At a recent Social Media event we got to talking about the Motrin social media [incident]. One of the threads that jumped out at me was the part about the mommies who responded happen to really speak out late on a Friday night. And by Sunday, Motrin has responded and removed the ads that started the whole issue–just 2 days later.
This scenario and others just like it are proving that social media never sleeps and therefore the social media team has to be ready to respond 24/7/365.
Some may feel like the pendulum has swung too far in instances like these–I agree–but I also feel its not coming back. And I am ok with that. I think as social media marketers we are doing our brands a huge service by humanizing them and caring enough to show it in our response times.
I have been asked: What is a reasonable response time on Twitter or Blog comment? I feel a few hours is probably right. Since in Twitter or Tweetdeck (or whatever tool you are using to monitor) there are built in delay times. So real time (or near real time) is out of the question (at least for now). Given that you may be busy putting your kids to bed when something like the Motrin issue hit–I have to think 3 hours is probably a good target.
The issue quickly becomes–what happens if it is a really tough issue–that can’t be triaged with just a single Tweet. Where you need to assemble a team as Motrin did. Well, I guess there is no weekend in social media because social media never takes a vacation!
What do you think? How can marketers prepare for 24/7/365 social media?
Tags: Social Media, Twitter
I think as marketers, when we’re using Twitter, we need to ensure we’re setting reasonable expectations on how often the account is being monitored.
If we don’t have the internal resources to monitor our social media accounts 24/7/365, we should be communicating that through all our accounts, and providing alternate means of communication for the public to submit their comments and concerns (email?), with a promise to respond within X hours (2 or 3) as soon as business resumes for the day/week.
It’s certainly a fine line to walk, but I think there’s an important distinction between being a responsible and responsive business, and being held hostage by an unreasonable mob (which is what happened with the Motrin twitstorm) with unreasonable demands for when the company should respond.
FWIW I think Motrin did a great job handling the outcry, and perhaps showed a good lesson that we should re-think when we launch campaigns as well.
A 24-7 response team is more feasible for corporations, Paul. For small/medium businesses and nonprofits, it’s impossible. What do you recommend for cases like this?
I think that we live in a world where people understand we are global-ized. We need to respond quickly but I think most people will understand a delay based on time of day. If marketers can respond on weekends: Great. But I don’t think that the average person expects that fast a response out of business hours. I think that when something is posted in business hours, that is an urgent issue, the suggested 3 hour delay is reasonable.