With the rise of social media, businesses and brands are recognizing that they must get involved or be left in the gutter to die. Over the past few years I’ve seen brands use various tactics and 
strategies, some effective…others not so much. One thing that hits a nerve with most people is automation. You know on twitter, if you get a DM (direct message) two seconds after you follow someone, this is very likely to be an automatic generic message. Far too many people use these, and I can’t stand it! “Hi there! You rock, I love the smell of your feet, and you’re my new BFF!” This is usually followed by a scammy shortened link. When I get these, I promptly unfollow the offending profile. Other people just send something that says, “Thank you for following me!”, and while still cheesy, I don’t delete them. At least the very first contact they have with me, isn’t asking me to do something for them!
Automation in moderation is ok. I know it’s not a popular thing to say in organic social media circles, but you cannot manage several profiles effectively without it. As far as automated tweets, I don’t partake. On the other hand, I do automate to find people that I would be interested in following. For instance, if a client of mine has a single brick and mortar location, I will use an automated tool like tweetadder. (that is an affiliate link, but I would recommend it anyway) Tweetadder’s software allows me to search for people and tweets within certain geographical parameters. I can set it so that my client’s twitter account will automatically follow anyone in that area who uses specific keywords in their tweets. From there, I review the new follows to ensure that they are a relevant profile, and I reach out to them when an opportunity presents itself. You can also search twitter bios for keywords with tweetadder. I can also automatically follow the followers of my client’s competition.
Bottom line, automation for following is good. Automation for tweeting and DMs…not good!
Which brings me to the purpose of this post. The other day I was in a hurry to pick up something for dinner. We decided to go to the Arby’s drive-thru. We placed our order, and while waiting for the food, I checked in at Arby’s using foursquare. I didn’t publish the checkin to twitter or facebook (which is really annoying if you do that all of the time). Instantly I received an automated tweet from @ArbysFoursquare. The tweet [below] told me about their fish sandwich, and asked me to buy one ‘today’. My first thought was “Damn, you people are greedy. I already bought food from your business, and now you want me to buy more?!”. Obviously, Arby’s is trying something new with their location based marketing, but they lost it on the execution. Why did they choose to bombard people, who are already at their store, with a sales pitch? If the tweet had read “@CoffeeNate Thank yo so much for choosing Arby’s, and checking in on foursquare!” I would have thought, “Gee, that’s clever.” Instead, I get a commercial and I’m left feeling empty and used.
.@ArbysFoursquare How about just thanking me?I already spent money!
— Nathan Smith (@CoffeeNate) January 27, 2012
The world is changing. Social media is transforming the way that businesses interact with customers. Customer service is slowly beginning to look like it did 100 years ago. There will be growing pains along the way, and some will catch on faster than others, but the consumers who use social media [approximately %90] will hold them accountable. We are seeing, and are going to continue to see, consumers being in more control. Nowadays, if I buy a product that is defective, or I have a not so pleasant experience at a hotel, I’m not calling the 800 number or sending an email. I’m tweeting them, and hitting them up on facebook, and I have gotten much more traction with this than I ever have with the behind the scenes email or phone call.
I’d love it if you would share a social media FAIL or SUCCESS in the comments below!
::UPDATE::
About 10 minutes after I tweeted about this post, Arby’s responded. See our conversation below. Let’s just say, “Nice recovery!”
@Zynali We’re testing other types of messaging and appreciate your feedback.
— Arby’s (@Arbys) February 4, 2012
@Zynali We appreciate the learning from your experience & we’re in the process of pulling that tweet out of the set of replies. 🙂
— Arby’s (@Arbys) February 4, 2012
@Zynali If you DM us your mailing address, we’d love to send you a gift card to use on your next visit to Arby’s.
— Arby’s (@Arbys) February 4, 2012
About Nathan Smith
