We've come a long way already

How far we’ve come. Not that long ago, many of us felt like we faced an insurmountable brick wall. Social media remained a black art in so many organisations – misunderstood and distrusted.

Since then, we’ve seen huge advances in the awareness of the true power of social media, with global events like the Arab Spring making it impossible to ignore. Uptake continues to boom, with my own organisation seeing award-winning campaigns go from strength to strength; national tweetathons attracting lots of attention; and a huge internal effort to develop a strategic way forward.

We’ve done much “talking and planning”. We’ve even seen plenty of “doing and learning”. I’d say that we’re now in a strong position to take it to the next level – to start “refining and perfecting”.

However, as the floodgates open, we need to be careful that unbridled enthusiasm doesn’t lead to sloppy delivery. And experience tells me that one platform in particular will continue to cause headaches for those of us charged with maintaining some order in this chaotic online frontier.

I’m talking, of course, about Facebook.

Common Facebook fallacies

Despite all my enthusiasm and optimism around the potential of social media, I still shudder whenever someone approaches me asking how they can get a Facebook page. Fundamentally, they are asking the wrong question. Facebook is just a tool – it is one possible answer to the wider question of how we might improve communication and engagement with our service users. And often, Facebook turns out not to be the answer.

Take, for example, the Primary School Facebook page I saw recently, aimed at promoting sport. Sounds like a nice idea, doesn’t it? Well, not when you remember that Facebook’s terms state that you have to be 13 to register. Suddenly, a nice idea turns into a potential disaster, where a school is seen to be actively encouraging its pupils to register on age-inappropriate websites.

(And by coincidence, the Guardian has today reported that teachers have been warned about befriending pupils on Facebook. This would seem pretty obvious to me, but the sobering examples given in the article prove otherwise.)

The problem is that Facebook seems so ubiquitous that many assume they should be on there. For large brands, that may be true – if just to protect yourself from cyber-imposters.

(That said, though, I was bemused to see an advert this Christmas for a popular cold remedy brand which proudly announced “we’re now on Facebook”. Really? Why on earth would anyone want to follow a page about a cold remedy? What sort of person would be proud to annouce to their friends that they are an ongoing fan of such a product? And what sort of information are they hoping to glean from following such a page? The only thing I can think of would be advice on how to avoid getting a cold, which would surely dent sales!)

For smaller entities, though, Facebook may not be the right answer at all, and can easily cause more harm than good. Some of the main mistakes we’re seeing include:

Using Facebook to just broadcast, rather than to start a conversation

Allowing people to leave comments on a Facebook page is risky. It opens you up to criticism and even abuse. It means you’ll have to constantly monitor things and have a process in place for dealing with comments. You may find that people come to expect a response to questions posted on there, sapping even more staff time.

Many people think they’ve found the perfect solution – simply disable comments. But in doing so, you’re taking the “social” out of “social media” and, arguably, completely missing the point.

Failing to understand how Facebook works

Facebook’s settings remain a mystery to many, yet so much can go wrong if you don’t get these right. Privacy can be easily compromised. For example, many people believe that it’s impossible to publicly track who “likes” a page. That’s because it doesn’t, by default, show up on the page itself. But the info is there for all to see – just set up a custom Like Box to see what I mean.

With two clicks, I'm able to see who "liked" the aforementioned cold remedy. Strange people.

Apply this ability to a fairly specific Facebook page (such as for a local school or youth group) and you can start to see the inherent risks of getting privacy wrong.

Not measuring success

Many of the proposals I get from people wanting to set up a Facebook page refer to “followers” and “page views” as the way in which they will measure success. Yes, these are reasonable indicators for exposure, but that’s only part of the picture. They don’t really tell you much about engagement or conversion. Are those page views actually helping you to achieve your goals?

Of course, this is an impossible question to answer if you haven’t set any goals. Which again begs the question – why? Why do you want to be on Facebook – what are you trying to achieve?

Underestimating the invisible cost

When people talk about social media as “free”, I’m quick to put them right. A social media presence requires a huge investment of time and effort to be successful (and even that’s no guarantee). And whilst staff are doing that, they’re not doing other things. It’s not a reason to not do it, but it’s a damn good reason to think long and hard about it first.

