Embedded is a presentation that I have put together which gives an overview of how businesses can and are using social media and looks at some of the tools and platforms available. It mainly examines how businesses are using it to engage externally but it also covers how businesses use social technologies internally in their organisations.
Feel free to comment, be interested to get your feedback
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=2ee96a68-5ca4-4dc9-822c-de21310ed4e4 "Social Media Overview and Case Studies")
Here is the Dominos pizza video that is causing all the stir at the moment. Its pretty grim, you most definitely would not like your take-out getting the same treatment. This was posted up on YouTube over the Easter bank holiday weekend, and by Wednesday had over 600,000 views. Dominos have come out and condemned the video and have fired the employees and say that the police have been notified and that a warrant for their arrest is awaiting. There’s some debate on whether the statement they have posted lacks sensitivity and contrition in general, nor does it address the whole issue of hygiene or the lack of it when it comes to the human part of the process. Other commentary is that Dominos should have posted a response in the medium that the “attack” was posted i.e. video – they should have posted a video apology by someone in authority in the organisation, along with an offer of some sort to try and re-build trust. Because essentially that is what has been ruined here. When you think of Dominos after watching this, you will be hard pressed not to conjure up the image of a couple of bored staff in the kitchen interfering with your food. Dominos have been active on social media channels such as Twitter for a period now. So it is all the more surpising that they have been wrongfooted on how to deal with this video. Which goes to show that even though you can be well versed in the rudiments of using social media tools, when push comes to shove and an organisation is faced with a thorny issue, that they revert back to the old way of handling problems, which inevtiably means lawyers, PR and time. Which does not translate well in to the real-time world of social media. A lesson for all businesses.
UPDATE – CEO of Dominos responds by a video post to apologise for the video. See below.
Also this weekend Amazon got into some trouble with the removal of gay and lesbian related literature. A major brouhaha erupted on Twitter tracked by the hashtag #Amazonfail which topped the daily twitter trends keeping it in full view. Amazon eventually came out and gave a fairly mild response to the controversy saying that it was a glitch and they were dealing with it. Surprisingly this did little if nothing to calm the whole affair. The lesson to be learnt from all this for brands is that they need to be listening to what is being said about them 24/7 and when re-acting to a crisis (real or perceived) to dispense with the PR spin and respond in a human voice.
CEO of Dominos responds by video:
