4 Lessons From HMV’s Twitter Burn

What happens when your company goes into administration, you push the big red ‘redundancy’ button – and you don’t know who’s got control of your Twitter feed?

Last week, the soon-to-be-defunct powers over at British entertainment retailer HMV found out. If you haven’t heard already, things got a little heated when around 60 of their HQ staff found out their jobs were no more. How heated? Heated enough to go rogue on their own Twitter account:

What does this mean for HMV? Admittedly, not much now apart from an embarrassing slap to the chops for the company and a few awkward job interviews on the horizon for those involved. But while the company continues its walk into the abyss, there’s a few lessons left in its wake that businesses utilising social media – an increasing number, I hope – should learn from.

You’d think this would be obvious enough – but the employees you trust with your social media are the living, breathing connections between your business and its audience. Give them the right reason and they’ll take you to the cleaners online. They shouldn’t, but they do. They’re human, after all.

Lesson: Get to know your social staff. And if something’s about to go down that will directly impact them, have at least some understanding of how they could react.

HMV’s Marketing Director was allegedly caught asking how to “shut down” Twitter. Yep. We won’t go into that. Suffice to say, if you know how the basic ins and outs of the ‘Big 4’ on social, you won’t start bouncing off the walls if anything goes wrong and your go-to-guys aren’t there to help. As a side note, this is another reason for C-levels to introduce themselves to the world of social.

Lesson: Nothing is beneath you. If you’re strategy relies heavily on certain digital arenas, get to know their mechanisms – regardless of whether you’re a junior exec or a Marketing Director.

If you’re au fait with the Streisand Effect, you’ll already know the implications of trying to delete a social post under the radar – and they’re very rarely positive. Suffice to say, if you’re trying to get people to stop talking about something posted on your wall/page/group, swiping it out from under their nose is going to do little more than provoke them to sniff it out all the more.

And what happens when they find what you’ve tried to brush under the carpet? Screenshots. All over the web and recycled to the hilt.

Lesson: Transparency (and often, a little humour) is your greatest ally when it comes to damage control. Unless extreme in its content, turn adversity into advantage and use the post in question to promote what you’re doing to put things right. Not only does it increase levels of trust, but it also keeps you involved in the conversation.

To use the HMV example (and I’m sure they’re not alone on this), if you’re going to let staff go – especially if they’re in charge of your social platforms – make sure you’ve collected the necessary login and admin details first. And after their departure, ensure they don’t have access to the company accounts. Very rarely will an ex-employee give you a heads up; @Poppy_Powers was a pleasant (and fortunate) exception to the rule for HMV:

Lesson: Retain control of the situation when letting staff go and cover all bases. Just because someone has left the company doesn’t mean they’ll leave your accounts alone given the opportunity. Bottom line: Your account details are your responsibility.

Anything to add to the list? Drop it in the comments below…