Sometimes, being involved in socia media, it seems everyone is talking about the same thing and that it’s being amplified over many people and over time.
It’s even scarier if you’re an organisation and you wake up to see 10, 20, 50, 100 tweets about you one morning and rush to come up with some sort of response by the afternoon.
But how “sticky” really are these conversations – or are they actually rather transient?
Let’s look at two relatively “big” occurences this year: United Breaks Guitars and the JK Wedding Dance and their search trends on Google (click for larger image):
JK Wedding Dance - United Breaks Guitars
Though there was certainly a surge, they both lasted for about six weeks each and given that they happened at about the same time, it could have been possible to miss one or the other due to noise.
Kanye’s search volume – while through the roof, is also shorter than any other story, lasting less than a month (looks like two weeks from the scale). And let’s face it, without the comment from President Obama, it would have been even shorter.
Kanye’s search volume immediately dwarfs that of JK Wedding Dance and United Breaks Guitars – again this comes back to noise. How long can your story (positive or negative) hold the attention of the social media sphere?
Google Wave doesn’t create a spike but does have the longest sustained interest over time – obviously good news for a product launch, bad news if this is a PR fiasco.
It peaks as high as Kanye but has sustained itself pretty well. Bad news for Tiger – or any brand that finds itself in that unfortunate position.
So what’s the takeaway?
I generally wouldn’t encourage it, but there might be certain situations where it’s okay to keep quiet and not respond. Take Kanye for example. If he kept silent and didn’t go on numerous talk shows – it’d be over in a week or two. Erased (or at least embedded pretty deep) in our collective consciousness. To some extent same for Tiger. If another “Kanye” happened two days after Tiger, I think both stories would have fizzled out.
The social media eco system is fickle and riddled with attention-deficit disorder. Everyone want someone to bash but that could change from one day to the next. It’s easy to say that in retrospect of course, but the next time you get that feeling you absolutely need to reply or your company will lose millions – think about whether that story will really be around in two weeks, of if the pirahnas would have moved on to new meat.
two days has just under 15,000 views, just over 4,000 ratings (with an average of 5 stars), over 1,000 comments
Today, six days after it was posted on Youtube:
just over 2.3 million views
19,358 ratings (with an average of 5 stars)
12,250 comments
So the initial 15,000 views x 4 minutes of negative engagement is now 2.3million views x 4 minutes of negative engagement.
Since everyone seems to be hung up on using physical world ROI to apply to social media, let’s do this in the reverse situation.
Let’s use the lowest conversion/open rate possible (I’m thinking direct mail with about 1%), I’ll halve that for the internet at 0.5%, which is 115,000 people. If these 115,000 people say “I’m never flying United again”, how much does that translate in negative ROI over each customer’s lifetime at an average of say, one trip a year?
Of course, this isn’t a “scientific” way of calcluating anything. But that’s what we do isn’t it? Buy a million banner ads and hope for a 1% clickthrough rate. This is the same thing, working against you.
It’s all over Twitter but I picked this up via Dan York’s blog: a YouTube video by a band, Sons of Maxwell, singing the song “United Breaks Guitars” which in two days has just under 15,000 views, just over 4,000 ratings (with an average of 5 stars), over 1,000 comments and plenty, plenty, of bad press.
Seriously, wouldn’t it just have been easier (and cheaper) to pay for and replace the guitar? Hell, buy the whole band new guitars and maybe it might have been a positive music video?
Again let’s put that in perspective. 15,000 views at about 4 minutes each (the duration of the music video) = how much time spent on negative brand association? Buying up the equivalent amount of 30 second spots won’t save you. And nothing United Airlines does will prevent this video from being viewed again and again for many years to come either.
I bet many companies fear this happening to them.
Stop.
Mistakes are going to happen. It’s about solving them the first time and solving them right. Not about ignoring them and letting them blow up in your face.
