Now that the twitter storm around Gillian McKeith has died down, it's probably a good time for Social Media experts to reflect on the lessons we can learn from the whole episode.
For fairly obvious reasons, we won't go into detail about the details of all the allegations and counter allegations but in summary this is what happened…
Someone said something about Gillian on Twitter – this was a fairly innocuous phrase said by a private individual with only 50 followers
The person managing the @gillianmckeith account took exception to this and fired off a volley of messages insulting the original poster and accusing a well known journalist of lying. At this point the messages came to wider attention.
Sensing that the @gillianmckeith messages may be seen in an unfortunate light they were not retracted but simply deleted then the account was disowned as not being the official Gillian McKeith account (despite being linked to from "official" websites and Facebook pages) These links were then erased.
In the end a single tweet from a very small twitterer resulted in Gillian McKeith trending behind only Raoul Moat on Twitter for a couple of days and a very large number of influential tweeters railing against her.
Hardly a glittering PR coup.
So what can we learn from this?
Silence can be Golden
Clearly whoever runs the @gillianmckeith account regularly monitors twitter for any mention of Gillian. This makes perfect sense. Any business needs to know what people are saying about their company or their brand. However what doesn't make sense is reacting to every comment.
Firstly reading and responding to every comment would be too time consuming and at best irrelevant or at worst counter-productive. Few people would like to know that major companies are tracking their every step on-line and being cyber-stalked is an uncomfortable experience (hardly likely to make you want to buy from the company stalking you is it?).
If you feel it's necessary to keep track of someone who is regularly talking about you then it may be worth following them just in case they stray from idle chatter into active complaints but be subtle.
When I first started in selling I was told "you have two ears, two eyes and one mouth. Use them in that proportion" and that applies equally for Social Media.
Once anything is published on-line it can't be removed
Twitter has a delete button for any tweets, its handy if you've made a spelling mistake or put a broken link into a tweet but don't for a minute imagine it can magically turn back time on that huge mistake you made. Just like delete on a PC doesn't actually delete anything then deleting a tweet will leave traces of those messages in dozens of places.
After the storm hit, @gillianmckeith first deleted the tweets, then switched to third person writing (to presumably distance @gillianmckeith the account from Gillian McKeith the individual) then tried to delete any linkage between the account and the rest of the company. With the benefit of Google Caching and some sixth form level HTML work all these activities were gleefully tracked and reported on - making the situation worse.
There is a reason it's called "quick and dirty"
The great thing about Twitter and Facebook is the immediacy of the medium. You can comment on (and follow other people's comments on) TV programmes whilst you are watching them – it's like having all your mates on the sofa simultaneously.
But Business Marketing campaigns aren't like that. They may start with a drunken chat around a pub table but before they see the light of day they have a lot of sober, considered planning.
This sober filtering of the drunken brainstorming ensures that all the really daft and possibly illegal stuff is thrown away before the public sees anything (though looking at some campaigns you do often wonder!)
All this reminds me of that wonderful 1970's Green Cross Code – Before Crossing the Road. Stop, Look and Listen. For Social Media this should be
Before Posting a Message. Look, Listen, then Stop (and Think)
Basically when using Social Media to promote your business there is a single maxim to follow…
Don't use Social Media for anything you wouldn't be prepared to print in a newspaper
If you follow that then hopefully your Social Media Marketing campaign won't fall off the rails!
Karl Meyer
Associate, Spice
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