Businesses must pay strict attention to their Facebook fan pages and think of them as extensions of their overall marketing campaigns, and have clear policies in place to solve any disasters, an online expert has warned.
The comments come after food giant Nestle has been criticised for a recent bungle in which its Facebook fan page was littered with criticisms, with a PR representative from the company hitting back with sarcastic remarks.
The incident began when environmental activist group Greenpeace launched a new video campaign targeting Nestle and the effects of its suppliers moving deep into forests to obtain palm oil ingredients, hurting the habitats of endangered species, specifically Orangutans.
According to a statement from Greenpeace on their website, Nestle attempted to have the video removed from YouTube.
This sparked a flood of protests from Greenpeace supporters on the company’s official Facebook page. A number of comments were posted against the company by activists, including statements promoting an outright boycott and others suggesting the group is one of the world’s greatest environmental destroyers.
Nestle responded with a tepid comment, saying “we welcome your comments, but please don’t post using an altered version of any of our logos as your profile pic – they will be deleted”. This was in response to activists using image altering software to change the company’s logo.
This sparked more protests from Greenpeace members, to which Nestle replied with a statement saying, “Oh please… it’s like we’re censoring everything to allow only positive comments”.
However, following more protests, the representative apologised and said that, “This (deleting logos) was one in a series of mistakes for which I would like to apologise. And for being rude. We’ve stopped deleting posts, and I have stopped being rude”.
James Griffin, chief executive of online reputation management group SR7, says the incident was handled badly and it serves as an example to other companies marketing on Facebook.
“I think it’s hard to see why Nestle didn’t have a crisis management plan come into action, and if they have one, it hasn’t been a very good one. You have to acknowledge the fact that when you engage in social media you are giving people a stage to complain about your brand – and that goes as part of embracing social media as marketing.”
Griffin says businesses, especially SMEs, that are looking to get into social media through Facebook must first think carefully about how they will construct their sites, and how they will handle any problems that arise as a result.
“We are finding that clients are warming up to the idea that when you introduce a social networking campaign, it has to involve a larger set of stakeholders than just the marketing department but also HR, risk managers and so on – because it can become out of control”.
“Some people think putting up a Facebook page is quick and easy and you can just leave it, but that is an extremely dangerous way to approach it because it needs to be considered at a higher level. You need to think about whether you will delete comments, if a legitimate criticism is made, then think about how you approach it, think about how you deal with conversations and so on.”
Griffin says many businesses don’t understand how devastating the consequences of a failed Facebook campaign can be, and suggests Nestle needs to shape up its marketing practices and take online reputation management seriously.
“Nestle have about 92,000 fans on its page, and what are they going to do with it? Are they going to abandon it, have it spammed by disgruntled customers or something else? They need to think about what is the next step, because a Facebook fan page is a long-term project… for any business.”
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
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