Up until Twitter became mainstream, brands didn’t have to worry too much about a mass backlash – unless it made it to the papers. Now, more and more brands are slipping up when it comes to underestimating the amount of power the Twitter community has.

Already this year, a number of brands have slipped up.

H&M

H&M followed in the footsteps of others, like Paperchase, who have been accused of using designs from up and coming artists without their permission. This time designer Tori LaConsay has pointed out some striking similarities between her work and the designs on several of their home accessories.

Initially, H&M released the following statement:

“We employ an independent team of over 100 designers. We can assure you that this design has not been influenced by your work and that no copyright has been infringed.”

But after a Twitter campaign, complete with hashtag, and promotion by Regretsy, the high street store has apologised on their Facebook page to those that ‘think we have copied”.

LA Fitness

Next up to feel the wrath of the Twitter community was LA Fitness. This time, it concerned a couple who were unable to continue their 24-month gym contract as she was pregnant, he had been made redundant, and they both had to move 12 miles away without a car to commute.

LA Fitness apparently refused to let them out of the contract. It was only after several hours of pressure from Twitter users that they gave in and allowed the couple to close their contract. Sadly, this was too late for LA Fitness, whose reputation has taken a serious beating.

McDonald’s

McDonald’s attempted a Twitter campaign this week to encourage users to tweet positive messages about the brand, using the hashtag #McDStories

Sadly for them, the stories ended up being a little more like this:

#McDStories Take a McDonalds fry, let it sit for 6 months. It will not deteriorate or spoil like a normal potato. It will remain how it was

Once the hashtag was out there, McDonald’s lost all control of it. Bit of a hard lesson, and one they probably could have learnt before – it’s hardly the first time this has happened.

Claire’s Accessories vs. Tatty Devine

It’s not the first time we’ve seen a small brand highlight a very similar product that a bigger brand has released a similar version of. But Claire’s Accessories’ biggest failing was their social media approach during the crisis. The company deleted any negative post on their Facebook wall and barely mentioned the claims by Tatty Devine on their  Facebook or  Twitter pages. Sometimes, no news can be as damaging as bad news.

So, despite brands being on Twitter for a couple of years now, it’s clear some still don’t realise just how much say a Twitter community has.

Handy, but just how many sites do you give permission to? Depending on the site, you can be giving them access to a LOT of your personal information.

Considering the security issues Facebook often faces, this may not be a good thing.

If you’re not sure who you’ve given access too, you might want to visit http://mypermissions.org. Visit the site then click on the icons for your favourite social media sites. As a cautious user, I didn’t expect to see too many sites with permission on my Facebook account. In fact, 50+ can access my details! I suspect many of those are from when I’ve used an application within Facebook. Scary.

I only checked Twitter a couple of weeks ago, so I wasn’t expecting to see many on there. But I was still surprised to see so many new ones. I’ve signed up to quite a few sites in the last few weeks, but I’ll be a lot more careful now.

Overall, I’m shocked by how much personal information I’m giving away. While businesses are unlikely to use it as often, it’s still worth having a spring clean of your accounts.

It is somewhat ironic, though, that you have to sign in to see which sites have your details..

To maximise his business, Rashid uses the social networks to let people know his whereabouts, receive discounts and book him. An example of one of his tweets is:

“Good morning #Chicago!! It’s a wet wet day here. 41°. Take $5 OFF the meter from now till 2PM to any airport from anywhere. :-) #ORD #MDW”

Interestingly, Rashid didn’t actually start out using social media as a marketing tool. He explains:

“I started Twitter thinking I’ll talk to people about taxi industry of Chicago. I feel there is a gap between taxi drivers and customers and there are lots of misunderstandings. They both are in such a defensive mode. They both feel like they have to protect themselves from the other and it’s just so wrong. I joined Twitter to eliminate the gap between a taxi customer and taxi driver.”

Rashid is even tech-savvy enough to offer free wi-fi in his cab (and accepts credit card payments for those that don’t carry cash). It really is no wonder people are happy to use him time and time again.

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard about a taxi company using social media to get the competitive edge. @tweetalondoncab lets you book a taxi in London by sending a simple DM to the account. They’ll then reply straight away with a booking confirmation. Handy if you’re in a busy or loud place and don’t have time to nip out and make a call.

Source: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2012/01/old-services-meet-new-media-a-tweeting-cabbies-growing-business.ars

Some of the stats are unsurprising – it’s rather predictable that 1 in 6 workers use social media to get hired, considering how many people are now on LinkedIn and Facebook. Interestingly though, Facebook beat Twitter and LinkedIn together when it came to the number of jobs it has helped people land. 18,400,000 Americans believed Facebook helped them get their current job, compared to 10,200,000 on LinkedIn and 800,000 on Twitter.

This is pretty surprising. After all, LinkedIn is more typically considered the best professional network for job hunters; Facebook is the more ‘social’ and casual of the networks.

If you’re looking to find a job this year, pay close attention to the tips at the bottom of this infographic.

