The average lifespan of a Tweet/Facebook post is, apparently, two and three hours respectively. This may seem like a drop in the water in the whole scheme of social media, but with those drops come ripples. Having a strong social media presence and policy has become increasingly important in order for businesses to stay competitive within their industry. When a company’s social media policy is implemented it needs to be constantly monitored to ensure the content positively represents the brand.
For a lot of companies social media is a gateway to their brand and therefore forms a first impression. Whilst social media output can be proactive it’s also a reactive service and certain content can leave a business vulnerable to negative public reaction. For example, when a person is on the verge of leaving a company all social media passwords should be changed before they leave. You wouldn’t want a repeat of the HMV redundancy incident that happened early this year. Having an employee tweeting ‘Just overheard our Managing Director (he’s staying folks) ask “how do I shut down Twitter?”’whilst the redundancy is taking place doesn’t bode well for the company in question.
Chief Executive of RyanAir, Michael O’leary, recently fronted RyanAir’s Twitter with an entertaining Q&A session that had the hashtag #grillMOL. One of his responses read ‘Call me genius, Jesus, Superman, or odious little s**t, whatever takes your fancy as long as you fly Ryanair!’ They do say bad press can make good publicity, but to ensure opinion isn’t mistaken for brand values SilverDoor staff have ‘all opinions are my own’ clearly visible on individual profiles. We like our social media ambassadors to speak freely but stay within our social media policy to maintain our brand’s reputation.
Creating a greater awareness and understanding of both SilverDoor and the serviced apartment industry is our main goal with social media. We post content on internal news and business travel news to be relevant to both inside and outside of the serviced apartment industry. SilverDoor’s social media reflects our professional ideals, but also attracts a wider audience by keeping our finger on the pulse.
