Facebook brand fails are a common and pervasive side effect of the widespread difficulty many entities have in figuring out how to use social media for business.
It seems no one is immune — big or small, millions of fans or fewer, Facebook brand fails are everywhere. Nevermind we don’t even see most of any given brand’s missteps on the social network, the ones we do see are enough to illustrate how truly little most businesses appreciate the importance of social media.
Facebook brand fails are, it seems, ubiquitous for reasons such as generational divide that make it so established marketing arms for companies just simply don’t get the purpose of social media.
A double-edged sword — social media for business is seen as an extension of social media for fun, and thus Facebook brand fails proliferate. While the sins are many (“like” whoring, dissonant content, failure to compel Facebook followers due to shallow self-promotion being just a few), the examples are even more legion and jarring.
But Facebook brand fails are clearly not apparent to whoever is making the big bucks to populate the pages of brands large and small with content to do (let’s face it) what all branded communication does — boost profits by upping user engagement and improving sentiment. It seems far too many brands believe by sheer merit of being on Facebook (or Twitter) they’re doing enough with their social media presence.
Of course, we could do dozens of separate articles on Facebook brand fails for individual reasons or featuring individual companies. There’s a lot of ground to cover, but for social media users such errors or poorly presented posts are immediately noticeable, even if you’re not exactly sure why.
(From the page linked below, the lazy and ineffectual “like, comment or share” call to no action — it prompts users to engage, but offers little value to both brands and “fans” in the way of meaningful interaction.)
But if you’re in a schadenfreude-y mood, and want to look at some Facebook brand fail porn, an awesome opposite-of-fail Facebook page not only documents them — it also serves as an indirect primer about how not to manage a company’s social media presence.
“Condescending Corporate Brand Page” finds real-life examples of Facebook don’ts from companies across the social network, and presents them in such a way that any aspiring social media manager should be checking in regularly to get tips on tone and content in some fast, free lessons.
But then again, it’s entertaining — let’s hope that all the companies don’t get on the social media for business stick right away, so we can be evilly amused by their Facebook fails for a long time to come.
0 Comments