A new brand join the club of Egyptian brands have faced a Social Media Crisis in Egypt, After Mobinil, Vodafone, Chipsy, Spectra Restaurants and recently Coca Cola, The new club member is El Araby Group. This support a theory that it become impossible to fully protect your brand reputation on Social Media which give the power to the customers. We show the case with more info from evaluating the risk that social media and the Internet present to your brand, to developing online brand protection techniques on social media and online crisis communications plan.
Also Read : Coca Cola Egypt Responds to Fabricated Ads on Social Media
SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING STATISTICS 2013 //
- 53% of Twitter users recommend companies and products in their tweets
- 74% of B2B companies aggressively using Facebook in social media marketing
- 57% of companies have acquired customers through LinkedIn
- 75% of small businesses in the U.S. engage in social media marketing
- $3.1 billion will be spent on social media marketing in 2014
- B2B spending on social media marketing will rise 67% over the next 3 years
- 20% of all website visitors to company sites come from social media
- 2 out 3 people that follow a brand on Twitter will purchase from that brand
- 66% of marketers saw a rise in search engine rankings due to social media marketing
- 92% of businesses plan to invest more in social media in 2013
THE CRISIS //
One of the amazing facts about Social Media Crisis is it always arise form the middle of no where ! One angry customer would write a very emotional words supported by related visuals and wait for the snow ball phenomenon to take over.
THE ANALYSIS //
As El- Araby Group [Egyptian joint stock family enterprise] operating in the market since 1964 under the leadership of Mahmoud El Araby who stated in the CEO message: Through our continuous efforts and God’s help, our products have attained a reputation of being of the highest quality.
This would be a reason why some people would mix between a pure good intentions of an entrepreneur who decided to give the credit of his success to God [Which is very common in the Egyptian Society] and a political color biased to the Muslim Brotherhood. Yet! Mahmoud Al Araby is already well known that he involved in some projects for community development activities including building The Famous Mosque [Al Rahman Al Raheem] but the man still have a clear record of any political history. However, This didn’t prevent the fact that the estimated reach for this post was over 760 K in more than 6 Fan pages all of them are against Muslim Brotherhood policy.
Also Read : Mobinil net loss: LE177 million for one Tweet
Facts & Figures :
THE RESPONSE //
Quick and Positive by the El Araby Group official page by posting PR statements using the “We Know ” technique to slow down the feedback of previous mentioned posts vilifies the group reputation. We fits took a deeper look into El Araby Group official page:
PR Statement Analysis :
Conclusion //
Social Media changed the relationship between customer and business from master and servant to give the customer the power to respond, record and report in with massive exposure and it become so hard and even impossible to fully protect your brand reputation on Social Media Networks, The rate of sharing for such hate message is directly proportional with the level of emotions you can trigger from the audience and the more your words are emotional, the more shares and likes you can get !
El Araby Group was really lucky to have this minor crisis spread on Twitter [where most of crisis come from] and also with no video supporting the claimed situation is very helpful to make it appear like an imaginary story but! they ware wise enough to admit the fact and explain the propose behind asking customers to submit personal info and ID numbers for the benefits of customer protection. I think the documentation cycle implemented by El Araby group should be changed while I am writing this as it might cause more misunderstanding or, fire back again.
Brand Guard-ship Techniques //
Most brand managers or, PR teams get panic for the crisis without re-considering the volume of the crisis and its amplification rate against time ! This is a reminder for each brand that even quick response is a highly recommended action in such cases and even every minute count could be an advantage or, a lost opportunity to minor the negative effect yet! go into threat evaluation and know what kind of threat you are facing, explore the sources and react accordingly.
The Essence of Strategy is Choosing What Not to Do. – Michael Porter
Fight Social Media Fire With Social Media Water:
You should get the battle mood and get ready for the fight. Invest some time in setting a strategy before reacting in random directions or, just respond in smart tactful moves. Arm your army with knowledge and information.
Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Spamming is not a recommended technique or recruiting a face accounts would make it even worse. You should think fast how to recruit an army for a counter attack to eliminate or, neutralize the effect of the crisis you are facing.
Be Human:
The amazing thing about Social Media is its a Social Media, in other words its a medium where people socialize, The last thing you would do is to react as a machine. people tend to respond better to simple direct words [like Sorry and Thank You]. Always the simplest way to be forgiven is to be truly sorry !
Say sorry and mean it if you did a mistake, explain in simple words and make simple and straight to the point and never underestimate your customers abilities to understand what is right and what is wrong.
