Social Media in the Business World

Social Media in Business: A Tool for Good or Evil

The use of social media by companies has risen in the last few years and with good reason.   Businesses have found new and interesting ways to promote their products, publish updates on the newest happenings of the company, and to engage in dialogue with consumers.  

One business that does a great job of this is a fitness supplement company named Muscle Pharm.  As an avid weightlifter, I have a lot of personal interest in Muscle Pharm and Facebook and Twitter are the best ways to find out what's going on.  Their Facebook page currently has 150k followers and their twitter account 175k.  They do an excellent job of engaging with their customers, and by doing so, help build brand loyalty.  Muscle Pharm is very popular among fitness nuts and mixed martial arts athletes and they tailor much of their social media usage towards this demographic.

Some of the interesting things you may find posted by Muscle Pharm are daily exercise routines, product updates, sales offers, and even any new celebrity endorsement deals they might have made.  As a result of this, many fans of the company use their Facebook and Twitter posts as makeshift message board to discuss more in detail about what was just posted.  This is an ingenious way to get people interested in the brand to communicate with each other, all the while being surrounded by logos and advertisements of Muscle Pharm. 

Here is a link to a good article regarding Muscle Pharm:  http://finance.yahoo.com/news/musclepharm-sees-substantial-growth-international-120000134.html

Another company that utilizes social media, but not always in a good way is the restaurant Applebee's.  They currently have just under four million likes on Facebook and 100k followers on Twitter.  They mainly tailor their use of social media towards people who are already customers of their restaurant.  The funny thing is, whomever is in charge of social media for Applebee's seems to have a better understanding of Twitter than Facebook.  If you use a social media app to check-in at an Applebees and post that check-in to Twitter, there's a chance someone from the restaurant may respond and thank you for your patronage.  They seem to use Twitter to engage their customers and it appears, at least to me, that they do a fairly decent job.

Facebook however is a different story.  As some people may already know, there was a recent story about a waitress who was fired after she posted a picture of a receipt a customer signed.  A lot of people took to social media to voice their concern and many of these people posted comments on Applebee's Facebook page.  Applebee's usually uses their Facebook page to post pictures of menu items and does not engage with customers, however this changed after this incident.

Applebee's began to directly respond to comments posted on their page, mostly in a negative way.  Many customers took to their respective social media tools to express their anger with Applebee's, which in turn generated more buzz about the topic.  Within a few days, there were thousands of comments on Applebee's page and were even rumors of Applebee's deleting user comments that it didn't find to their liking.  As a result of this, sales in the short term dropped significantly at many of their restaurants and there was major reshuffling in their social media deparment.  

A good article about this: US restaurant commits "social media suicide"

Social media can be a great tool for companies big and small to generate buzz about their products and to engage in conversation with loyal customers.  It can also be used to create controversy and damage a company's image and sales.  It all depends on the people hired to use it.

What are your thoughts???