Simply being bad at it

Producing a constant stream of engaging, interesting content is actually quite a skill. I’m certainly no expert at it. But huge expectations are being placed upon relative novices, who are suddenly being asked to do the job of a communications expert on top of their day job. And in truth, many of them are getting it wrong. They’re probably not doing anything horribly, scandalously wrong – they’re just not doing it that well. Dull, predictable or irrelevant updates; barren attempts to start a conversation; misjudged efforts to sound trendy or youthful – all of these pitfalls plague the many Facebook pages I’ve come across, and only really serve to damage the reputation of the associated brand.

Time to get it right

Of course, most of the above would apply to any social media platform, and we have a long way to go to tackle these challenges. But for all the half-baked efforts we see, there are also plenty of great examples of people doing social media really well – genuinely innovating and redefining the boundaries of success.

We’re undoubtable seeing a continuing increase in the uptake of social media. What remains to be seen, however, is whether we’ll also see a notable increase in the quality of those efforts.

Footsteps photo courtesy of MollaAliod – licenced under Creative Commons

The campaign has scooped the award for “best use of social media by a public sector organisation”, as well as being shortlisted for “best use of social media by a non profit/charity organisation”, at the Some Comms Awards 2011 in Manchester last week. It also bagged the “Grand Prix” award, singling it out as the “best of the best” of all the entries.

Some of the things we introduced or improved for 2011 included:

YouTube videos of the candidates’ manifestos on a dedicated YouTube channel embedded on the elections page of the Council website, along with text versions. YouTube was also used earlier on in the campaign, to help generate interest amongst potential candidates.

SYP candidates presented their manifestos on YouTube

An interactive map of polling stations, including a “find your nearest” postcode search. This made it very easy for potential voters to find out where they could vote in over 50 different locations across the city.

An interactive map of polling stations

A strongly branded presence both online and offline, to catch the eye and imagination of young voters.

Strong branding played a vital role

A Facebook page for posting candidate photos and written and video manifestos, allowing people to become fans and to share with online friends. There was also a competition to win an iPod if people became a fan of the page, and even a QR code linking to the page for use on related printed material.

A Facebook page pulling everything together

Huge success

In 2009, 18 candidates stood for 11 seats and 5019 young people voted.
The 2011 objectives were to:

1. increase the number of candidates to 24.
2.  increase the number of voters by 50%.
3. ensure number of candidates is more than one in all constituencies to guarantee competitive election

These were ambitious targets, as the 2009 campaign had already seen an unprecedented increase in the number of voters. However, the 2011 results spoke for themselves:

1. Initially had 31 registered candidates of which 26 stood for election, equalling a 44% increase.
2. Voting more than doubled from the previous election with 10,228 young people voting – a 104% increase.
3. Each constituency had three or more candidates with one boasting seven.

Team effort

As with the 2009 campaign, this was a real team effort, with colleagues from across the Council and our partner, Stevenson College Edinburgh, pulling together the various strands of the campaign. And of course the young people themselves played the most vital role, working so hard and bringing so much enthusiasm to the process.

It’s another good example of the power of social media to reach out to audiences, to empower citizens and to excite interest in important issues.

Having already scooped national awards, including in the “Hard to Reach Communcations” category at the CIPR Local Public Services Awards and the “Government to Citizen” category at the Good Communications Awards, I’m proud to see the campaign get local recognition.

Me and my colleagues receiving the award

Find out more about the campaign, which saw us use Facebook, Bebo and YouTube to increase nominations and voter turn-out in the 2009 Youth Parliament elections.

Onwards and upwards

The next elections will take place in March 2011, and we’re already cranking up our campaign to again include Facebook and a dedicated YouTube channel.

If you’re using social media to target “hard to reach” audiences, I’d love to hear from you. Get in touch or leave a comment below…

Campaign graphic

Later this week I’ll be attending a national awards ceremony, at which one of our campaigns has been nominated for an award. ** UPDATE – we won! **

Edinburgh’s 2009 Scottish Youth Parliament election campaign has already won a Bronze award in the Marketing Society’s Star Awards – the only local authority campaign to win in any category. It was also a finalist in the CIPR national awards, in the category of best campaign under £10k, and won the CIPR Local Public Services Award for Hard to Reach Communications, where the judges commented on how the “strong and effective use of social media and online marketing together with celebrity endorsement succeeded in creating a vibrant and healthy parliament and increased vote.”

