8 Mistakes Big Brands Make Fighting a Social Media War

Larry Chiang writes about hacking business and school. After a Harvard Business School keynote, they wrote: “What They Don’t Teach You at Stanford Business School“. If you read his scandalously awesome “What They STILL Don’t Teach You at Stanford About Getting Revenge” and, “What They STILL Don’t Teach at GSB About Public Speaking” you will like his latest post about Getting VCs to Pitch Us Entrepreneurs.

If you spend 60 minutes reading his stuff, you’ll be street smart by St Patrick’s Day.

By Larry Chiang

8 Mistakes Big Brands Make Fighting a Social Media War

Nothing attracts human interest more than conflict.

Mammals love watching mammals fight and its the most popular stuff on Animal Planet. Well, Twitter status updates are all the rage so naturally conflict here attracts the most coverage.

Big brands are notoriously bad at this new medium where the exception is more notable than the norm. The norm = bad

Here are the biggest mistakes I have viewed first hand

-1- Non Transparency.

If you’re a big brand tweeting, who exactly is the voice.

PB Works does it right using a great employee spokesperson David Weekly. And that hottie that does community Christie

-2- Using a logo as your Twitter Pic

Nothing says corporate more than an effen logo as an avatar. Have you seen the graphic designers joke, “Use the cream, ‘Make my logo bigger'”. It’s hi-larry-ass but sad because its true.

Have you seen Duck9 website. We made and keep making that mistake.

-3- Forgetting Sex Sells

Yelp has an incredibly hawt smart female running community.

I don’t know exactly what my point is or was… but I read in a Stanford business book that sex sells. Ka-pow, I just saved you

-4- Learn to Say Sorry

If your brand was a big donkey, apologize.

There was a big venture capital firm that told me I was dumb and that my idea would never work. I wrote a Yelp review and paid $3k for inbound links to my review. They apologized and I dropped it.

-5- Don’t Fire Back

After my review of State Farm, a review was written about my company to mock my experience.

Never fire back.

Cite defendable truths and at least claim to “continue investigations of this internal business practice”

-6- Empower All Employees to Tweet

Remember, in a time where nearly everything records and nearly everyone is part of the media, your employee statements

-7- Remove the Disclaimer

“I’m an employee of Duck9 but these words are my own” is a legal disclaimer that my night school trained attorney can pierce.

-8- The Ostrich, Camel Toe and MooseKnuckle

In short don’t stick your head in the sand if you’re a big brand. In the comments, add your thoughts

-9- How to Recover From a Black Eye
Business is about not hitting the panic button.
One consumer with 20 twitter followers can stain your reputation with a compelling story.

Social Media War party is happening at South by Southwest (SXSW). For the first time at SXSW, there is the Social Media War party. It has the food tab supported by State Farm. And just like life, if State Farm doesn’t pay, I Larry Chiang will.
http://bit.ly/buster10

I wrote this in 30 minutes. If I missed something, email me… larry @larrychiang dot com and include your cell in the subject line.

DISCLOSURE: I kick a lot of butt. Text or call me during office hours 11:11am or 11:11pm PST +/-11 minutes on my cell: 650-283-8008.

Larry Chiang is the founder of Duck9 , which educates college students on how to establish and maintain a FICO score over 750. He is a frequent contributor to BusinessWeek. His earlier posts on GigaOm include: How to Work The Room ; 8 Tips On How to Get Mentored ; and 9 VCs You’re Gonna Want To Avoid . You can read more equally funny, but non-founder-focused-lessons on Larry’s Amazon blog .