Social Networking - A Cautionary Tale
What To Do When MySpace Stops Showing the Love
As a small business, we're always looking for cost effective ways to extend our brand. Considering the reach of social networking sites, we decided to reach out to pool players through the MySpace channel. Taking a page out of the Travelocity playbook, we created a page for Frank, our bulldog mascot much in the same way that Travelocity has a page for their Roaming Gnome. We have our WPBA player rep Debbie Schjodt travel around the states with Frank to build the brand and create a photographic diary of Frank's travels.
We set up the page, had a blog for Frank, put up pictures of Frank at pro and pro/am events with pro pool players, amateur players and customers and over the course of two years amassed a following of 1,600+ friends and fans.
Then on the afternoon of August 18 2008, the unthinkable happened. Our MySpace account disappeared. No warning, no notification, just a deleted account. We asked MySpace for an explanation, but all we got were canned form letters. Two years of work and good will gone thanks to someone at MySpace with an itchy trigger finger.
With the damage done and no hope of recovery of our MySpace account, we took the next logical step - we launched a new site for Frank via a Wordpress blog and put a press release about the incident and Frank's new blog on the wire. It was picked up by some technology blogs and a number of high profile news sites in the billiards industry. In one day we had more traffic hit Frank's new blog than we'd get from a month of visits to his MySpace page.
The moral of the story is simple. Don't put your fate in the hands of a third party where you have no control. Social networking sites are excellent tools for extending your reach, but if you rely to heavily on one partner, you could end up getting burned. If the unthinkable happens as it did with us, don't sit back and take it. Go on the offensive and find a way to spin a negative into a positive.
1 Comment
Danna Crawford says:
I do know that feeling as I had that happen to mine last year. I lost almost 10 thousand friends and THEN to top it off, someone opened up a page using my name! Geesh. So, I started another one and I need friends ..lol http://myspace.com/powersellingmom I love your BLOG btw! And that dog is DARLING!
