Many companies out there spend 100s of hours and 1000′s of dollars trying to connect with their potential clients and customers on Facebook. While an off post may not send your company down into the abyss, it can certainly have a dramatic effect on your company’s image as noticed today by Buffalo Wild Wings facebook fan page.
Buffalo Wild Wings dropped the ball on their Facebook Fan Page.
Today is September, 4th 2011. NFL Preseason has been officially over since Thursday, and with 1000′s of fans eagerly awaiting the offical season to start this coming Thursday, BWW left themselfs wide open with this post.
“What preseason game are you watching today?” – Cue comments. ”Perhaps they’re talking about hockey?”, “What kind of dumbass question is that? Nice sports knowledge”, “Hey MORON, what game are you watching today?” Over 500 negative comments about poor sports knowledge. Could this have been a joke to get higher customer interaction on their fan page? Possibly. However is it worth risking corporate image over? Probably not.
With the millions of BWW fans on facebook (now over 5,000,000) and with their brand image of “Beer, Wings and Sports”, this single post has clearly been a fumble on part of BWW’s social media team. Will they lose fans over it? It’s possible that some may have been so insulted by an attempt like this, they could lose a fan or two, however with over 5,000,000 standing strong, I’d seriously doubt any serious harm to their brand image more than a slight embarrasment over a “dropped ball”. I think the lesson to be learned here is not to let your geeky social media team that has no sports knowledge start cranking out posts about games that aren’t even happening. What are your thoughts?
This is a problem in today’s workplace. Employers are looking for the all-in-one employee that works for minimum wage. I have seen ads of companies that are looking for, wait, it is coming – “Designer (expert in photoshop), html programmer, CSS, php and mysql programmer must have 3-4 years SEO and 4-5 PPC administration also knowledge of social media. Starting pay $9-$10 per hour”.
I understand times are tough but how can your content writers/ bloggers do their job when they are also doing 5 other people’s jobs. I do know that Bw3 will not loose followers but if you are in a small niche market and you wrote on a technical fact and were wrong, how much of a black eye would you receive. Remember you are protraying yourself as a “Expert”. Your tech team are experts for what you hired them to do not in the field your business is in, or they would not be programmers, SMO’s, SEO’s. Pay them to do their job and help them help you!