Mind the Gap when Hopping on the Social Media Bandwagon

Around the world, social media is the old ‘new’ buzzword.

Since sites like MySpace, Friendster and Bebo flourished years ago, several other sites have appeared to extend the concept of establishing and extending connections online.

Today, the most popular and fastest sites are Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Whether these particular sites maintain their dominance or not is irrelevant. Brands come and go but needs remain. Like search engines, social media has ceased to be merely a technological (software coding) innovation. The fundamental changes it has sparked have earned it the status of cultural phenomenon.

While the benefits of social media for personal relationships were immediately obvious, for a long time, it was fashionable to express doubts that they could serve any purpose beyond a fluffy type of engagement with what were vaguely called ‘communities’.

Once dismissed as being too focused on the youth demographic, they have since gained acceptance and respectability as important tools for all corporate communications.

But this realisation on the power of social media has not come by itself. In fact, time and again, the power of social media was imposed on companies by external forces.

In brief, social media builds on what I call the 3-Cs: content, conversation and community. Content starts conversations which builds communities. Sadly, many companies remain fixated on growing communities around their brands without dealing with the correct foundations of content and conversation.

Last week’s experience of Nestlé provides conclusive proof that social media has come of age. The world’s biggest food company faced a barrage of attacks and humiliation over the poor handling of comments on its Facebook fan page.

In response to a campaign started by Greenpeace, the environmental activist group, accusing Nestlé of using an unethical Indonesian supplier of palm oil whose forest-burning practices put the orangutan population at risk, several people expressed their displeasure on the fan page. Like other big corporations, Nestlé is a featured on the usual suspects list of big, bad companies whose very size and profits makes them ideal targets of such campaigns as if size and profitability were evil by themselves.

There is nothing new or surprising about such criticism. It comes with the territory and I believe companies in this category have adjusted to life on those terms.

What made this case unique was the unprofessional and sarcastic tone of Nestlé's fan page administrator to the comments. To observers, two things were instantly clear. First, that the administrator’s actions were largely unmonitored by senior officers in the communications department and second, it is a thin line between fans and fanning the hate.

Abdicating social network community management to poorly supervised underlings seems to have become the norm. Companies persist in equating social media with Gen-Y.

While employees in this age bracket may be keen about the medium, more often than not, they are unsuited for the role of responding responsibly to darts thrown at them. Passion is not enough. The Nestlé case should make companies revisit how they prioritize social media management on the corporate communications pecking order.

In addition, it is now clear that the era of social media as a cool toy is ending. It used to be that the simple act of joining a social network bestowed an aura of acceptance on companies. Bloggers celebrated such announcements and some sites listed names of companies with blogs, Facebook and Twitter accounts as benediction.

To these companies, just showing up on social media was eighty-percent of social media success. The remaining twenty-percent was about posting banal updates or other tepid messages.

Adoration not engagement seemed to have become the new goal of social media participation for companies. Well, this happy state was unnatural. It was too good to last. Companies will now have to learn, just as Nestlé has, that social media is serious business. The era of social media as lovefest is history.

In Nigeria, a few companies have joined the social media bandwagon. The list includes Bank PHB, GT Bank, Skye Bank and UBA Group, Starcomms and Arik Air. As important as the communities these companies expect to build, they cannot fail to pay attention to the need for a clear strategy on the terms of engagement.

Wherein lies opportunity there also lies risk. Companies can simply not afford to give carte blanche to their online community managers about what they can or cannot publish.

While not on the scale of colossal missteps like Nestlé’s, some of these companies have taken to posting updates on issues that may cause them headaches and embarrassment down the line. For instance, I have received tweets announcing share price gains from UBA Group and GT Bank on days when their market prices have risen.

Why would a company want to start a conversation and community around its share price? The share price is at the tail end of a long value-creation process. Moreover, on a day-by-day basis, the market has a way peculiar to itself. It is neither productive nor positive for companies to discuss a daily number as an appropriate or representative metric of performance.

If there is one lesson companies can learn from the Nestlé debacle it is this: social media is no longer rated PG. It is for a mature audience now. Fans and haters expect companies to approach engagement with the seriousness that they do all their other corporate communications.

Relegating social media participation to the backbenches can be suicidal. Like rogue traders whose access to back office operations can bring down storied investment banks, rogue social network community managers can wreck untold damage to respected brands.

A stitch in time saves nine.

Email the writer:o.onyeaso@alrroya.com