Is social media heralding the invention of a brave new world?  Some would have you think so.  There are a lot of people who make good money ‘making social media work for you.’  Remember – be scared, be careful, be in awe of new technology… etc.

Newest example: three staffers in US Congressman Rick Larsen’s office were fired after their tweets revealed “A December to Remember” (hashtag #D2R). Two male and one female staffers were canned after tweets revealed plans to arrive at the office drunk, continue drinking, and essentially party away December.

Now, the knee jerk reaction from some is to point the finger at Twitter.  “See – social media is the harbinger of doom!  It’s a brave new world!”  But I want to quickly point out:  Social media did not get them fired.  Being IDIOTS got them fired.

I get the distinct impression that if you’re stupid enough to drink your month away while working for a politician, you’re going to find ways to get yourself fired.  The fact it was via Twitter is entirely incidental.

I’m a little disappointed that the three of them didn’t invent an entirely new way of highlighting their idiocy to the world.

In many ways, it’s self-explanatory – ignoring your customers isn’t the best idea.  Yet it’s shocking how many organizations continue to charge down the hallways of business wearing a blindfold.

Many of you will be familiar with the infamous Domino’s Pizza debacle.  A number of employees posted youtube videos of rather disgusting behaviour, which became a viral Internet sensation.  It took three days before Domino’s smartened up, discovered what was happening, and was able to respond.   But give Domino’s credit – at least they chose to respond.

The newest case of ludicrous behaviour comes to us from NAS (North American Sports) – the owners of  “Ironman Canada.”  The Canadian Ironman race is typical of a big name triathlon– over 3,000 entrants who pay over $600 each to swim, bike and run through Penticton, British Columbia.

NAS outsources the registration of its races to a company which was unaware that the British Columbia Provincial Government has recently changed its taxation laws.  Somehow,  3,000 people signed up for an “Ironman” race without being charged the proper amount of sales tax.

When NAS recognized the error last weekend, they sent an email to all registrants, on the Friday of the US Thanksgiving weekend.  In the interest of accuracy, I’ve reproduced it here:

Dear Subaru Ironman Canada Entrant,

As many of you may be aware, effective July 1, 2010 British Columbia moved to a harmonized provincial and federal sales tax at a combined rate of 12%. This has been a controversial and confusing tax change but it is the law and therefore must be collected on all sale of goods and services. Unfortunately when your entry to the 2011 Subaru Ironman Canada was processed through Active, HST was not collected on the entry fee. This has recently been brought to our attention and we are obligated to collect that tax.

To that end, the credit card that you used to enter the race will be charged $69, the amount of the HST on the entry fee. We will begin processing the charges on Monday, November 29th and these will be complete by December 10th. Should you wish to have this charge applied to a different credit card or if the one you used to enter has expired, please contact our athlete services center at admin@nasports.com or 877-377-2373. We apologize for this error and any inconvenience it may cause.

And then hell broke loose. A number of online forums effectively exploded , while both the “Ironman” and “Ironman Canada” Facebook pages started receiving postings from upset customers.  Customers were furious that they weren’t consulted, that their credit cards were going to be charged without permission, and there was widespread confusion over how NAS came up with the $69 figure.

How did NAS respond?  They didn’t.

Because the customers were ignored, the fury continued unabated Saturday and Sunday.  By Monday, the online dialogue had changed.  It was no longer “How dare they do this?” but “Why won’t they talk to us?”

Even the irate triathletes were getting in on the action, suggesting ways NAS could have brokered the news.  Had NAS responded right away on Monday with a  “Folks, we hear you.  We are sorry.  Clearly, you are upset.  Please give us 24 hours to work this out?” chances are good all could be forgiven.

So, on Monday, how did NAS respond?  They didn’t.

No – the questions remained unanswered. And since they were being ignored, the online discussions turned to talk of class action lawsuits and mass protests.

At the end of day Tuesday, NAS finally sent out an email, but it, too, was woefully inadequate – ignoring a number of the very concerns being raised by racers.   Facing revolt, Ironman has announced that the $69 additional charge would be ‘voluntary.’  Not surprisingly, a large number of the ‘ignored’ athlete customers have announced they have no intention of paying the fee. This could leave NAS with a $210,000 shortfall.