It has now been shortlisted for the “Government to Citizen Communications” category of the Good Communication Awards, and I’ll be representing my organisation at the ceremony on Thursday.

The tremendous reception that the campaign has received is thanks to the enthusiasm, innovation and hard work not only of my colleagues, but also of the young people involved in the elections, and I’m proud to represent such a campaign as just one of the many people who worked to make it happen.

The following gives a flavour of the efforts, and hopefully offers some inspiration to others, especially those involved in e-participation and youth engagement.

Scottish Youth Parliament Elections in Edinburgh

The challenge

Every two years, the Scottish Youth Parliament (SYP) holds elections for young people between 14 and 25 to represent the views of their peers. In Edinburgh there are 11 SYP members. In 2007, 13 candidates stood for election, just 25 votes were cast and elections were held in a single venue on one day.

For the 2009 elections there was clearly room for improvement, and an integrated campaign was launched, utilising traditional, social and web-based marketing, to try to increase awareness of the elections and boost the number of candidates and voters.

The solution

To encourage more young people to stand for election, the following was carried out:

• A dedicated page was created on the Young Edinburgh website
• Posters were distributed featuring the celebrity endorsement of local lad John Loughton, former chair of the SYP and well known to the target audience as the winner of Celebrity Big Brother Hi-jack 2008
• Briefings went to all schools asking head teachers to use in-school communication channels
• Information was posted the Council webpage and an announcement made to the local press

We received around 25 notes of interest and eventually 18 candidates stood.

One of the election posters

Next, to get more people voting, we introduced social media, setting up Facebook and Bebo pages as well as a YouTube channel.

Bebo webpage

The Facebook and Bebo pages were used for posting candidate photos, written and video manifestos, allowing people to become fans and to share with online friends.

On YouTube, we uploaded videos of the candidates outlining their manifestos, again with links back to the information pages.

A video manifesto

We also:

• Made it easier for people to vote by extending voting from a day to a week and placing ballot boxes in schools, libraries and colleges
• Updated the Young Edinburgh webpage with information on voting, with links to the social media sites
• Distributed posters with details of the SYP social media sites and how and where to vote
• Ran a radio campaign
• Placed adverts on Facebook
• Secured a feature piece in the local press and in the council’s newspaper, which goes to every household in the city

The outcome

The results were outstanding:

• 18 people stood for election
• 5019 young people voted – an increase of 19,984% from 2007!
• All 11 seats were filled – three candidates in two areas were elected unopposed
• In total, there were 2727 views of candidate videos on YouTube. The video with most number individual views amounted to 404, the lowest 107

Conclusion

Probably the most telling aspect of the campaign was how social media was used to compliment the other, more traditional, channels. Social media is rarely a solution in itself, but it is a significant addition to your arsenal and can dramatically increase your reach. The video manifestos were hugely popular, generating a lot of interest in the elections and in the democratic process.

The campaign was also testimony to the continuing trend towards utilising social networking to engage with young people. Only a few years ago, most local authorities would have discarded such an approach as too risky, too unmanageable, and too unknown. Now, there is a growing interest and understanding of the benefits of these platforms, along with a more rational and considered appreciation of the risks. Good experiences such as this one will continue to build the case for the wider adoption of such channels as a key method of engaging and informing our citizens.

I look forward to seeing how many voters turn out in 2011…

The seminar was lead by John Campbell and Mark Baillie, and John began by considering the good, the bad and the ugly. Examples of good campaigns included:

• Coca-Cola’s 80s/90s “Can’t Beat the Feeling” adverts – a tune that many of us still recognise today and an excellent example of strong branding.
• The University of Birmingham’s Circle of Influence campaign to raise £60 million. Astonishingly, they’ve already reached the £50m mark, combining online strategies with a more traditional print campaign.
• Drinkaware’s drink diary, which allows you to monitor your drinking and compare with friends, adding a social element to the mix. You can even download a phone app. I couldn’t help thinking this could backfire though – imagine people using the diary to compare how much they could drink in a week and actually trying to beat each other!
• Volkswagen’s Fun Theory website, featuring various viral videos aimed at making people change their behaviour for the better:

John notes that common factors to all of these successes were creativity and innovation.

