Social Media Ethics
An Ad-Free Social Network: Say Ello!
Have you heard of Ello? Although it’s still in beta version, it’s one of the upcoming social networks that’s creating a stir. As we become more aware of social media advertising and marketers keep spending more and more money on promoting their message on social media, Ello’s creators have promised to not data mine, meaning no advertising to users on the site. Ello has agreed to never make money from selling ads, nor will it profit from selling user data. Is this too good to be true? How will users adopt the site? Although you can only access the site by invitation, the notion of an ad-free network is appealing to many.
Whether or not the channel actually plays out and becomes a large social media network, I feel that it will change the expectation for other social media sites. Ello plans on making money by selling widgets and apps that will allow users to customize their profile. While I am against having to pay to access a social media site, I would be apt to being able to have a free profile and then adding on as needed. This will give marketers the opportunity to fully customize their site and make it a destination for their audience. Instead of pushing ads to consumers, marketers will need to hone in on what is important to their audience and make their Ello page engaging, entertaining, and relevant, forcing marketers to rely on content resources instead of just increasing their budgets.
As Ello grows in popularity, other social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter will have to take Ello’s ad-free stance into consideration. Just like capitalism, if consumers are wanting what Ello is offering as opposed to what Facebook and Twitter are offering, these sites will decrease in popularity and will have to make changes in order to keep with what the audience is demanding.
While I think that the ad-free concept is great, I am not completely convinced on how people will respond to having to purchase widgets and apps for their profile. Because we are so accustomed to not paying anything in order to be a part of social networking sites, that will be an adjustment. Personally, unless the widgets are really cool and really cheap (less than a dollar), I don’t think I would want to purchase any. If the majority of users on the site are not willing to purchase these widgets and Ello has already agreed to be ad-free and not sell data mining, Ello will have to find new ways to be profitable. I feel like this is a make or break for the channel. I don’t feel like we will really know what the site until it is out of beta mode. Ello is doing a good thing by bringing up the idea of an ad-free network and I wish them the best of luck.
CPR, Dogs & Running Shoes: Reputation Management Lessons from Pearl Izumi
A person giving a dog CRP to promote running shoes? Doesn’t sound like a good idea to me. As social media as continued to evolve and become widely adapted, marketers have been taking the opportunity to use their social media voice to market to consumers. While being able to promote your brand in a social environment and having the ability to have a real conversation with your customer is a very positive thing, the actions that some brands have took on social media have ended up damaging the brand’s reputation.
In a 2013 Canadian running magazine, Pearl Izumi, a high-quality running shoe designer released an add that showed a runner (wearing Pearl Izumi running shoes) having to give his dog CPR. While the ad was actually created for and distributed in a print publication, consumers took to social media to voice their concerns and opinions regarding the advertisement. This is significant because it shows that even though the ad was in print, consumers reach out to social media to voice their concerns and get their message across to the brand. The brand definitely took some hard hits on social media:
As an animal lover, the ad was offensive to me. Because many people feel a special bond with animals, why would a company want to post an ad that makes people feel empathy for a dog that has passed away? Personally, that did not make we want to purchase new running shoes! What were they thinking?
Pearl Izumi responded by pulling the ad from all future publications as well as issuing an apology on their Facebook page. In addition to the apology, the company donated $10,000 to the Boulder Valley Humane Society in Colorado (where the US corporate offices are located). While I do feel that they were sincere with their apology and attempted to “put their money where their mouth is” by making the $10,000 donation, I feel that they could have took the opportunity to educate their audience (while the audience was being extra attentive to the brand) about the proper way to run with dogs. Because dogs can’t tell you that they are exhausted and need to take a break, there actually have been instances where dogs have ran themselves to death trying to keep up with their owner. While this is a very unfortunate circumstance that people don’t want to think about, it happens. Since Pearl Izumi already opened up this can of worms, why not take the opportunity to educate and help prevent actual occurrences like this from happening?
Since the reputation blunder, Pearl Izumi has posted more photos of man’s best friend- only this time, they have been more careful about their posts!
KitchenAid Social Media Mix-up
Have you ever seen a post from a brand or individual you follow and thought “what in the world were they thinking by posting that?”. Unfortunately, social media accounts get hacked quite often. It doesn’t just happen to individuals, but large corporations like Delta Airlines and Burger King. It happens so frequently now that people automatically assume that the account was hacked when they see one of these posts. We’re so accustomed to seeing hacked accounts that we often give the brand or individual the benefit of a doubt. Sometime when you see an off the wall post, however, the account wasn’t hacked- the account was just posted to by mistake by someone who actually has the ability to post onto the account. This is what happened with the kitchen appliances brand KitchenAid.
