The Power of Social Media – How it impacts your business 101

I guess this will be the second post in the same day. Not something I would normally do, but as the Fates would have it, a perfect example has presented itself.

This morning while my girlfriend, room-mate and myself were having our morning coffee and tea, a local radio station 100.3 The Q, ran a story about a company in Whistler, BC which offers outdoor adventures. The company in question is Outdoor Adventures and how they had a staff member shoot 100 (yes, one-hundred) former sled-dogs, and how the former staff member has applied to the Workers Compensation Board of British Columbia for medical costs due to him suffering from Post-Tramatic Stress Disorder, commonly referred to as PTSD.

Now, regardless how we all might feel about this, there is a very important lesson in the power of social media in respect to this issue. This story broke on January 31, 2011. By three P.M. this afternoon I had had five people SMS/BBM me links to the story. At some point earlier in the day, someone had created a Facebook group about this called Boycotting Outdoor Adventures in BC, Whistler. I first saw a friend join the group in my Facebook newsfeed at roughly five P.M. PST. As I read the primary status which talks about the issue, I noted there were 999 members already in the group. I decided to join the group (Liked), and in the 4 or 5 seconds it took the page to reload in my browser, the member list had grown to 1013 members. Currently at 5:41 P.M. PST, there are 1,250 people who belong to this page/group.

So, I ask you the reader, “If this were your company, how do you handle the social media end of this?”

There is no quick answer or fix. I suspect that within 7 days the group in question will be over 100,000 members strong. Today the story is breaking in Victoria BC, Canada, but with social media it will be around the globe by tomorrow morning. To give you another view of this, by 5:48 P.M. there was an online petition regarding the subject, located at care2 which had been posted on the FB page.

There is an old saying in business which goes like this: “The customer is always right”. Myself, I tend not to agree with the statement because in my first hand experience the customer doesn’t really know what they want. It’s up to you to help educate them so that they make an informed buying choice. Regardless of my opinion on the subject, the fact is, clients will talk. The days of when a happy client might tell one person, and an unhappy client might tell ten, are gone. Today a happy client might tell ten people or post a positive review on their FB page or write a testimonial online. An unhappy client, if they are technologically savvy, can bring down your entire business.

So as I sign off for the day, think about this:

- The next time you think you don’t have the budget for intelligent/professional social media marketing, OR you think you don’t need to worry about having a proper social media campaign working for your business, think about what happened to this company.

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