Twitstorm
Here’s a new term to put in your customer satisfaction vocabulary: TwitStorm. What is a TwitStorm? According to Mike Kilroy’s recent article, Beware the Twitstorm, it is the conflagration that occurs when a nasty reputation-damaging tweet on Twitter, true or not gets retweeted, over and over again, to thousands. He calls the Tiger Woods situation the ‘greatest TwitStorm of them all’
Managing a company’s brand or reputation has become exponentially more difficult with social media and in particular Twitter. There are several links in his article to situations at Wendys, Kryptonite Bike Locks, and Twitter use of the hashtag #recall.
For those unfamiliar with the term #hashtag, this is the ability to create a following on Twitter using a phrase preceded by a #. A check on the Twitter using #Tiger, or #Tigerwoods or #Woods or #Nike yielded a new video on the negative affect of Nike’s dependence on Tiger Woods for revenue and their potential revenue loss due to the current scandal.
Basically no wife is going to buy her husband Nike products for Christmas, birthdays or Father’s day. Nor will she be pleased to see her husband wearing Nike items because of the close association between Nike and Tiger Woods. See this video.
The new best practices for Reputation Management require organizations to track social media, and Twitter, in particular, to avoid being blindsided. A company or brand reputation can be destroyed overnight with a slow or non-existent response.
December 23rd, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Thanks for the shoutout regarding my TwitStorm post, Adele. I think you capture the urgency with “The new best practices for Reputation Management require organizations to track social media, and Twitter, in particular, to avoid being blindsided.”
What’s shocking is how few companies are paying attention, or just leaving it to low-level employees. Guess some lessons have to be learned first.
January 9th, 2010 at 11:10 am
There is also an article out about the loss of shareholder value by Tiger Woods’ sponsors. It is estimated between $5 – 12 Billion. See the report at http://bit.ly/6pTf8c