Companies are busy jumping on the social media bandwagon and with good reason. As a company you need to build a presence on the sites where your customers and prospects are seeking information about your industry, your competition and where user experiences are exchanged. The advice given to companies is to engage with representation from all relevant departments – typically sales, marketing product development, support and executives. Brands are built over a long period of consistent service, sales execution, corporate -voice, -values, -colors and even typeface. How is that consistent experience and brand building effort protected if you let your team across all departments engage in social conversation? Yes, guidelines, training and a strong corporate culture will help, but if you what to be visible on the web you need to be timely and controversial - do you see the conflict?
What are the consequences if the University of Phoenix tweeted with typos, an SAP support guy admitted to a bug in the software that wasn’t officially acknowledged or an Apple Genius referred to a cheaper product on Amazon?
Just like celebrities – your brand can be severely damaged by a few misguides efforts to engage. The social media world is not a free lunch. Be careful out there ;-)
