Of social media blunders and epic face palms.

I love social media.

I realize that a large portion of that has to do with my generation, but I thrive in this place of instant communication and constant connection. It’s a tool that has allowed me to connect with someone like-minded in the UK through just the sharing of photos, video’s and impromptu-squealing at Dr. Who gifs. It’s allowed me to access the news headlines right away and hear about historical, world-changing decisions that have been made, instantly. It’s also opened up the doors for online bullying, falsified information and online scamming/harassment.

So when a company fails to grasp the importance of social media, or how to properly make the most of it makes the inner-PR person in me cringe. For this I’ve rustled up three examples of companies shirking their social accountability in the online world.

The first culprit: Applebee’s.

In what’s probably the biggest social media meltdown I’ve witnessed ever, the social media coordinator at Applebee’s failed to follow one simple rule of social media as a business: Don’t try to censor people.

After waitress, Chelsea Welch, posted a photo of a snarky receipt on Reddit as a joke and was fired, the online community stepped in to try to help. They were met with mucho snark from the Applebee’s Facebook page. After posting a status at around 3pm, Applebee’s tried to soothe wounds by saying customer confidentiality is the most important thing – which would be okay if they didn’t have pictures of happy receipt notes written by customers plastered on their Facebook page. They were called on this.

Probably works better if you don't have only good personal information up on your FB pages..

 

So people snarked back – which ended up in Applebee’s Facebook page hiding comments from view and banning people from their page, in what would be the start of a giant “I’m a thirteen year-old having a hissy fit because everyone is being rude to me” type of argument. So Applebee’s took a little break and regrouped…and started tagging people and pasting the same comment over and over and over again with different people tagged. At this point I was shaking my head – and then it got better.

According to R.L Stollar – at around 3:06 am – Applebee’s began tagging people…and arguing with them. *face palm*.

Go home Applebees, you're drunk.

 

Now I realize the situation is more black and white than it appears on the internet, but this just goes to show you why social media is important. This could have been avoided – instead (as a good friend Shannon put) they took the, “we’ve seemed to have found ourselves in a pit of toxic waste – QUICK PASS THE SHOVEL SO WE CAN KEEP DIGGING!” approach.

Article on this major meltdown can be found here.

Culprit numero deux: HMV

In what I thought was the most entertaining social media fail came from the HMV head office in the UK, where, employees were brought into HR and fired in mass numbers one day. Unfortunately the company didn’t think that far ahead and ended up firing their social media planner who live-tweeted the whole event on the company account.

 

For 30 minutes Twitter lapped up the tweets, laughing as the HMV execs scrambled to figure out what the heck was going on. Probably my favourite tweet of the whole ordeal came from the Marketing Director, when he asked, “How do I shut down Twitter?”

The woman responsible took to her personal Twitter saying that she felt this was an important opportunity to push the point home of why social media was important to their company, something the senior management had been overlooking since she started. While a lot of people are saying this just came from her being ticked about being sacked, I have to say I’m agreeing with her. If you’re already being fired, why not drive the point home about social media. You know for a fact they’re going to be cognisant of their social media accounts now, and probably make sure the holder of the passwords isn’t on the chopping block next time.

Article can be found here.

And finally: The Girl Scouts.

How did these happy-go-lucky cookie sellers make it on here? Well it seems that they have refused to embrace any kind of technology while simultaneously crushing the dreams and hopes an 11 and a half year old girl.

This all started when Emma, a Girl Scout, thought of a way to both sell cookies and be able to raise money to buy and send cookies to soldiers serving overseas. What could possibly be wrong with this plan? Well she promoted it through social media and was asking for donations via Paypal. Apparently the Girl Scouts has a strict cash or cheque only policy and although they tweeted Emma’s account saying great job – they backpedalled when they found out funds were collected online and told her she couldn’t do it.

Cash or cheque bitches, or we're not ponying up the goods.

 

How did this come to be? Apparently a jealous mother/ Girl Scout leader felt as though Emma wasn’t learning life-lessons like she would if she went door to door because the internet “isn’t real life”. Obviously this woman wasn’t talking with HMV and Applebee’s execs because they would have quickly told her how “real life” the internet can get.  

