Five Social Media Disaster Stories To Learn From & (Hopefully) Never Repeat

Social media is here to stay whether we like it or not. For many, interacting with friends, family,  coworkers and customers on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn is a part of a normal day, and no more strange than sending an email or answering the telephone.

For businesses, social media sites provide the opportunity to engage, encourage and listen with customers, not just a vehicle to advertise to them.

Done right, social media can be the key to a surge in growth for many small businesses.

Done wrong, it can be an enormous waste of company time or worse, damaging to the company brand and bottom line.

Below are five true stories of "social media gone bad" that teach a valuable lesson that hopefully we can learn from and not make the same mistake.

Please note, I normally do not mention companies by name in my blog. In this case I am doing so because these stories are extremely well known in marketing and PR circles, and the details of each can be easily found with a simple Google search.

1. Nestle and the Environmentalists

In early 2010, the Nestle company’s Facebook page was inundated with posters from Greenpeace concerned over the company’s use of palm oil. According to the Greenpeace posters, Nestle was guilty of deforestation in their production of palm oil and other environmental no-no’s.

A Greenpeace rep created a video, a rather gory one, depicting an office worker eating a KitKat dribbling blood, and uploaded it to YouTube.

Nestle’s response was to ask that YouTube take it down and to post on its Facebook page that such use was in violation of their trademark. This resulted in even more postings on its Facebook & YouTube page from protesters. Nestle’s responded by removing the negative posts and citing copyright infringement.

Which of course, made things worse.

The Nestle social media marketing team, a handful of young marketing and PR newbies responded to the post removal protests with comments such as:

"Thanks for the lessons in manners. Consider yourself embraced. But it's our page, we set the rules"

"Oh pulhlease....it's like we're censoring everything..."

Not good.

Eventually, the Nestle Facebook page had over 95,000 "fans". None of which had anything nice to say about Nestle and sales began to drop.

MORAL: Work with an experienced PR person for your social media marketing. Just because your intern, teenage son or daughter, or fresh out-of-college admin knows their way around Facebook doesn’t mean they have the skills to respond to an online assault against your company.

Remember, it's not about knowing how to use the tool, it's about developing the message.

Also, never respond to negative postings with threats of any kind. It will almost always backfire.

 2. Walmart’s Coming to Town!

In 2006, a family of Walmart lovers started blogging about a trip they were taking across the US in their RV with a goal of visiting at least one Walmart in every state. The blog was aptly entitled Walmart Across America.

The blog featured the adventures of Laura and Jim, on their way from Las Vegas to Georgia in their RV and their fantastic experiences with Walmarts on the way.

Great idea, right?

Wrong, Seems that “Laura and Jim” were one in the same; a photographer paid by Walmart and the whole ‘trip’ was a hoax.

The entire fiasco coined the term “flog” for Fake Blog and netted Walmart even more negative publicity than it already had.

MORAL: If it’s not true, don’t write it. It is almost impossible to lie on the internet and get away with it for long. In the long run, whatever you gained from the lie, will be lost ten fold once the lie gets out. And it will get out.

3. The Pitter Patter of Little Feet at Taco Bell

Nope, not children. Rats.

In February of 2007, someone posted a video on YouTube of huge rats scurrying around a New York City Taco Bell restaurant. The video went viral but Taco Bell, hoping it would blow over, ignored the whole thing and kept silent.

Soon even more videos began to surface depicting horrible conditions in Taco Bell restaurants. After over 2 million video views, Taco Bell’s stock price and sales began to drop.

MORAL: When negative things about your company are posted on social media sites, don’t ignore it. Immediately apologize and create a plan to fix the problem. When you ignore it, you just make things worse.

Southwest Airlines often gets blasted on social media sites for some of its policies but you rarely hear about them because Southwest immediately addresses each issue and fixes the problem.

Oh and let’s not forget the other moral of this one: Clean up the skeletons in your closet (or rats in your kitchen), or eventually someone will find out and share it with the world.

4. Up Your Nose with Dominos

In the spring of 2009, two Dominos Pizza employees filmed themselves doing all kinds of nasty stuff with Dominos food that they were preparing for a delivery. The video depicts one of the employees sticking cheese up his nose and then placing it on the sandwich.

They then posted the video on YouTube and within 24 hours multiple links to the video appeared on the first Google search engine results page when searching for “Dominos Video”. The video received one million views before it was finally taken down.

The two employees were charged with felony charges of delivering prohibited food and Dominos faced a public relations nightmare.

MORAL: All companies should have an Acceptable Use Policy for social media use that all employees are trained on. The policy should clearly state what is and is not allowed and what the consequences will be for violating the policy.

Even if your company does not have a Facebook page or YouTube channel, you still must have policies in place that employees must follow if they ever are representing the company on a social media site or are identifying themselves as an employee of your company.

5. Defending Dad Against GM

In December 2009, General Motors CEO Fritz Henderson was fired. Shortly after the announcement was made public, Fritz’s daughter, Sarah Henderson posted on the GM Facebook page that the new CEO to replace her Dad was “a selfish piece of shift” (sic).

She made many posts that day, most generously peppered with F Bombs and assorted other dirty words. She also urged people to “never buy from this god forsaken company ever again”.

GM took the posts down but not before the page was seen and copied by bloggers around the world.

MORAL: Although it is getting more and more difficult to keep our private lives separate from our business lives on social media sites, you must make it clear to family and friends that your company Facebook page is not the place for them to hang out.

If your friends and family are ‘liking’ your company Facebook page, please advise them to keep their comments professional or better yet, ask them not to comment at all.

Have a social media disaster story to share? Please do so!