A Real World Lesson in Social Media in the Enterprise

McDonald’s social media fail­ure this week is a good case study for under­stand­ing how busi­ness is chang­ing (or rep­re­sents my wish­ful think­ing about how I’d like it to change). I’ll call this the “old way of think­ing” and the “new way of thinking”.

In short, McDonald’s ini­ti­ated a social media cam­paign on twit­ter. Peo­ple were encour­aged to share their sto­ries about McDonald’s using hash­tag #mcdstories.

I can just imag­ine the sto­ries they thought they’d hear. All uni­corns and rainbows.

Real­ity bit hard.

Peo­ple shared sto­ries that would freak you out if you even know some­one who eats at McDonald’s, let alone eat there yourself.

Old school think­ing would use this as a rea­son to avoid social media. This think­ing is fear based, it works by ignor­ing prob­lems and hop­ing peo­ple don’t notice. It’s very scary for these sorts of thinkers to let go of con­trol­ling the mes­sage and hear­ing bad stuff. (Me, I like to hear bad stuff, said nicely!, so I can improve.)

The new way of think­ing, I pray, is to stop and say “shit, we bet­ter improve the eat­ing expe­ri­ence at McDonald’s”. It’s not about “hop­ing no one notices” but rather about deliv­er­ing excel­lence and con­tin­u­ous improvement.

It’s about build­ing a process and a cul­ture around doing what you, with all your expe­ri­ence know, to be right for your cus­tomer instead of being a slave to doing things well enough so no one screams (and then mak­ing it hard to scream).

Social media enables a peer-based con­nec­tion between com­pa­nies and cus­tomers that smart com­pa­nies will use to deliver a bet­ter cus­tomer expe­ri­ence than their competitors.

Let me repeat that because it’s really impor­tant. Social media is not about Fan Pages, or hash­tags, or blogs. It’s about con­nect­ing more authen­ti­cally with your cus­tomers to meet their needs bet­ter than any­one else.

An authen­tic con­nec­tion with your cus­tomers gives you bet­ter insight into their needs and helps you build a bet­ter exe­cu­tion strat­egy. A focus on Fan Pages and other non­sense us all about gim­micks and deals. Every­one loves a deal. You need them to love your brand. Big freak­ing difference.

A final note. You might say that Apple, the largest mar­ket cap com­pany in the world doesn’t use social media and they’re doing just fine. My answer… When you’re hit­ting it out of the park like Apple, you can make your own rules too. More likely, you’re giv­ing peo­ple a McDonald’s expe­ri­ence not an Apple one. Can you hear me now?