Source: Mashable

The infographic above is an interesting one for demonstrating the influence the internet now has on our buying behaviours. The following points were particularly interesting:

• 20% of social consumers use Facebook to research products at least once a week.
• Facebook, YouTube and Review Sites have the most influence on shoppers. Interestingly, Twitter, Blog Posts and Facebook Comments feature in the bottom five influences. Considering how often many of us use Twitter to crowdsource, and blog posts to get an honest review of products, I’m surprised to see these rank lower than online ads and news articles.
• After online interaction, 31% of people are promoted to purchase, 20% are prompted to recommend but 26% take no action.

Overall, the general message of this infographic is that a successful online marketing strategy can’t just be about Facebook and Twitter. While these ‘owned’ methods help, search (Google etc.) and earned methods (ratings and review sites and blog posts etc.) are just as important.

When Facebook’s top gallery first came out, people got really carried away customising it. Unsurprisingly, the tech heads have got together again and created a video tutorial showing how to customise your Twitter photo gallery.

Business users can showcase products, logos or a specific message on their page, hopefully inspiring the admiration of those all-important “key influentials” on Twitter.

The only downside is that images only show up if they’re uploaded to Twitter or sites like Instagram and Flickr. I’ve tested it out with an account that feeds in most of its content from its company Facebook page, and none of the images show up.

It’s also worth remembering that any photos you tweet in the future will push your customised gallery back, so you may have to repeatedly upload them.

If you want to try customising the gallery on your Twitter profile, take a look at the video below.

It’s actually a great example to show anyone that utters the words “But why would I use more than one social network?” It highlights the subtle differences between the networks, which attract varied audiences – or the same audiences using sites in very different ways. For example, those who love to share their dinner with Flickr or Tumblr are unlikely to have the same affection for Meetup – unless they also love finding business networking groups, or local knitting meet-ups.

Overall, it demonstrates that social media is all about sharing – it’s just a different approach for how they share it.

What do you think? Do you use multiple social networks?

We’re all familiar with the stereotypes of high school – the Jock, the Geek, the Prom Queen…but what if a high school was made up of Social Media sites?

Flowtown has put together this cute infographic of what type of student each social media site represents. For example, Twitter and Google lead the class as Gossip Girl and Prep, while Wikileaks is rather predictably the ‘Anarchist’.

Which student would you be?

Twitter allows you to get in contact with companies and influential people who you might not have been able to before. This contact can give you the edge over the competition, and help you land your perfect role.

Here are ten tips for Twitter success in the job market.

1) Desperate to work for a certain company? Follow them on Twitter. More and more companies use Twitter as a first port of call to advertise their vacancies.

2) Use that Twitter bio to pimp yourself out. That little space should be your sales pitch, and it’s often the deciding factor for whether people will follow you or not. Give them a reason to follow you. Describing your favourite sandwich filling or revealing the name of your cat is not what employers are looking for (unless the employer is Marmite. Or the RSPCA.)

3) Consider posting a TwitCV. Squeeze your experience, ambitions and skills into a tweet (leaving room so others can retweet you) and you might just catch the eye of that perfect employer.

4) Use the link in your profile for your online portfolio. There are a few free options about, like extendr.com, and you could always link to your LinkedIn page or blog if you prefer.

5) Communicate! Chat to other people, use it as a networking tool and share other people’s content. You never know what opportunities you could pick up from these new contacts. A friendly, informative tweeter is always more likely to get a follow.

6) Check your spelling and grammar. Install a dictionary to your browser and make sure you use it! Consider installing After The Deadline too for a last check. Twitter is full of journalists, PRs and bloggers, and they can spot bad grammar a mile off.

7) Got a blog or website? Tweet your latest posts (2-3 times a day to catch different time zones). Your followers can then easily access your ‘About Me’ and ‘Hire Me’ pages.

8) Search for hashtags and keywords relevant to your chosen career area, read up and share as much content as you can. Basically, if you want a career in a certain field, you’ll need to prove that you know your stuff and that you’re constantly learning. Consider signing up to an edition of paper.li, which gives you a daily roundup of content related to your Twitter account or keyword.

9) Don’t overshare. Twitter is social, but a potential employer can see what you’re saying, and many employers now do a social media search before inviting candidates to interview. Try to keep your hangover/relationship/bored statuses to Facebook when possible.

10) Try a Twitter job search engine, like TwitJobSearch.com, which can help you find the latest jobs that agencies and employers have tweeted about.

While Facebook clearly earns a large profit from its advertising options, Twitter still appears to be struggling with its sponsored tweets concept. If a company is not achieving a high turnover, how can such high valuations be justified?

The piece appears to compare the current tech bubble to the dot.com bubble of 1999. But as one of the readers ‘jbernard703′, who commented on the piece, pointed out, “There is no bubble because no “real” money has been dumped into these companies as of yet”.

The closest example of the social media bubble bursting was seen when Yahoo decided to retire social bookmarking site Delicious, due to the lack of profit model. However, the service was later bought by YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, and it’s currently valued at $15-30 million.

So, have we learnt from the dot.com bubble? Or is the situation likely to occur again?

Source: Mashable