As public
relations students and practitioners, we all love a good hashtag or social
media campaign. Often, hashtags and campaigns can enhance your voice on
twitter, broaden your outreach and begin a discourse with your followers. All
of which is great, but when you are a big corporation or a largely followed
twitter account, you have to remember that your followers have as big of a
voice as you do. Forget this component, and you’ve got a social media campaign
gone wrong on your hands.
Here are
a few examples:
#MyNYPD
#MyNYPD
was a twitter campaign run by the New York Police Department that asked Twitter
users to post a photo of themselves with police officers using the hashtag
#MyNYPD. Expecting positive responses, this campaign went horribly wrong when
people began using this hashtag to send in pictures of police brutality and
other negative responses.
#AskJPM
When JP
Morgan asked twitter users to participate in a question-and-answer session with
one of its executives using the hashtag #AskJPM, it seems as though they forgot
to think about the level of distrust and anger people have over the role of big
banks in the financial crisis. 7 hours later, JP Morgan canceled the campaign after
questions like, “Did you have a specific number of people’s lives you needed to
ruin before you considered your business model a success?”
#McDStories
Back in
2012, a McDonald’s campaign backfired when the company used the hashtag
#McDStories to geet their followers to draw attention to the brand’s use of
fresh produce. Extremely vague, the hashtag brought back results of McDonald’s
horror stories. McDonald’s quickly pulled the hashtag after being active for
less than 2 hours.
The
lesson to be learned from these social media campaigns gone wrong is to realize
that social media makes it impossible to control where a conversation or a
campaign will go. Before initiating a campaign, it is vital to go into
pre-Crisis Communications mode and create a contingency plan just in case your
campaign goes wrong; realize that some negative comments will arise and
consider sticking to traditional uses of social media if your company or
organization does not fit the potential for a positive campaign.
Source:
#MyNYPD: Why It's
Impossible to Control Online Conversation
This guest blog was written by PRowl staff member Rute Barkai.
This guest blog was written by PRowl staff member Rute Barkai.
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