The Paranoia of Bad Press
When products begin to host their own social media networks, you know two major market forces have merged to find an ever-wider circle of possible consumers and a platform to proselytize the product. So, to be sure, a funny thing always happens on the way to the forum — and the Facebook page and the Twitter page. When media and consumerism, those uneasy bed-mates, strike up a bargain of sorts, we the people are sure to be invited to one hell of an event.
To be sure, a viable marketing strategy for these latter days of Web 2.0 has been to link the homepage of major products and businesses to a social media website (Facebook has become ubiquitous — for now) it does beg the question of whether or not this is the wisest strategy. In some regards, these companies take their reputation management into their own hands.
Hosting a social media website dedicated to Product X makes it possible for fans and critics alike to post comments, start threads, and affect organic search results. To be sure, with the growing prominence of real-time search — and the wholesale appropriation of Twitter feeds in the SERP pages — it seems one bad comment could set off a wildfire of negative press.
It must be said that these comments, whether praise or condemnation, would have been hosted on other social media websites. Now comes a rather Machiavellian idiom: keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. Why allow another site to benefit from your company name? By hosting the social media channel or platform, you are indeed allowing negative posts to pepper your page. But, you are building a tremendous amount of consumer trust in doing so.
If you can be trusted to listen and respond evenly to criticism, you stand to retain and grow traffic and consumers. An even-keeled mea culpa is worth thousands of consumers. Allowing them to respond in kind is a tremendous means of dealing with potentially disastrous public relations incidents and can even entice the dissatisfied to a change of heart.
A prime example of the successful balance of product and social media can be found at Yoostar. While offering a revolutionary new technology, they have made it accessible by everyone.
Related Blogs
- Related Blogs on social media
Tags: branding, marketing, social media, Yoostar