In 2008, right before Barack Obama was elected president, his grandmother passed away. Following her death, the following statement was posted onto KitchenAid’s (@KitchenAidUSA) Twitter account: “Obama’s gma even knew it was going 2 b bad! ‘She died 3 days b4 he became president’ #nbcpolitics”. Although it appeared that the account may have been hacked, that was not the case. One of KitchenAid’s social media team members accidentally posted the tweet onto the corporate account instead of on his own account. Although the tweet was quickly removed by KitchenAid, it was seen by thousands of people. In fact, the tweet was also discussed outside of social media in places such as The Chicago Tribune, Huffington Post, Forbes, and Fast Company. Following the tweet, KitchenAid issued the following apology: “Deepest apologies for an irresponsible tweet that is in no way a representation of the brand’s opinion. #nbcpolitics”. As if they didn’t think that the first policy was enough, they then issued a policy directly to the president: “I would like to personally apologize to President @BarackObama, his family and everyone on Twitter for the offensive tweet sent earlier”.
While I feel that the first apology was necessary, I think that the second policy was unnecessary. I understand that they wanted to make sure that the Obama family knew that the tweet was not representative of a corporate stance, Obama wasn’t actually tagged in the original tweet. I feel like by posting the second apology tweet, they were bringing more attention to the situation than what was actually needed.
The situation that occurred with KitchenAid is a lesson that all social media managers can learn from. Because what is posted on social media can be so harmful to your brand’s reputation (and for your personal career as well), is is so important to not cross your personal social media accounts with your brand accounts. Yes, this was an accident, but it could have been prevented by this social media manager making sure he/she was logged into the correct account prior to posting. But, everyone is human and mistakes do happen.
Have you ever been in a situation where you or anyone on your brand’s social media team accidentally posted onto the wrong account? How did you resolve the situation? Do you feel that there should be more roadblocks in place so that posts like the KitchenAid example don’t happen in the future?
Who Do You Trust? Brand Advocates, Subscription Boxes & Social Media
How many websites do you check out before purchasing a product? Are you reviewing the websites for price comparisons or are you looking to genuinely find the product that best suits your needs? Today’s consumers have seemingly unlimited choices when it comes to researching and purchasing products. It’s not like the old days where you could only buy what you could get at the store. You were limited to only specific brands and didn’t know what other consumers thought of the product. You now have access to millions of product reviews and promotional information to help you make an educated decision on which product is best for your needs.
But who do you trust online? Do you trust the information that is on a brand’s website and social media pages? Do you trust bloggers that are given an incentive by the company? Do you trust your friend who purchased the product last week? Chances are, you’re going to trust your friend. If they don’t have any skin in the game, their review seems more honest, right? Today it seems like the further a person is removed from the corporate brand entity, the more you as a consumer trust their opinion. You want to trust a person who is considered to advocate for the brand without any benefit to themselves or being compensated by the brand. Personally, I trust brand advocates. I feel that many of you feel the same.
I love subscription boxes (you know, those themed boxes that you sign up for to receive in the mail evert month). But there are so many of them to choose from and some of them are pretty expensive. I don’t personally know which ones are the best for me and I don’t want to waste money on ones that I might not like. So what do I do? Turn to brand advocates. For subscription boxes, the brand advocate that I trust the most is the Ramblings of a Suburban Mom blogger, Jennifer V. While she has a disclosure on her site stating “This blog does accept complimentary product in exchange for honest blog reviews. No monetary compensation is received for blog reviews, however, posts may contain affiliate links and / or referral links”, I really trust her opinion.
From my personal experience following her on the blog and social media, she is very honest and her reviews are accurate. They often reflect my feelings when I receive a new subscription box. I not only follow her blog, but I follow her posts on Instagram and Facebook as well. She often talks about her family and posts pictures of them. That helps me see her as more of a person to trust then a corporation pushing marketing jargon on me (I am a marketer, so I know why they are doing that, but still, that information is very biased).
So what does she gain by posting subscription box reviews other than free subscription boxes? Blog traffic! On her blog, you’ll notice that she sells a heath/diet system called Advocare. Perhaps she talks advantage of her blog and social media traffic to help sell this product? As a follower, I’m ok with seeing an Advocare tab on her blog. I really trust what she has to say. More subscription box companies should send her free boxes to review. It’s the best review site of it’s kind on the web in my opinion.
A Question for my Fellow Marketers: How well do you trust marketing material or a corporate website/social media account? Do you feel that your opinion is skewed because you work in marketing?
YouTube Terms and Conditions…I Accept?!
YouTube. It’s the site you visit when you need to learn how to fix something, want to watch adorable cat videos, and see videos that will make you laugh until you cry. People think of YouTube as an entertainment site that even helps people become famous. I mean, who doesn’t want to have one of your videos go viral? But what about the legal liabilities of YouTube and its users? Who owns those videos and who has the right to promote them? Let’s take a look into YouTube’s equally thrilling and exciting terms and conditions!
Like most other social media sites, the terms and conditions are really boring. Black and white copy (and I mean a TON of it) written in terms that lawyers understand. One thing that stood out to me was that as a user, you are not allowed to show a YouTube video on an embedded media player. I see people everyday use third party applications to download the YouTube videos directly onto their devices. I wonder how YouTube is patrolling this? Is there any consequences? If so, I didn’t see them in the terms and conditions. If you know, please inform me!