Folks, the lesson here is crystal clear.  If NAS had come out initially with a message like this, it’s a different story:

“Hey, folks – we screwed up.  We screwed up big, and we feel awful about it.  Here’s what happened.  The Provincial Government has changed the rules regarding taxation.  As a result, we have determined that the race fee needs to go up by $69.   We don’t like it either but we’re forced to submit it.

We’re going to give you two choices – if you can pay the $69, great.  We appreciate it, and feel bad.  In fact, we’re going to give you a coupon for half-price Ironman Merchandise on race day.  If you don’t want to pay the $69, please let us know and we will happily refund your race fees.

Again, please accept our apologies.  Let us know what you want us to do, and please rest assured we are reviewing our procedures to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

Right away, half the fury evaporates. But even more importantly – if they had bothered to stick around and respond to concerns raised immediately after distributing bad news, the rest of the fury would have evaporated as well.  People may not have liked it, but they would be far more understanding and forgiving.

Now, NAS is paying out $210,000, and has managed to infuriate its customer base at the same time. And why?  Primarily, because they did not bother to respond to their customers.

And you know what is incredibly sad? As of right now, NAS has STILL not bothered to respond to any of the comments or questions posted on the Ironman Canada facebook page.

Pay attention to your stakeholders.  Find out where they talk to each other and meet them there.  It’s just common sense and smart business.

Non-surprising fact: Michael Bryant cares what people think about him.  (After all, until ten days ago he was still the odds-on favourite to be the next Ontario Liberal Party Leader.)

Non-surprising fact: He’s hired a PR firm to help him navigate through the mess that inevitably happens after he killed a cyclist on a Toronto street.

Surprising Fact: They’re doing a horrible job of it.

Look – I have no problem with his PR team.  They’re good people and they do fantastic work.  It’s disingenuous to slam the work of what would be a “rival” PR outfit, and I don’t want to do that, because I mean it – they really do good work.

Which is why what they’re doing here is just so… odd.  I don’t know – maybe Michael Bryant isn’t paying them a lot of money?  Are they being neutered by an overly cautious legal team?  I don’t know, and I welcome the opportunity to hear from them.  But let’s take a look at the Twitter account “Bryant Facts.”

The good:

• recognizing the role that social media has to play in staying out in front of a particular story
• making at least a token effort at counteracting some of the ‘lies and mis-perceptions’ that are out there.

The bad?  Just about everything else…. for example:

• No icon (classic Twitter newbie mistake.)
• Lack of updates (at the time I’m writing this, the Twitter account hasn’t been updated in over 33 hours.  That’s two or three lifetimes.)
• Not engaging the public or engaging in real conversation
• Lack of third party, verifiable information.  If the role of the account is to respond to misinformation, at least point them to the correct information.  Merely saying “Um, no, you’re wrong” isn’t going to cut it.

At the time I write this, Bryant’s blog is actually faring even worse – rather than four updates, it has only three.   And it leaves no opportunity to provide a comment.

What Bryant’s team has done is taken the social right out of social media.  That’s not harnessing the power of social media;  that’s outright neutering it.

Unbelievably, it even brings attention to negative allegations which may not have been noticed before.  For example, one blog post begins with the words “The “narration” in this YouTube clip is one-sided opinion and contains multiple inaccurate assertions.”  (Thanks for pointing out the video.  I hadn’t seen it before.)

What is their version of the truth?  We may never know.  The author doesn’t tell us what the truth is.  There is no verifiable information provided to an information-hungry, albeit skeptical public.

In this very high profile case, hiring ’spin doctors’ carries a risk in and of itself.  Which is why this is just so perplexing… This ’strategy’ leaves the reader with more questions than answers, and sadly, does so in a way that may make the problem even worse.

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(For those who are non-Canadian, or have been hiding under a rock, Michael Bryant is the former Liberal Attorney General and widely considered a rising star in Ontario Politics until he struck and killed a bicyclist in the city of Toronto, Canada last week.  He has been charged with criminal negligence causing death.)

Full credit to the good folks at Outspoken Media for a great article on crisis communications, and why corporations need to stop being afraid.

Kudos.  In my experience, ignoring problems rarely makes them go away.

This is one of those blog posts I’m almost scared to write, for fear of being sued.

Long story short – Amanda Bonnen has a Twitter account.  She’s hardly an active user… she’s got about 30 followers.  In Twitterverse, this makes her so small as to be insignificant.  She tweeted “Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s okay.”

