In business, sooner or later, everyone makes mistakes. How you get on in the long term however depends upon your ability to learn from them. In terms of the way age is calculated in the business world, Facebook is still a young company and as such it is prone to gaffes. While that is to be expected and excused when it comes to the learning curve displayed afterwards the steepness one expects from the 'bright whizz kids' there is sadly not evident.
Back in May, for example, Facebook was outed as the hand behind PR agency's Burson-Marsteller, anti-Google campaign which directly attacked the search giant on its reputation on privacy. Just a month before Facebook had run in hot water over the ad-hoc banning of Facebook Pages without as much as an adequate explanation or recourse for an appeal.
Without a doubt the introduction of Google+ other_posts_by is creating waves at the Palo Alto base of the world's largest social network. In July Zuckerberg created media waves by announcing a presentation which would reveal 'awesome' products at Facebook. The event was a fizz with the Facebook CEO showing a product that was already in place (Facebook Groups) being 'gifted' with a capability (video chat) that Google+ already offers and bests by allowing group video chats in the Hangout function.
Panic is not the kind of reaction you expect to last for long however. For social media to benefit the end-user you expect a robust response from Facebook and some healthy competition. There is no getting away from the fact that Facebook has 10% of the world's population in its user base. Were it to move fast, shed its university campus autocratic ways and become membership-centric it would be more than enough to stop it haemorrhaging members to Google+ and it would up the ante in the social network game.
Sadly there is no evidence of this happening just yet. Facebook, which in 2011 set out to woo journalists, has been consistently taking aim at its own foot with the biggest guns it can find. This month it banned a user's account for placing a Facebook ad asking people to add him to their circles in Google+. While banning the ad itself could conceivably be justified based on some of Facebook's guidelines regarding ads, banning the user's all other ad campaigns which were not breaking the rules smacks of petty reprisal and just the kind of autocratic behaviour Facebook has been trying to convince us it has shed.
Its faux-pas is a valuable lesson in how to deal with mistakes in social media marketing:
- Respond fast and apologise loudly. Google made a massive mistake when in launched Buzz, breaking its own privacy rules. It apologised quickly and very publicly, rolled back changes it had made and voluntarily agreed to oversight scrutiny for five years.
- Place the end-user first. It does not matter how great the functionality, content or design you introduce, may be. If it does not immediately reflect upon the direct and pressing needs of your user base then it is largely irrelevant. In 2008 Microsoft rolled back an expensive re-design of its popular Hotmail interface when users overheated the blogosphere with their complaints regarding its look and user-friendliness.
- Remember it's a service culture. The web is the largest service market there is with every site and every app fighting for customers. If you behave like a despot you are unlikely to win the hearts and minds of the people whose custom you need to attract.
- Remember it's a public medium. The web is not a private communication channel. Everything you do there is ran through the sieve as observers try to gauge your identity and real set of values. If you have no overriding motto guiding you which can serve as an instant check on everything you do you run the risk of appearing dictatorial, inconsistent and, even, a little sinister.
- It's your failures that are remembered the most. Facebook was instrumental in offering a viable communication channel when Egypt underwent through its recent political upheaval. Yet we will remember it most vividly for targeting a sole developer and acting pettily.
- Stake the moral high ground. On the web reputation matters and the way you behave is seen as the test of whether you can walk the walk or just talk the talk. Facebook may want to change the world but it really needs to change its own culture first to be fairer and more forgiving.
The web is vast. It is also incredibly personal and direct and no one can hide in it. If you want your social media marketing to succeed you do not need to never make mistakes, you need to be able to learn from them and become better.