If more companies realized that being forthright and honestly admitting when they make mistakes, they actually become MORE respected.
Companies and web sites can't act in a silo anymore. They need to be more human if they want to gain any ground in a social arena.
Thanks for sharing this! Nice to see there are still companies out there that are willing to accept a little egg on their face. It can wash right off anyway...good show!
Craig
· 10 months ago
In any relationship communication is key. No difference online and probably even more so because you don't have the ability of non-vocal communications. Companies need to speak to their consumers. Otherwise they will begin to lose credibility and trust.
m.dot
· 10 months ago
This 6 tips work in ANY relationship.
Good job. Hi five.
Zack B.
· 10 months ago
This is an outstanding post - thanks Muhammed, and thanks to those of you who have replied so far as well - your comments are just as useful.
I'm hard at work on a startup that will be launching soon and this is exactly the kind of stuff my team and I need to hear. I'm pretty excited about taking a hands-on approach to customer relations - monitoring and participating in conversations across the web as they happen (here's hopeful that they will!).
Hopefully more companies will begin to realize that playing the "king on top of the mountain" and not listening to the wants and needs of your subjects will do nothing but get you overthrown!
Bobbie Carlton
· 10 months ago
I agree that the best way to make fans is to 'fess up to any mistakes you make, apologize and try to fix them as best you can. This letter/situation reminds me of something that I want to point out though. As more and more companies learn this lesson, I hope we won't see calculated manipulation around mistakes/erros. While I am not saying this was such the case here, I recall actually getting irritated with the overly effusive apologies when RackSpace had an outage a few years ago. After continuous updates on the progress of the outage, then apologies from everyone through the CEO for the situation (which was not their fault at all), I was about ready to shoot whichever RackSpace employee next dared to apologize. Lesson: apologize, fix it, move on!
rondata
· 10 months ago
Great article, thanks!
SusieJ
· 10 months ago
Honesty and common sense are clearly missing in corporate America.
Stuart Foster
· 10 months ago
It's amazing how far just a little bit of humility and transparency will take you online. People love interacting with corporations when they are accessible and can admit fault with their decisions. Fallibility is important. Humanity is important. Thus customer service like that of Zappos could become the next killer app for the web.
GemStar38
· 10 months ago
Sometimes the obvious things to do get forgotten when you are dealing with Social Media. Everyone is so busy looking for the next big thing that they forget to deal with the here and now.
Sean Nieuwoudt
· 10 months ago
Nice article, thanks! I couldn't agree more with "Communicate Even If You Have Nothing to Say"
Bruce at MyEmployee.Net - BPO
· 10 months ago
It is indeed a commendable communication practice to communicate to your communities. Before issues come up and become complicated and complex, communicating to communities compacts the connection between the communicators, that is, you and the customer. Yes, community members should be treated like a customer. Communication improves the relationship and connection between you and your communities and improve the loyalty or constancy of that connection between you and your customer or community as communication itself is the very same concrete foundation or composition of how social media sites work.
Credit Cards UK
· 10 months ago
Thanks, this makes so much sense.
Mobulars Design
· 10 months ago
Almost all cases of social 'media' revolt, thing went back to normal either out the users desire to return things to normal or out of an actual resolution.
Jason Wright
· 10 months ago
To heck with the revolt I say its time for a full out revolution!
there is no right or wrong there is just luck! that's is nothing more nothing less just luck.
Joan Stewart, The Publicity ho
· 10 months ago
What many of these popular social networking sites apparently don't understand, or choose to ignore, is that their sites serve as valuable crisis communications tools.
Comcast, for example, has one employee working fulltime to monitor Twitter posts and respond to complainers rapidly--smart!
If the social networking sites don't do this, too, they're inviting trouble, nasty comments and terrible publicity that can spin out of control.
For example, Joel Comm, a popular Internet marketer who has a huge following, sent an email to his list earlier this week complaining that Facebook removed his profile unfairly. He included a link to his blog post where he explained the whole ugly episode: http://twitpwr.com/faceboot
I don't know how many people he has on his list, but I'm guessing it's well over 50,000. All it took was one email to alert his followers to the problem and present Facebook in a bad light, and with good reason.
Why isn't Facebook responding to these kinds of problems, the same way smart communicators are using Facebook to respond to their own followers and friends when something bad happens to them???
The same with Twitter. The site is so unstable that I read tweet after tweet from users who can't log onto the site for hours at a time, or error messages that keep popping up. I'd like to see more from Twitter about what it's doing to solve these problems.
Brent Allsop
· 10 months ago
No, you got this all backwards.
You don't want any managers or leaders of a 'social' site.
It's just a bunch of people doing, saying, and deciding what THEY want to do.
You're a fucking idiot who spends way too much time pretending to be some sort of "expert" on social media. Big deal, asshole, you have too much time on your hands, and you can spend all day submitting stories to Digg. This makes you an expert on nothing besides masturbating to your front page story count. Stop sucking dick, get a life, maybe talk to a real live girl or two, and quit spouting off about fucking social media. No one cares (except you and your Digg friends).
