Digital Digest: Failed Communities

Digital Digest: What Edelman Canada is reading in digital marketing, technology and strategy. Fresh links served up Fridays.

Nearly three years ago, Mark Hendrickson left his day job to found Plancast, a social network that helps friends share their plans and get together in real life. Unfortunately, user adoption was slow and it never achieved the needed critical mass. Mark’s detailed and loving post-mortem on Plancast (see last item) is a reminder that despite our best intentions communities sometimes fail.

Increasingly communicators and marketers are engaging directly with customers to create passionate communities around their products, services and a shared vision. But as Mark learned, the threat of community failure is never that far away. This week’s edition of Edelman Canada’s Digital Digest examines communities that failed to thrive, or that hurt the brand rather than help it.

- Matthew Hayles, Editor

Case Study: H&M Hit With Social Media Backlash

Keeping a professional tone in a crisis is a key skill for community managers. When H&M’s Facebook Page exploded with allegations that it had copied an artist’s work for its products, the company wasn’t prepared and its first response alienated customers. Having avoided its ounce of prevention, H&M’s team is stuck with pounds to cure. The lesson? Putting simple crisis response and escalation guidelines in place empowers your community managers to handle customer complaints quickly and professionally, so that you can focus on building a flourishing community for your customers.

The Consumerist: H&M Hit With Social Media Backlash

Disclosure: Levi’s, a competitor to H&M, is an Edelman client in the U.S.

Twitter Bots Create Surprising New Social Connections

Strong peer-to-peer connections are a key sign of a healthy network. A new research paper suggests that “socialbots” – automated Twitter profile that retweet messages and introduce human users to each other – can “catalyze new human-to-human connections” and help kick-start communities. Are some communities failing because we have humans managing them?

Technology Review: Twitter Bots Create Surprising New Social Connections

Facebook Pages Only Reach 17% Of Fans

Fans rarely come back to visit a Facebook Page after liking it, making it harder for organizations to sustain community momentum. In order to keep your customers’ attention your content needs to appear in their News Feed so that they can like, comment and engage with their peers. Unfortunately, new data from EdgeRank Checker found that the average Page is reaching just one of every six fans – a dramatic drop compared to six months ago. This post from All Facebook outlines four tips for ensuring your content is getting the most exposure it can on Facebook.

All Facebook: Facebook Pages Only Reach 17% Of Fans

Case Study: McDonald’s Loses Control of Hashtag

When McDonald’s launched the #McDStories stories hashtag, it quickly became a trending topic on Twitter – but not for the reasons the world’s largest hamburger chain had expected. Twitter users quickly jumped into the public conversation to share their own “crude, funny or devastating” stories about McDonald’s. No brand is ever 100% in control online, but developing a thorough understanding of your community and customers, and using that intelligence to inform program development, is a good place to start.

Paidcontent.org: McDonald’s Loses Control of Hashtag

Disclosure: Darden, a competitor to McDonalds’s, is an Edelman client in the U.S.

Just 13% of internal social networks succeed

“Achieving critical mass is difficult for any community,” writes Adi Gaskell in Social Business News. That is especially true for internal social networks – launched in the workplace to encourage employee engagement and collaboration – which aren’t seeing the needed user adoption. How can this challenge be overcome? Adi outlines six tips for building an internal social network that delivers the results you want.

Social Business News: Just 13% of internal social networks succeed

Disclosure: LinkedIn, mentioned in this article, is an Edelman client.

Case Study: The 9 User Behaviours That Killed Plancast

The reality is that sometimes communities fail because the value to customers just isn’t compelling. In this detailed post-mortem, Plancast founder Mark Hendrickson examines why his service, a social site for planning events, never gained traction with consumers.

TechCrunch: The 9 User Behaviours That Killed Plancast

Edelman Canada’s Digital Digest is a weekly bundle of links, served up on Edelman Canada’s Our Ideas blog on Fridays. It’s also available by email. If you know someone who would like to be added to the mailing list, have any questions or just want to share some thoughts on anything you read here, email me. Let’s get a conversation going.

Digital Digest is edited by Matthew Hayles.