As far as content rights go, YouTube makes it very clear that you as the content uploader have the rights to your content: “For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your Content”. They can, however, use your content in ways that they feel necessary “by submitting Content to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of…” Based off of reviewing Twitter and Facebook’s terms and conditions, this is apparently a fairly common industry practice. Digital copyright laws and regulations are also discussed in the terms and conditions. Although I think that it was a good thing for YouTube to include these in the terms and conditions, it added an extra layer on complication to them.
The average YouTube user doesn’t understand what is really being said in the terms and conditions. I feel that this is a very negative thing for the user and is unethical. Why would you as a company create a document to protect your site that the majority of users can’t even understand? It feels like YouTube is trying to hide how they operate from the users. If users don’t understand how their content may be used or distributed, they could be taken advantage of. What do you think? Is the language used in YouTube’s terms and conditions too much for the general user?
The Social Potter 
You Don’t Own Your Social Media Pages- Your Customers Do!
Posted on Updated on
The tricky part about reputation management and post moderation is determining how and if you want to respond to these comments. Not all customer posts require a response. From my experience, I’ve noticed that some customers just want to vent about there experience and don’t really expect a comment back. In some instances, you choose not to respond directly on the post, but try to pull the customer into a private phone conversation with the customer service team. In this week’s post, I will be examining two separate social media posts (one from a customer to a hotel and one from a viewer to a mainstream news network) to determine what, in my opinion, the appropriate response. One thing that I’ve learned is that no matter what your response is, some people just cannot be pleased nor satisfied. But as social media managers, we have to do our best!
Post #1: To a hotel: “I am disgusted about the state of your restaurant on 1467 Justin Kings Way. Empty tables weren’t cleared and full of remains of meals. It makes me wonder what the state of your kitchen is?!!! Gross.”
Let’s first analyze the post to see if we can determine what the customer is really looking to get across. By posting this to the hotel’s Facebook page, the customer is wanting to bring attention to the issue. He wasn’t complaining about the food or the service that he directly received, but was mentioning the overall state of the restaurant, which makes the issue seem more relevant to the hotel’s Facebook page audience. I mean, who wants to eat in a restaurant that had half-eaten food sitting all over the place and is “gross”? In my college days I was a waitress, so I completely understand that things happen. Perhaps the hotel received an unexpected business rush on a day they were understaffed to handle the situation and the buss boy was now serving tables and helping the waitresses and bartender instead of cleaning the tables. It’s kinda rare, but I’ve seen it happen. I feel that the hotel should respond in an honest manner and invite the guest back to try out the restaurant again. Perhaps they can even brag about their high food service rating score (assuming that to be the case).
Proposed Response: Hi John. Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback regarding our restaurant on Justin Kings Way. We want to assure you the the atmosphere you described experiencing at our restaurant is not to our standards nor does it exemplify the atmosphere that we aim to create for our customers. Due to miscalculations on our part, we were very understaffed during your visit. It was unfortunate that our restaurant, which has a health code score of 98%, was perceived as less than stellar. We would love the opportunity to change your perception of the restaurant. Please send us your email address in a private message and we will send you coupons to use on your next visit. We sincerely hope to see you again!
Post #2: To a mainstream news network: “Your reporting on the Middle East is biased in the extreme. You gave almost all your air time to spokespeople for the Israelis last night and there was no right to reply for the Palestinians. The conflict upsets me so much and your reporting of it, saddens me even more and makes me f**king furious.” (Let us assume the reporting was balanced, with equal time to both sides.)
The first thing that I notice about post #2 is that it involved political viewpoints on hot topics that tend to polarize people. The viewer is clearly upset and angry about about the newscast that he just witnessed. Honestly, he probably wrote this post immediately following the newscast and didn’t give himself time to think clearly about the situation prior to posting. We are assuming that the newscast was actually very balanced and reported on each side equally. My first instinct is to reply with a link to the newscast in question and discuss that each side of the issue received 10 minutes of discussion. However, in the case of this post, I feel that the best thing to do is to not respond. Because this individual is upset, I wouldn’t want the conversation to be elevated and turn into an online debate between him and the brand. Since the post stated his opinion, I feel it’s best to leave it at that and not validate it by replying. In this type of situation, I’ve seen where other views respond to the post instead. This seems to work out pretty well as far as generating engagement for your Facebook page. Not all comments require responses. It’s up to the social media team to understand their brand and audience and determine the best way to moderate comments, keep their customers happy and positively promote their brand.
Do you agree with the response that I proposed for Post #1? If you were the customer who made that post, would you feel inclined to accept the coupon offer and try the restaurant again? If your experience was very different, would you feel like you wanted to remove the negative comment that you previously posted on the hotel’s Facebook page?
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This entry was posted in Social Media Ethics and tagged comment moderation, Reputation Management, Social Media.