The bad and ugly examples including Burger King’s Whopper Sacrifice, which asked people to give 10 of their Facebook friends the boot in exchange for a free burger. As a result, a quarter of a million friends found themselves dumped in favour of a meat sandwich. John observes that this kind of campaign, based on negativity, is a very risky strategy and the uproar that ensued was proof of this. The campaign was quickly pulled.

Perhaps an even uglier example is the infamous Toyota Yaris advert, Clean Getaway, which managed to offend scores of people with its sexist (and, some argued, potentially incestuous) content.

(Note: for more examples, see my list of Social Media lessons learned the hard way)

6 steps to success

We are then talked through 6 steps to a successful campaign:

1. Understand your audience

An essential first step: make sure you know your audience and understand how they consume media. Where are they? What do they consider effective, or cool? Mark shows us an example of some face-to-face street research they had done, enabling them to build up personas to better understand their target audience. He stresses that you can only get certain knowledge from that sort of engagement.

2. Confirm your objectives

What are you trying to achieve? Is it realistic? Again, research is critical, and we are shown a number of useful tools which can help in measuring social media:

• Google Trends – shows what people are searching for – especially good for filtering info by region to get a more local flavour
• Google Alerts – email updates about Google results for keywords
• Social Mention – a social media search and analysis platform for aggregating user generated content
• Alltop – top headlines from popular topics worldwide

These sorts of tools can be especially useful for researching the competition and setting realistic targets accordingly.

3. Plan the customer journey and content

Taking what you’ve learnt from your earlier research, you should then decide the main message you want to get across, and which tools are going to be most suitable. This is the step that may sound the easiest, yet is perhaps one of the most complex, and requires a broad and deep knowledge of social media platforms in relation to marketing. We have all seen obvious examples of companies stumbling into social media without any real strategy or purpose, and they are usually found out very quickly.

As an example, John looks at why we might want to use Facebook:

• Go to the audience – we know that many people are already using Facebook, so to some extent we have a captive audience.
• Viral by nature – viral campaigns are undeniably the most successful, and see users to spread the word amongst themselves. Something recommended by a friend will surely carry more weight than a traditional piece of ‘push-marketing’.
• Understood by audiences – people are familiar with Facebook and its functionality, so you’re not asking them to learn new concepts.
• Achievable - low cost and easy to set up.
• Socially connected – if we reach one person, we may then also reach their friends too. Not to mention lateral links to other platforms.

4. Touchpoint strategy

Usually the ultimate goal of a campaign is to get people to your site. There are various ways of driving people through, from feeds and widgets to online ads and mobile integration. It’s important to have a strategy, though, of how to manage and optimise these initial points of contact, or touchpoints.

Mobile devices are arguably the perfect engagement tool:

• They are portable and convenient
• They are becoming increasingly hi-tech
• Users have a very high affinity with their devices – they love to use them
• They are always present and always on
• They are ready made for the job

Mark talks us through a number of intriguing uses of mobile devices, from the Golf GTI speedometer app, the ability to take a photo of a person and have it converted to Lego, and BMW’s Expression of Joy – augmented reality technology which sees Mark driving a virtual car around his desk. These are all excellent and entertaining apps in their own right, but ultimately exist to drive people to the end goal (be it ordering some Lego or booking a test drive).

5. Continual engagement

Launch day is, of course, not the end of the story. In fact, it’s only the beginning. Continual engagement is crucial – keeping the content fresh and keeping your audience informed. And again, making something viral is a fast-track to success. John mentions another tool, Kontagent, which analyses social networks and offers a range of viral tools.

And critically, all of this needs to come full circle and deliver a compelling website, where your users will end up. Without that, all of your efforts will be for nought. A decent main website has to be part of the strategy.

6. Measure, update, measure – and so on

Finally, you’ll need to measure your ongoing success. Update and adapt. If something isn’t working, don’t be afraid to drop it and try something else. Don’t let any part of your strategy fall slack – work it all and make sure it is working for your audience.