Brad
· 10 months ago
I think Netflix would be another canidate for how to survive a social uproar, even though their site isn't souly a social network... Under it all, it is.
Alison
· 10 months ago
Great post - couldn't agree more. Last year we mistakenly removed huge amounts of information which was valuable to particular parents on our site and it caused an uproar (rightly so). I blogged on this topic for those who want more tips!
Alison
· 10 months ago
Great post - couldn't agree more. Last year we mistakenly removed huge amounts of information which was valuable to particular parents on our site and it caused an uproar (rightly so). I blogged on this topic for those who want more tips!
Rheen
· 10 months ago
Hey, saleem amazing article. Imviting you check this a Social Networking site here's the video that was featured at foxnews lastweek, check out the link below.
Online community managers cannot afford to ignore their people either! It depends on the type of community you run!
The thought of ignoring my community is an insane thought. Community managers are not just there to move posts and kill vulgar comments. Sure, if you are a SOCIAL community manager. If that's the type of community you run, then good on ya! It's not the type I run. We are not all in the same boat. There are ALL types of communities.
rondata
· 10 months ago
Online community managers cannot afford to ignore their people either! It depends on the type of community you run!
The thought of ignoring my community is an insane thought. Community managers are not just there to move posts and kill vulgar comments. Sure, if you are a SOCIAL community manager. If that's the type of community you run, then good on ya! It's not the type I run. We are not all in the same boat. There are ALL types of communities.
DebbyBruck
· 5 months ago
I love this article. Communicating comes in all different shapes and sizes. Not only top-down, bottom-up, but also side-to-side. Keeping an eye on the ball. What is the function of your social media site? How can you achieve that? By using the basic fundamental key to communication and that is listening. Secondly, is receiving the information that needs to be heard and lastly, acting upon mistakes with apologies and hoping for forgiveness. That's the best each of us can do. It usually works!
lucio ribio
· 4 months ago
Completely agree with Laurel, its a non sense answering for any sort of noise, and mobilising teams or resources for something won't have an either learn/roi.
Katrina Elaine Alba
· 3 months ago
It's an excellent example of how a company should utilize crisis public relations.
It takes a lot to admit a mistake. What I appreciate here--aside from admitting fault--is that the letter was signed by the CEO (an authority figure that people would listen, respect and look up to), and that the company was able to compromise between the desires of both the content owner and the public.
All Comments
Companies and web sites can't act in a silo anymore. They need to be more human if they want to gain any ground in a social arena.
Thanks for sharing this! Nice to see there are still companies out there that are willing to accept a little egg on their face. It can wash right off anyway...good show!
Good job. Hi five.
I'm hard at work on a startup that will be launching soon and this is exactly the kind of stuff my team and I need to hear. I'm pretty excited about taking a hands-on approach to customer relations - monitoring and participating in conversations across the web as they happen (here's hopeful that they will!).
Hopefully more companies will begin to realize that playing the "king on top of the mountain" and not listening to the wants and needs of your subjects will do nothing but get you overthrown!
RT
www.anoweb.alturl.com
Comcast, for example, has one employee working fulltime to monitor Twitter posts and respond to complainers rapidly--smart!
If the social networking sites don't do this, too, they're inviting trouble, nasty comments and terrible publicity that can spin out of control.
For example, Joel Comm, a popular Internet marketer who has a huge following, sent an email to his list earlier this week complaining that Facebook removed his profile unfairly. He included a link to his blog post where he explained the whole ugly episode:
http://twitpwr.com/faceboot
I don't know how many people he has on his list, but I'm guessing it's well over 50,000. All it took was one email to alert his followers to the problem and present Facebook in a bad light, and with good reason.
Why isn't Facebook responding to these kinds of problems, the same way smart communicators are using Facebook to respond to their own followers and friends when something bad happens to them???
The same with Twitter. The site is so unstable that I read tweet after tweet from users who can't log onto the site for hours at a time, or error messages that keep popping up. I'd like to see more from Twitter about what it's doing to solve these problems.
You don't want any managers or leaders of a 'social' site.
It's just a bunch of people doing, saying, and deciding what THEY want to do.
That is the philosophy at canonizer.com.
Brent Allsop
URL: http://www.foxnews.com/video/index.html?playerI...
The thought of ignoring my community is an insane thought. Community managers are not just there to move posts and kill vulgar comments. Sure, if you are a SOCIAL community manager. If that's the type of community you run, then good on ya! It's not the type I run. We are not all in the same boat. There are ALL types of communities.
The thought of ignoring my community is an insane thought. Community managers are not just there to move posts and kill vulgar comments. Sure, if you are a SOCIAL community manager. If that's the type of community you run, then good on ya! It's not the type I run. We are not all in the same boat. There are ALL types of communities.
It takes a lot to admit a mistake. What I appreciate here--aside from admitting fault--is that the letter was signed by the CEO (an authority figure that people would listen, respect and look up to), and that the company was able to compromise between the desires of both the content owner and the public.