If you want to use Twitter to
promote your ad campaign, great, but you need to use common sense. That’s why
this week Webwindows begs you not to
do what British Gas did on Twitter.
Twitter: A Double Edged Sword
We specialise in advising you
about the wonderful world or web marketing here at Webwindows. In our ten years
in the game, we couldn’t fail to notice just how powerful Twitter has grown as
an advertising platform. With half a billion users, one carefully crafted Tweet
can bring your ad campaign to hundreds of millions.
Twitter’s strength is also its
weakness. If you happen to miscalculate your Twitter promotion it has the
ability to anger those same millions, turn them against you, prompt them to create
a campaign to hijack your ad campaign and render it practically impotent.
What not to do on Twitter: The British Gas Edition
If you don’t believe us, remember
what happened to British
Gas when they made this fatal mistake. By the time the trolls had finished
with them, their ad campaign had been disgraced; it had made the headlines in
practically every online British publication and ruined their page one on
Google. It drove away customers in droves.
So what did they do? Well, as
most energy companies have been lately, they decided to raise their prices.
Naturally, annoyed customers who were looking for any chance to vent their
frustrations.
Then they initiated a Q&A
session on Twitter with the hashtag #AskBG. It was like lighting a match next
to a powdered keg, as the company’s many frustrated customers gleefully took
the opportunity to high-jack the hashtag to ask just why their energy company
raised prices so high. Then British Gas made it worse by promoting the campaign
on Facebook; the only social networking site with more users than Twitter.
Webwindows Asks: What Should You Take Away from This “Terrible PR Stunt?”
Here’s where Webwindows makes its
case. Don’t be like British Gas. They’re a big company, they can handle bad
press. Most companies can’t. A campaign like this that angers so many customers
has the potential to ruin a smaller firm. If you take anything away from this
terrible PR stunt, let it be that you need to know your audience inside out.
Webwindows are also on twitter - Webwindows twitter.
