These days it’s hard to avoid social media consultants and in-house specialists shouting about showing pride in their recent corporate social triumphs.
So it’s a welcome change to read the latest offering from Social Media Influence founders, Matthew Yeomans and Bernhard Warner – a book which brings together the great corporate social media failures.
#FAIL: The 50 Greatest Social Media Screw-Ups and How to Avoid Being the Next One will appeal to anyone who has ever been enraged, frustrated, or just let down by a company they thought they could trust. And that’s probably all of us.
Many of the examples in this authoritative, but accessible, catalogue of catastrophe, are true David and Goliath tales of the little guy defeating the corporate giant.
But where this book really scores, is that it isn’t mere schadenfreude. We’re not just smirking (or sometimes laughing) at the corporate blunders – we’re learning too.
If you work in PR, marketing, social media, or have any kind of communications role, there are lessons to be learned from each example.
This is schadenfreude with a purpose. Highly recommended.
Andrew Weltch is a former social media manager at Social Media Influence, and is senior consultant at Weltch Media.