That got her sued by Horizon Realty – for $50,000.

I don’t even know where to start with the absolute insanity of this.   I’ll leave the whole ‘they’re right to sue/they’re stupid to sue’ argument off of the table for now.  Let’s just examine the communications here.

Either a) Horizon had mold, and had an upset customer, or b) Horizon didn’t have mold, but a customer was trying to claim they did.  One would assume that the reason for her tweet was simply to vent – after all, with so few followers it’s not like she has a large public following.

Horizon has to be naturally worried about statements like this driving people away from their properties.  That makes sense.

So what’s a prudent course of action here?  Did they call her and ask how to make her a happy customer?  No.  Did they investigate her complaint to determine whether or not there was any veracity to her claims?  No.  Did they send her a nasty letter written in crayon, complaining because she wasn’t playing nice?  No.

They sued her for $50,000.  My favourite line of the whole story is “Bonnen wasn’t contacted before the suit was filed or asked to remove the Tweet, (Horizon Realty’s Jeffrey Michael) said: “We’re a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization.”

So here’s my sole point – in terms of communications, you can’t buy this type of publicity.  Nor would you want to – with coverage across North America, I would suggest that the “good name” of Horizon Realty is going to require a much more vigorous defence after today than before.  In short – it was a collosal, enormous blunder.

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If anyone from Horizon cares to respond, I’m more than happy to print their response verbatim.  It beats getting sued.  Although I’d like to point out that a) I’m in Canada, where if you sue me and lose, you have to pay my court costs and b) as a sole entrepeneur, I doubt you could find enough worth suing over anyway.

The list of social media outlets can go on forever:  Facebook.  Twitter.  MySpace.  LinkedIn.  Friendfeed.  Tumblr.  Flickr.  Youtube.  Plaxo.  Ning.

Its easy to get overwhelmed in ’social media goodness.’  Social Media are buzzwords that all the cool companies are into.  PR blogs abound with news about the latest social media innovation, or  new ways a company is taking advantage of Twitter.  Dell recently announced they made $3 million selling over Twitter.  I think it’s fantastic.  Anyone who claims social media is a fad has lost the point.   The case records and success stories are proven, and plentiful.  But here’s my point – it doesn’t really matter.

As an avid Twitterer, Facebook user and LinkedIn user, what I’m saying may be considered hypocritical, I accept that.  But what’s far more important than the medium you use to communicate, is whether or not you’re actually communicating.  Let me say that again just to stress my point – it’s not what you use to get the job done – it’s all about making sure you actually get the job done.

I get three pitches every day from people promising to find me 5,000 twitter followers in a day.  The media occasionally make a horserace story out of the fact that one political leader has more facebook friends than another.  Does any of that matter?  Not even a little.

It’s this simple… if you’re an idiot, you’re going to be an idiot in front of 5,000 new people who otherwise have no clue who you are.  If you’re a vacuous bag of hot air, having 1,000 facebook friends doesn’t fix that.  And if your goal really is to be more ‘visible,’ having 5,000 or 500,000 followers isn’t going to help one little bit.

I don’t say this to vent – I’m saying this so everyone can just calm down.  Don’t worry if you’re not on the newest version of “Twittumblerbook.”  Worrying about follower counts is a lot like trying to figure out who was more popular in high school.  The really popular kids may look like they’ve got it going on, but check back in three years.

Be ‘real.’  Be authentic.  Be yourself.  Try to be helpful to other people.  Again – I’m openly admitting my own weaknesses here.  I’ve got as much crap up in my Facebook profile as anyone.

But ask yourself – would you rather be known as someone worth listening to, or someone who begs to be listened to?  Having 100 die-hard fans is worth an order of magnitude more than 5,000 followers who you don’t have a relationship with.

Dell didn’t sell $3 million worth of computers by being loud and obnoxious.  Dell answered questions posed online, tried to be helpful, and presented solutions to people who were frustrated with technology.  The brought value at a valuable time.

The loyalty of your fan-base will come back to help you or haunt you when things don’t go your way.   I am fond of saying that bad things occasionally happen to good companies.  The next time something happens with me, I know I’d rather have 500 hard core loyalists in my corner than 5,000 people who simply know me as someone who fills pixels on their screen.

Just as you don’t use a saw to drive a nail, don’t use social media to substitute for relationship building.  While they may belong in the same toolbox, they’re not the same thing.