Let’s take a step back here – a Girl Scout wants to sell and donate boxes of Girl Scout cookies and donate them all for soldiers overseas and the issue is she isn’t taking cash or cheque? Seriously!?! This story made me mad because we’re always pushing for people to do social good and make the world awesome – as long as they’re only doing so by “nationwide guidelines”.

Article can be found here.

Social media is an important staple of our communication right now, both socially and corporately. I do see a major divide in social media use and understanding and no, that’s not just in people’s age. Social media, when executed properly can be key in avoiding crisis or managing crisis and it can also be gasoline on the fire. I am very interested, as a social media junkie, to see where social media is going to go in the next few years.

Any thoughts or other examples – please send them on down!

Of bullying and making the world more awesome

Sometimes people drive me crazy – scratch that, a lot of the times people drive me crazy. There’s one thing though, that just puts me over the edge every single time.

Bullying. Any and all bullying, all the grey areas of bullying, justifying bulling, laughing about bullying and especially shrugging off bullying.

Everyone who knows me or has me on Facebook knows about a specific incident of bullying last week – some of you were expecting a blog post sooner but I really needed to just calm down and get my head on straight before I tacked this in a post. What set this off? A group of kids made a Facebook group to bully my little brother. Of course, I’m emotionally invested in the person being bullied, but this is something I’m confident I would do regardless of the person being bullied. I confronted the group, and threatened to call the police.

What came next is what absolutely drives me up the wall. People came to the rescue of the bully and began to laugh everything off as a joke. The bully at this point owned up, apologized – but on the group was still laughing about it. When met with conversations about depression and bullying-related suicide one commenter felt like replying with, “CUM SHOTS!” was the appropriate reaction. When I brought up suicide, one commenter chimed in with, “Aw – is he going to go kill himself now?”

Now these kids are between 16-18 years old, which I’m pegging as old enough to know a lot better – and yet they laugh at depression, bullying and suicide. It’s a massive joke that warrants, “Stay gold – pony boy!” and Kansas lyrics typed on a public forum. This infuriates me. I’m all for finding the lighter side of things – but DO NOT laugh off bullying. Nothing drives me up a wall further than shrugging off bullying as a joke. It’s not a joke, it’s not funny. Anyone who laughs at bullying, regardless of severity,  is feeding into continuing the cycle of bullying. Why would someone stop bullying at a small scale if they’re being egged on? What would stop someone from escalating at that point because hey, people are finding it funny?

It’s not funny. Being on both ends of bullying I know how it affects people and I know what it can do to someone. I’ve spoken with people who have been diagnosed with clinical depression from being bullied – and worked with them. Yet, we live in a world that still says, “oh come on it’s just a joke – you can’t take a joke?” You’re right, I can’t take a joke – especially when the joke is not funny and hurts someone else.

Bullying is not a black and white issue – there is a lot of grey area , however the way we treat and confront bullying should be one-dimensional: Do not allow it. Bullying kills people. Literally, something that pushes someone to want to end their life isn’t funny, so why are we allowing people to laugh? In this instance, calling the police was met with joking, laughter and giggling – which makes me wonder, what are we not doing in addressing this as a serious issue? When cops bring about chortling and snickering instead of remorse, what is going wrong?

I will never allow for bullying, I will not stand for it and I will speak out against it when confronted by it. I do not allow bullying either in person or over a computer screen because bullying, in any form, is wrong. We live in a world where people are quicker to laugh at someone than stand up for them and that’s sad. We treat depression like it’s that person’s fault that they have it, more so if they’re being bullied because that means they’re weak. We hardly ever point the word “weak” at bullies because apparently their ability to insult and ridicule makes them strong. I call bullshit on that. I will defend someone’s strength of character with depression or while being bullied over someone’s strength of character while being a bully any day.

I honestly, honestly hope that even just one of you – one person in 7+ billion who reads this takes a stand in some way against bullying. Not because I’m asking you, not because it will make you look good but because it matters. People matter, you matter, he matters, she matters – they matter.

I found this video last week and honestly I watched about ten times the day I found that Facebook group. One quote stood out the most:

“We can make every day better for each other, if we’re all on the same team let’s start acting like it. We got work to do. We can cry about it, or we can dance about it. We were made to be awesome.” – Kid President