Again, tools to help you measure your success include the excellent Google Analytics, which now offers integration with Facebook; Click Tale, which tracks user journeys and lets you watch movies of people browsing your site; and Twitalyzer.

10 commandments

John concluded with a mention of Augustine Fou’s 10 commandments of modern marketing:

1. Thou shalt not target customers with messages they don’t want
2. Thou shalt be truthful
3. Thou shalt respect your customers
4. Thou shalt make it easy for people to find you
5. Thou shalt be useful
6. Thou shalt make it easy for people to pass along
7. Thou shalt measure and optimize
8. Thou shalt listen to customers
9. Thou shalt remove any organizational barriers to speedy, collaborative innovation
10. Thou shalt not do brand-ing

Fou’s 10 commandments of modern marketing

Thanks again to all at Precedent for a thoroughly enjoyable and inspiring morning. They run a whole programme of such seminars in various locations across the UK.

A big year for Twitter

BBC News has a nice summary of the year on Twitter, looking at the news stories which were big on the micro-blogging platform. Twitter proved its worth by being at the heart of key events such as the Iranian election, allowing citizens to report from the scenes of protest even after other channels of communication had been cut.

Social Networking in general had a good year, with an ever-increasing expectation that companies should be using such platforms to talk to their customers. CNET has a brief look at the highs and lows for various Social Networks, focusing on how current front-runners Twitter and Facebook are evolving to stay ahead of the game.

Meanwhile, Mashable‘s Jennifer Van Grove has a look at Google’s 2009, reflecting on the search giant’s big releases and major accomplishments. It was undoubtedly a big year for the company, with the likes of Google Wave attempting to revolutionise the way we communicate and collaborate.

Back at the BBC, the technology team talk about the technology they loved in 2009, discussing many things you’ll have heard as well as a few you may not.

For those getting tired of reading, the Guardian’s Tech Weekly Team have a 40 minute podcast reviewing the year in tech, whilst Web Axe looks back at some of its best web accessibility podcasts from 2009.

The "Apple Glove"

Finally, the Register has a collection of quotes from the year as well as some of the best (of the worst) patent claims, including IBM’s bizarre noise-maker and Apple’s attempt to reinvent the glove.

Happy New Year!

My presentation at ScotWeb2 - photo courtesy of Jadu

This post explores some of the issues that I plan to discuss with attendees at tomorrow’s ScotWeb2 event in Edinburgh, regarding the current state of accessibility on Social Media sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. I hope to have some interesting feedback to post here after tomorrow, so for now here’s an overview of the subject. I’ve also thrown in a few open questions to kick-start the discussion.

[Edit: see a summary of the event on the ScotWeb2 blog]

What do I mean by Social Media accessibility?

Social Media has enjoyed an explosion of popularity in the past few years, making it easy for individuals to quickly and easily publish their own content and share it with the world, without needing technical skills in web publishing.

As with all such revolutions, though, some people have been left behind. Individuals at most risk of exclusion are those who require websites to be fully accessible in order to access the content. There are many barriers which can impact on the accessibility of a webpage, affecting people with many differing conditions. A blind user, for example, will probably use screen reader software to have the content read out to them. The content needs to be fully available to the screen reader for this to work correctly.

There are three distinct issues to consider when talking about the accessibility of Social Media platforms:

• Can everyone publish their own content without barriers?
• Does the publishing platform support the creation of accessible content?
• Is that content then presented to the end-user in an accessible way?

Why is it an issue?

There are obvious moral arguments why such systems should be accessible, as well as some important legal imperatives too (e.g. the Disability Discrimination Act in the UK). Essentially, if these systems are inaccessible to certain users, then those users are missing out on the opportunities and benefits of using that platform. Is it our responsibility, as adopters of the service, or the service providers themselves?

Sites such as Facebook have revolutionised how we build and maintain our social networks, on and offline. Sites such as YouTube have given us access to a huge variety of new media content never previously available. And platforms such as blogs and forums have allowed us to communicate with others and have our opinions heard across the globe.

What are the problems?

