eric whelan

­Bloc 2012 has been an unmitigated disaster. The outrage from festival goers on the web is impossible to avoid and it definitely looks like there are serious questions to be answered about the competence of the management and security. I’m not here to complain about the festival (I didn’t attend), but there are lessons to be learned from Bloc’s very public disaster which we witnessed as the festival went into meltdown late last night.

Bloc has over 8k followers on Twitter and over 37k Likes on Facebook. As the festival site apparently descended into chaos, social media was the one place that Bloc could have at tried to communicate with those at the festival about the problems that were being faced. But instead, they decided to continue as if everything was going brilliantly. It’s more important, it seems, to save face than to listen to what your audience were screaming at you.

As attendees pleaded for information about why they were queuing for up to three hours to enter the venue before being faced with more queues for the stages, Bloc thought it would be better to put out photos of the “fantastic” performances; performances that their audiences were unable to access. As the issues on site got serious and the police were called in, Bloc took a silent stance, not releasing any information at all to festival goers. A day later, their Twitter still hasn’t been updated despite the scathing words coming from attendees who felt hard done by. #bloc2012 makes for some really interesting, if sweary, reading.

Six hours after the site was shut down, Bloc finally released a statement of sorts. But it’s a case of too little too late; Bloc ignored their audience when they were needed the most. They had a hugely powerful communication tool at their fingertips but instead decided try and protect their reputation by not admitting to their failings.

So what can we learn from Bloc’s complete social failure? These points might seem obvious but I see orgs failing their audience all the time by ignoring some simple steps.

Listen to your audience:
When your audience are screaming at you that there is something wrong, listen. Tweets about huge queues appeared on Twitter from about 6.30pm yet there is no mention of  it in any of Bloc’s tweets from the day.  Bloc should have tweeted about long waiting times and advised festival goers to arrive early to ensure they saw the acts they wanted to.

Don’t pretend everything’s ok:
This was one of Bloc’s biggest mistakes. As thousands of tweets came in expressing frustration about the festival, they continued to tweet about great performances and retweeted the few happy tweets they received. It’s likely that this infuriated those who were having a bad time since it basically undermines their complaints. Saying “everything is great!” when it clearly isn’t is simply not a good idea. Listen, respond and try to fix the problem.

Admit when you’ve messed up:
Easily the most glaring mess up that Bloc made was their silence. A day later, there’s still no admittance from them that they made a huge mistake and lost control of the event. Festival goers are obviously angry about what happened, but much of the flak Bloc are receiving from them could have been avoided if they had of simply accepted it and apologised. I’m not saying they needed to put out a full statement at 1am, but a tweet and Facebook update with any kind of information would have gone a long way.

Still nothing from Bloc a whole day later.

Make it right:
Even at this late stage, Bloc can still save themselves from the social disaster they’ve created. There’s still time to communicate with their audience, explain what happened and say sorry but considering their silence last night, I wouldn’t be confident this will happen.

I understand that things were tricky last night – there was a real risk to festival goers and obviously fixing this and getting people out of the venue safely was top priority. But that doesn’t mean Bloc should have ignored their entire social audience. The complete silence was disastrous and in some ways, chilling. It could easily have made attendees feel as though the festival had abandoned them. It takes all of 30 seconds to write a short update. Why didn’t Bloc do this? Why did they decide to completely ignore the thousands of people who were turning to social media for guidance?

The only people that were willing to offer any advice to festival goers last night was the venue, The Pleasure Gardens. This is a simple tweet that Bloc could have copied: hell, they could have retweeted it.

But instead they stood silent and let thousands of people who were their responsibility fend for themselves.  Let’s compare The Pleasure Gardens’ most recent tweets to Bloc’s. It says a lot, doesn’t it?

In the third of what appears to be an ongoing series, yet another organisations has proved how  oblivious it is of what Twitter is used for. A few months ago, I wrote about how a Twitter account for an in-production BBC 3 TV show was spamming anyone and everyone on Twitter to try and find people to take part. Not surprisingly, it ended up that The Year of Making Love was a disaster, with only 300 out of 1000 contestants turning up for recording and a good number of those that did eventually walking out.

Now a production company, again producing a show for BBC 3, have taken the same approach to finding subjects, spamming accounts looking for retweets to help find people to take part. The only difference this time is that the company seemed to be approaching other companies as opposed to going directly to potential subjects, but that’s a very minor difference.

While @YearofMakingLuv got away with it, Twitter were having none of it from @BoomTownTVShow, whose account was quickly suspended. What’s the lesson? Twitter’s a place for conversation, not for spamming. It’s good to see that Twitter themselves have started to crack down on accounts that don’t understand that.

