It is time again for an another social media failure – this time from Toyota. What Toyota’s CamryEffect campaign did was pure and total Twitter spam. The Toyota account @CamryEffect was replying to users who used a Super Bowl related hashtag like #Giants or #Patriots with an offer to win a car. What made this …

Many company’s have discovered that using hashtags effectively can put Twitter and social media campaigns over the top. But what happens when a hashtag campaign backfires? An attempt to launch a Twitter campaign in the midst of a bitter strike affecting thousands of passengers did backfire for Qantas. The company hoped to generate some positive PR …

Social media have created a participation culture. We no longer merely watch and consume culture. We create, share and interact with it. Social media has forced openness and transparency in businesses that was not possible before. The power has shifted to the customer who can – if dissatisfied with the business – impact the business: …

Apologizing has become one of the standard practices of crisis communication and reputation management. The problem is, they are all starting to sound alike. Johnson & Johnson, already under fire for a string of product recalls, had another public relations issue on its hands after its o.b. tampons temporarily disappeared from stores and little was …

With the explosion of attention businesses have begun giving social media, many are jumping into the social sphere without understanding how to use it the right way. What can we learn from these social media failures? Don’t abdicate responsibility for your social media accounts. When you hand the daily management of these profiles to a …