CAPTCHA

A State of the eNation Report from January 2008, published by AbilityNet, claimed that Social networking sites were locking out disabled users. In particular, it identified CAPTCHA as a significant and insurmountable barrier for many users, preventing them from even registering for sites. Many sites have since acted to improve this situation (for example, Twitter recently replaced their inaccessible CAPTCHA with reCAPTCHA, a far more accessible product). Yahoo is a surprising example of a high-profile company still getting it wrong.

Dynamic pages and Rich Internet Applications

Many Social Media sites rely heavily on dynamic content and interfaces powered by the likes of AJAX. Some users may not notice when a page updates, changing or adding new content. In some cases, certain functions may be inaccessible because of the scripting techniques used. Even where the elements are adapted to be accessible to modern assistive technologies, it is important to remember that many users will have older versions which are not compatible.

Volume of content

Social Media is a fast moving and high-volume medium. Anyone who uses Twitter, and who has built up a reasonable number of people to follow, will know how quickly the Tweet streams change and how easy it is to miss potentially useful content.

There is also the wider issue of usability and the common requirement to wade through masses of content to find what you want.

User generated content

Perhaps the most serious challenge to Social Media accessibility comes as a consequence of its very nature – the fact that anyone can publish content. Quality control becomes near-impossible, and accessibility is often the first victim. Is there a way of mitigating against this? Is any degree of content moderation realistic?

YouTube is an obvious example. Although YouTube provides the ability to add captions to videos, for the benefit of deaf or hard-of-hearing users, this is an optional extra that few will use. Equally, blind users will have no access to the visual content of the videos without decent video description. Is it realistic to provide this additional content, or could it make the process too time-consuming and expensive? If the latter, should we be providing the content at all?

Even worse, as Nomensa’s article on Social Media and Accessibility points out, the YouTube interface itself is inaccessible:

The (YouTube) website lacks many common accessibility features. The player is not keyboard accessible, nor is it accessible to a screen reader user. Recently, YouTube have introduced the ability to upload captions for people with hearing difficulties, yet the player itself remains an obstacle for many other users. The same problems are apparent when YouTube content is embedded on alternative websites using the standard player.

In one swift backwards step, the greatest social interaction of all time, becomes an obstacle. Perhaps even an impossibility.

Nomensa

Conclusions, and what can we do about it?

Perhaps the most important step is to put pressure on the providers of these services, to make sure that they are offering accessible platforms. How can we do that? And how effective will it be?

Until the platforms are accessible, we need to be aware of the barriers and act accordingly, offering alternatives to ensure that we’re including everyone. We could also direct our users to the accessible versions of key platforms (Accessible Twitter, Easy YouTube etc) until the original sites improve.

The inaccessibility of some of these sites should not prevent us from using them – rather we should just be sure of approaching them knowing the risks. Indeed, there are other risks of exclusion beyond accessibility – cultural, social and economic factors may all affect whether a person engages with these services, so we can never assume that these platforms provide a complete solution. Are there ways of bridging this digital divide?

Further reading

• OFCOM report on Social Networking attitudes, behaviour and use (PDF)
• Social Networking accessibility paper by Henny Swan (PDF)
• Blind Access Journal reports that Twitter Quietly Fixes Broken Audio CAPTCHA
• Are Social Networking Sites Accessible to People with Vision Loss? The American Foundation for the Blind
• Deafblind Web Users Engage With Social Media

I’ll continue to add to it as new stories come up so if you spot a good one, let me know!

It’s worth noting that I’m collecting these as useful ‘lessons learned’ – not to put people off using such platforms for their organisations, but to provide a clearer picture of some of the pitfalls.

McDonald’s #McDStories Twitter Campaign Fails – 24th January 2012

A Twitter campaign by McDonald’s aimed at spreading good news about the firm has backfired spectacularly – with people using the #McDStories to highlight their worst experiences of the fast food chain. (source: Huffington Post)

The only surprising thing about this story is that they didn’t see it coming.

Labour sacks candidate in Twitter row – 9th April 2010

The Labour party sacks one of its parliamentary candidates after details emerged of offensive comments he had published on Twitter (source: The Guardian).

Quite an astonishing one, this. The phrase “should have known better” has never been more applicable. I’ve written a brief post analysing the story.

