Learning from the Twitter Fail Whale

To fail once may be regarded as a misfortune. To fail twice looks like carelessness.

Poor Habitat. They had two visits from the Fail Whale last week - there must be barely any water left in the pool.

For those who missed the hoo-ha, the slick British home-ware brand hit the headlines last week when they spammed Twitter hashtags with their upcoming special offers. (Hashtags, in case you don't know, gather tweets relating to the same topic - take a look at Digital Tip for how to use them.) Habitat first hit trending topics, from #iphone to #mms - even #Mousavi, which was streaming news from the Iranian crisis . Then, in a clunky backtrack, Habitat blamed the tweets on an "an overenthusiastic intern who did not fully understand the ramifications of his actions" . It was an undergraduate error (or two) by the otherwise hip furniture brand.

The Rules

First rule of Twitter? Do not spam Twitter.

Second rule of Twitter? Do not let interns manage your Twitter account.

You need to get your corporate social media policy straight, right from the start. Twitter, in particular, is famously viral, and famously fail-intolerant. And so, while some argue that social media, by its very nature, requires absolute freedom to succeed, most social thinkers advise that you should very clear who can tweet on your behalf, and what, precisely, are the limits of their remit. Dave Fleet outlines the issues coherently.

So, while we wouldn't suggest you emulate Associated Press, who last week caused controversy when they exhorted their employees to to police their Facebook profiles “to make sure material posted by others doesn’t violate AP standards", it's clear that Habitat was waaaay too liberal here. If they knew an intern was tweeting for them, they should have put an immediate stop to it. And if they didn't know, then why the heck not?

Twitter Train

Assuming that a decent company social media policy had already nixed the intern's involvement - how should Habitat have approached their entry into the Twittersphere? Well, with caution. In the absence of a Twitter-authorized set of ground rules for brands, Habitat should first have spent some time looking at the brands that are really claiming Twitter:

@UPS, who've turned Twitter into a parcel-tracking tool

@vodafoneliveguy, whose Where's Wally theme generated lots of buzz

@O2UKOfficial, whose customer service tweets are converstational, individualized @ replies

and

#lovemarmite and #hatemarmite - a perfect integration of a brand's pre-existing theme with a new-ish medium.

If they were still a bit wobbly, they could have done much worse than flick through Michael Brito's post outlining the 10 best practices for brands; Corinne Weisgerber's great presentation on using Twitter for PR ; Themos Kalafatis, who demonstrates how text mining can help companies listen more intelligently, and Megan Keanhe, who argues that sometimes the best thing a brand can do on Twitter is just, you know, zip it.

Still, with such a dramatic entry onto Twitter, it's highly likely that it will be heads down at Habitat for some serious homework, before their next tweet. So chin up, chaps - onwards and upwards, and all that.

Kate Williams, eModeration Research Consultant

www.twitter.com/emodkate

PS. For more fail-related fun, go to Twitter Fail, a blog whose only mission is remorselessly to mock those individuals and companies who, um, fail at Twitter.