Social Strategy

By now the stack of case studies showing how social media can cause huge disruptions for companies is fairly large. Yesterday it seemed like yet another example would be added to the list.

At 11:30am a well established 'mommy blogger,' @crissy, tweeted a post from her blog, Dear Crissy, calling out Toyota for a shady email pitch she received.

The email came from MommyNetworks.org and it offered bloggers a chance to "score" a $10.00 Amazon gift card for helping to spread positive news about Toyota. The email provided links to positive content about Toyota and asked the bloggers to rate, share or otherwise promote these links and report the activity back to MommyNetworks to claim the gift card. (Read full text here)

In the text of the email a direct connection with Toyota was never established, but the language of the email heavily implied that Toyota was behind the effort. Of course, Crissy found this communication to be offensive and so she shared the story on her blog and with her 33,000+ followers on Twitter. Before long other 'mommy bloggers' had picked up the story and #toyotafail was on it's way to becoming the next #motrinmoms or Domino's Pizza disaster.

That is, if Toyota hadn't been actively monitoring their Twitter conversations in their CoTweet inbox. Within hours of Crissy's tweet, @Toyota issued a response

And the result was an overwhelming turn in the tide of sentiment related to the incident.

Toyota used CoTweet to track incoming messages and the data shows that their timely response made all the difference:

There are several important lessons to be learned here.

#1 - The entire incident took less than 15 hours from first tweet to negligible levels of volume. Speed is critical. As soon as Toyota responded, the sentiment reversed dramatically and total volume peaked only an hour later.

#2 - Honesty is a virtue. Toyota had the truth on their side and was able to clear their name simply by setting the record straight. They had no affiliation with the company that sent the email, and that fact was later confirmed by that same company. However, had that not been the case, lying would have only stirred the pot.

#3 - Fact checking is hard in situations like this. MommyNetworks never claimed to be sponsored by Toyota, but they did use a brand name in such a way that it was represented as if it was affiliated. Crissy had no reason to think that Toyota hadn't been involved and blogs aren't held to the standard that traditional journalism is. She presented the story as she saw it. Social media is a fantastic tool for spreading information, but there's no guarantee that the information is correct. Brands have to be on alert in order to correct any false assumptions before they reach critical mass.

#4 - Track it. Toyota immediately set up custom tags within CoTweet to track the conversations around this incident. That information can now be used to create internal insights - training material, PR follow up and measurement.

This story has a happy ending. But it should serve as a warning. Are you prepared to tackle an incident like this? Do you have systems in place to surface these types of messages before they go viral? Who would respond? How? If you can't answer those questions, now is the time to put a plan in place.

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