Sunday Express makes a Twit of itself – 17th January 2010

The Sunday Express publishes a damning exposé of the BBC’s use of Twitter, claiming that they have no followers and are wasting their time. Unfortunately the writers have confused followers for following, and the accounts in question actually have thousands of followers (source: No Rock and Roll Fun).

The article has since been pulled, but is a reminder of how easy it is to criticise social media without fully understanding it, as Tory MP Anne Widdecombe will now be finding out, after giving the Express a quote based on their dubious findings.

Alpha Course online poll backfires – 23rd October 2009

The Christian Alpha Course’s multi-million pound advertising campaign has potentially backfired when an online poll, asking whether people believed in God, showed an abnormally high 98% saying ‘No’. (source: The Register). Suspicions of an online sting by atheists seem highly likely.

I’ve also written a post looking at the risks of online polls.

Staff at PC World and Currys mock customers’ ‘stupidity’ on Facebook – 6th September 2009

Comments describe customers as ‘really stupid’ and ‘ignorant’, with some suggesting that they should be punched or even cattle-prodded (source: Guardian). Parent company DSG plans to investigate and take ‘necessary action’.

Lloyds spams Tweeters going on their hols – 26th August 2009

Automatic tweets to anyone mentioning the word ‘holiday’, plugging the pharmacy’s Travel Health webpage, do not go down well in the Twittersphere (source : pezholio.co.uk). Attempts to contact the company, suggesting they change their tactics, are ignored.

MI6 boss in Facebook row – 5th July 2009

Personal details about the next head of MI6, Sir John Sawers, are removed from Facebook amid security concerns (source: BBC News). Foreign Secretary David Miliband denies that security had been compromised, saying: “You know he wears a Speedo swimsuit. That’s not a state secret.”

Habitat abuses Twitter hashtags – 20 June 2009

UK furniture store Habitat starts tweeting, but abuses the hashtag in a surprising spate of spammy behaviour (source: Social Media Today) which quickly attracts criticism amongst Twitter users. Misused hashtags include #iphone, #Apple and #MOUSAVI (in a pretty cynical attempt to cash in on the high profile Iranian elections).

Force disciplines police blogger – 16 June 2009

A serving detective, revealed as the author of a high-profile blog, has been disciplined by his force (source: BBC). The award-winning blog had included criticisms of government ministers and police bureaucracy.

Council freezes Twitter account after insult gaffe – 3 June 2009

A council-run newspaper accidentally Tweets a potentially insulting message (source: localgov.co.uk), apparently intended only as a Direct Message to one person. Twitter account promptly shut down.

Probe into teacher Twitter posts – 22 May 2009

Teacher caught Tweeting on her mobile phone during class time (source: BBC). Up to 38 comments a day, some discussing her pupils. An investigation is launched.

Facebook gaffe earns woman the sack – 27 April 2009

A Swiss Insurance worker is fired after using Facebook whilst off sick (source: PC Pro). She had claimed a condition which prevented her from using her computer, and insisted she had accessed Facebook via her phone whilst in bed.

Video prank damages Domino’s brand – 15 April 2009

Domino’s Pizza employees post a film of unsavoury kitchen activity on Youtube (source: NY Times). Within days, millions have viewed the footage, and outrage spreads across the internet.

Damage control - Dominos responds via Youtube

New Skittles Twitter homepage not so sweet – 2 March 2009

Skittles adds a homepage feed of Tweets about it’s product, only to be inundated with abusive, unmoderated comments (source: PC Pro). As one poster observes, Skittles have “opened up the brand so we can all deface it.”

Girl fired for comment on Facebook – 27 Feb 2009

Girls describes her office job as ‘boring’ on Facebook. Is subsequently fired (source: BBC). Employer says “her display of disrespect and dissatisfaction undermined the relationship and made it untenable”.

Ryanair and the ‘idiot bloggers’ – 25 Feb 2009

Ryanair employees leave abusive comments on a blog which had reported a flaw in their website (Source: Times Online). The official statement that comes afterwards does little to defuse the situation.

Further reading

• How Facebook can get you fired
• Social Media Pitfalls: 5 lessons learned
• Top Ten Branded Social Media Gaffes