How to Use Social Media Expertly, Plus Beer

Twitter can be a great tool for a company, but there are also many ways, if used wrong, in which it hurts an organization too. One recent incident that shows how a mis-tweet should be handled is the Red Cross and Dogfish Head Brewery interaction.

Dogfish Head Midas Touch, the favorite beer of the Red Cross

CNNmoney reported that a Red Cross employee sent out a personal tweet ("Ryan found two more 4 bottle packs of Dogfish Head's Midas Touch beer...when we drink we do it right #gettngslizzerd.") from the Official Red Cross Twitter page. While it isn’t something a non-profit wants on their Twitter page, it wasn’t the end of the world. They deleted it and apologized in a comedic way. Case closed, or it would have been if Dogfish Head hadn’t stepped in.

One of my classmates wrote about the Red Cross’ response, but I’d like to focus on Dogfish Head’s actions after they found out about the tweet. It was reported that fans of the beer started a donation campaign using #gettngslizzerd. Dogfish’s social media team found out about the tweet and decided to join in with beer-for-blood deals at places where their beer is sold.

Dogfish Head Brewery did a great thing. They aren’t a large company and because of that they can’t reach the people that the Red Cross can, but by finding an opportunity in a mistake and using that to reach people and do something positive they’ve made their presence known in a big way.

Both of these companies handled this incident expertly. The Red Cross has created a unique giving page for all the #gettngslizzerd supporters and Dogfish Head is still interacting with their customers through all forms of social media. More companies should follow their example.

Social Media Skills Young PR Pros Need

Mark Ragan, CEO of Ragan Communications, asks Tom Fishman, MTV's manager of social media & community, and Jon Bellinger, VP of social media strategy at Ketchum Inc., what important skills young PR professionals need when using social media.

http://www.ragan.com/Main/Video/1504.aspx

The biggest take away from this video for me is the importance of integrating yourself into a community. Knowing how members act and prefer to interact with companies is vital. Using those communities as only a convenient tool isn’t a good way to share a message, we can all see through those lazy tactics. But creating a real dialog and collaboration with those community members can lead to great results.

The best way to integrate a message into these communities is to know how they work and what actions are seen as acceptable and which ones step over the line. Once this is made clear it’s easier to work with people from those communities and know how a brand can fit in with them.

Another upside of this is that now I have a good excuse for all the time that will be wasted on various sites instead of doing work. I’m not procrastinating; I’m studying online communities.