Content Strategy for the Masses

This is a great article from PBS’s MediaShift on how to correct mistakes on social media.

MediaShift . How to Correct Social Media Errors | PBS.

Quick overview:

- Neither Facebook or Twitter offer a suggestion on how correct a poorly written post. Pundits suggest these services, or a third party app, need to create a functionality that lets users correct errors and notify anyone who retweeted the erroneous message (great idea for budding API developers!)

- Google+ allows users to edit posts and lists the date and time of the change.

Made a mistake? Best practices include:

- capture the error with a screengrab

- acknowledge the mistake and reference the error

- send tweets and messages to let those who shared or retweeted the error

If your social media mistake is offensive to some readers, and/or potential brand damaging, read this about Kenneth Cole’s rebound, and this, about Bing’s approach.

During the protests in Egypt, designer Kenneth Cole was given a strong lesson in how not to use recent events on Twitter to self promote, and thanks to some quick actions and ownership of his mistake, recovered. Now Microsoft may need to look to the designer for some damage control lessons.

After the horrible earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Microsoft’s Bing search engine posted a ‘retweet’ challenge – they will donte $1 for every @bing retweet up to $100,000 for quake victims.

Oops. Backlash started pretty quickly as people accused Microsoft of using the disaster to promote their search engine and their “corporate citizenship” page, which shows how Microsoft is helping Japan.

Meanwhile, Bing’s competitor Google created a popular people finder for those trying to find friends and relatives in the disaster, and released their satellite images to help resources on the ground find those in the most amount of danger. No retweet challenge or marketing plan needed because these services are worthwhile and deployed during times of need.

Bing’s Twitter team later apologized for their tweet, claiming their intention was to make it easy for people to donate to the cause. Their original tweet, however, was not deleted and continues to be retweeted, even by Bing’s celebrity spokespeople like Ryan Seacrest. In other words, this marketing plan continues despite admitting to an error.

You may remember something like this happened only a few weeks ago when designer Kenneth Cole tweeted inappropriately that the protests in Egypt were actually people excited about his new collection. He quickly recovered from this by owning up to the mistake, removing the original tweet and stating it was his personal error. No excuses.

How can Microsoft recover?

- delete the RT challenge tweet

- add “how to donate” to their Bing homepage

- use their expertise to create a tool that helps the cause

Is this a marketing fail by Microsoft, or just a misguided attempt to raise awareness of how to donate funds to the cause? How else could Microsoft help? While you’re thinking of this, please also consider donating as there’s nothing worse than analyzing a company’s $100K donation when you haven’t given anything yourself.

How to donate:

Canadians wishing to help support relief efforts underway are encouraged to contribute by:

• Donating online
• Calling 1-800-418-1111
• By texting the word ASIA to 30333 to make a one-time donation of $5*
• By contacting their local Red Cross office. Cheques should be made payable to the Canadian Red Cross, earmarked “Japan Earthquake/Asia-Pacific Tsunami” and mailed to the Canadian Red Cross National Office, 170 Metcalfe Street, Suite 300, Ottawa, Ontario, K2P 2P2.

Americans can donate: text REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation

Oh dear. So, earlier today I was alerted to a tweet posted by the clothing design clothing company, Kenneth Cole.

I shouldn’t NEED to explain why this was in poor taste today, less than 24 hours after peaceful protests turned violent. But I just did.

Given the amount of outrage this tweet caused, Kenneth Cole took responsibility for the mistweet in an apology on Twitter and then on the company’s Facebook page.

His damage control was swift:

1. He apologized personally and took responsibility. Though his initial tweet says “we weren’t intending to make light,” he later clarified in a further tweet that his “joke” didn’t come from an employee at Kenneth Cole, but from him personally.

2. His team isn’t countering the negative comments with excuses on why it happened.

Yes, this tweet was in poor taste and some comments even accuse the company of posting something controversial for free publicity (forgetting, of course, this is a fashion company), but there but for the grace of God go I, people. Here are some lessons we can all take away from this:

-  Once you post something online, it never goes away. @kennethcole deleted the original tweet, but I found it easily.

- If you schedule your tweets, it’s probably best to not schedule upcoming posts beyond 24 hours, particularly if your tweet is related to current events.

- If you’ve made an error, take a short break to catch your breath. Then, calmly take responsibility, admit the error, apologize and move on. If you’re the CEO, go on social media yourself, even if the blame lies with an employee.

- You aren’t the first and you won’t be the last company or person to embarrass yourself on social media. I’ve accidentally tweeted DMs, celebrities fight it out with each other on Twitter , and there’s always Kanye to the rescue.

Any other rules for social media to share? Comment!

Clothier GAP changed its logo this week to much hulabuloo. Companies do this all the time, but this shift created a social media firestorm, mainly from people who seriously and loudly disliked the new look.

My favourite response has to be the parodies. One from Crap Logo, where you can Gap Logo yourself. Their Twitter account boastfully says they’re going to milk this for all its worth because it’ll be a memory after this weekend. The other from Gap Logo Twitter, with the tagline: I have feelings too, jerks.

Gap’s response? While they say they still like their redesigned logo, they’re using social media to say “Oh yeah? Why don’t YOU come up with something better?” Their Facebook page calls out to the public to create a new design, which according to Fast Company’s Co Design will be used as part of the Holiday advertising campaign. Information about their crowd sourcing project will be revealed in a few days.  Fast Company also has a great article on what happens when companies crowd source their design for the better, and when it raises the ire of professional designers.

I’m personally pleased to see sans-serif, and surprised by the passion everyone put into a logo… for The Gap. Then again, this same thing happened a year ago to Tropicana.

Was The Gap correct in its response on social media? If you ran a company where everyone hated the logo, what role would you allow social media to take? Would you immediately respond and hint at changing the logo (to possibly thousands of dollars wasted) or wait for the social maelstrom to die down?

UPDATE: So, it turns out The Gap felt social media was right and they were wrong. The company ditched its plans to ask its fans to create a new logo and instead, returned to the classic, serif-font look.

Last night, the Emmys were on… including illegal online streaming before NBC glommed onto the fact.

As each stream was shut down, users complained they hated the fact the live feeds were being removed, mostly spewing vitriol directly at the broadcaster. “Hey NBC,” they’d say. “We’re watching the commercials! What else do you want?!”

Good question. What else do we in the TV and digital entertainment media want? Why aren’t broadcasters streaming live video more often? It happened, and quite successfully, during the World Cup – which I can only assume helped slow piracy. Why not the Emmys? Well, it usually comes down to rights.

PaidContent.org wrote a great post about how NBC had great opportunities to turn winning clips from the show into potential viral videos. Within seconds of the opening sequence with Jimmy Fallon singing Born to Run with some cast members of Glee, Tina Fey and Jon Hamm, NBC should have posted the video up on You Tube to catch the viral wave. But they didn’t – seemingly because of their inability to secure online rights. The rights for the show were cleared for TV, but not for online.

Looking back, a similar thing happened this season with an episode of Glee, where a potentially embarrassing video of Sue Sylvester singing “Let’s Get Physical” gets viral at the fictional high school. Sadly, that clip wasn’t posted to You Tube for it to get viral in real-life. Another issue with rights clearances? Or was it an oversight to not include social media in the experience?

Granted, rights clearances are more complicated and resource heavy than most people would ever understand. But as a user posted, what else do we want?  For live events like awards shows or big finales, do we want to fight for online rights or do we want the fans to post our stuff online to share between themselves? What’s the solution?