Some organisations just don’t get how Twitter works. It’s a place for conversation, not a place for spamming and this is why it has grown to level that it has. A few months back, I wrote a very short post on how not to engage your new followers on Twitter, but it’s not just new followers that you will alienate by spamming; it’s any potential followers too.

An account being used to find people to take part in a new BBC 3 dating programme, set up by Fever Media, is a perfect example of how not to engage an audience.

And so it goes on. In the time it’s taken me to write this post (less than 10 minutes) they’ve posted another 13 updates. Spam, spam, spam.

If I were to take over this account, I’d approach the audience in a completely different way. A quick search for “date” or “dating” on twitter comes back with a huge list of people who’re talking about dating. Directly getting in touch with these people means that you’re much more likely to find people interested in taking part in the show, rather than throwing out a really large net in the hope of catching a single fish.

Twitter users don’t react very well to this kind of “conversation”. They’re also well skilled in the art of clicking the Block button, which I’d guess many people have done to @YearofMakingLuv. And that’s before even mentioning their awful username, generic stock photo avatar and horrendous grammar.

As a digital marketer, there’s one thing that you have to always remember; the difference between marketing and spam. It’s not difficult. Simply think “if I was receiving this many updates to my personal account, would I be annoyed by it? Would I feel as though I was getting the hard-sell?” If the answer is yes, then you’re spamming your audience.

If this is the conclusion you come to, then it’s easy to stop huge numbers of people unsubscribing to your updates. You simply don’t send as many updates! Specifically here, I’m talking about direct marketing - emails, newsletters, digital updates. Social media is an entirely other ball game.

Since the start of December, I’ve received no less than eight emails from language organisation Rosetta Stone. On Dec 13th, I received two emails, and on Dec 19th, three. 

I wasn’t the only one that noticed either. Callum Raines had made a complaint about it on Twitter. Our comments got the attention of Rosetta Stone who pledged to reduce the number of mails they were sending out.

But for myself, and I’m sure a lot of other people on their mailing list, it’s too late. I have unsubscribed despite being interested in what the company have to offer. Their messages were complete overkill and while I’m sure their direct mail outs got them some good Christmas business, I’d bet that it is negated by the number of unsubscribes.

The lesson? Keep your updates regular but don’t over do it. Fortnightly or monthly is plenty and only update when you have a story to tell. Otherwise, your audience will feel like you’re only interested in their money rather than their support.

I love this infographic from AddThis on how sharing through the web has increased over the past five years. It’s astonishing to think that sharing on Twitter has grown by over 35 thousand percent.

Whenever I’m training is social media I always stress the importance of using a name online as close to your actual name as possible, especially on Twitter. I was quite lucky in that I was able to get my real name, @ericwhelan, but I did have another Eric Whelan message me last summer grumbling that I had “stolen their username”. In actual fact, I  wrote a post last summer about Twitter name sitting and how I didn’t really see an issue with it.

Last night, PJ Harvey won her second Mercury Award. As expected, the twitterverse took to the web to congratulate, to moan and to discuss. And who better to include in the conversation but PJ Harvey, right? Well, the only issue is, PJ Harvey’s twitter name (which has lay dormant for over two years, is @PJHarveyUK as opposed to @PJHarvey, as most assumed.  Cue thousands of messages going to Phil Harvey, a software developer from Newcastle.

Irritating, yes, but that should realistically be where the story ends. A few irritaiting messages but it will die off in a few days. But that’s not where it ended. Cue Welsh band Los Campesinos:

This message was retweeted by dozens of followers, reaching thousands and thousands of people, despite the fact that the account did genuinely belong to someone with a proper reason for using the name.

Eventually, Los Campesinos backed down.

Were Los Campesinos joking? Possibly, and Phil’s responses to the thousands of people messaging him were, at times, hilarious. But it still proves why it is so important to grab your username while you can. If the actual PJ Harvey were using this username (and, for that matter, ever tweeted) this would be such a fantastic opportunity for her team to grab potentially thousands of new fans. A quick message back to point them to where they could buy the album, tour dates etc. It really seems like a hugely missed opportunity. If this were an organisation or a museum, for instance, this kind of mistake could cause a devastating loss in potential custom.

It also backs up my earlier post, where I argued that there’s not really a problem in sitting on a username, even if you’re not ready to commit to a particular social media application. You never know where you’ll be in a year and what applications will be the next big thing, so it’s worth being prepared.

Situations like this blow over easily, but while it’s happening it could really make your organisation look like they haven’t thought out their social media strategy well enough to forsee any problems like this. One of Phil’s first tweets, posted minutes after the Mercury winner was announced, illustrates perfectly the response it could cause in your organisation.