paying attention.  These women are both considered fairly influential, are thought-leaders and tremendously well-respected in the Twitterverse.  Their collective “reach” is huge. Yet neither of these brands are, apparently, doing much to monitor this space for brand mentions and are, most assuredly, missing opportunities to do just that.

In the meantime, Dell reported yesterday that it made $6.5 million that is directly attributable to Twitter promotions and operations alone. I’ll admit that $6.5 million is, for many companies, a drop in the bucket. But I know many companies who would gladly take that $6.5 million and laugh all the way to the bank – especially in light of the state of the global economy today (Fonseca, 2009).”

Brands forget that consumers a lot of the time have an emotional attachment to them. Social media allows consumers to voice that attachment. Good or bad. Also, social media can increase the accountability and responsibility of a brand. Not that brands have to listen to every word that consumers say but it’s important for them to learn from what they’re not doing, lacking, or failing at. Change isn’t the worst thing in the world.

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