How Toyota Used Social Media to "Digg" Itself Out of a PR Nightmare

In January 2010, Toyota had to recall its 2.3 million vehicles because of faulty accelerator pedals. Immediately Toyota was trending on Google and Twitter on a daily bases, negatively. Realizing the opportunity to reach out to the publics through social media during the time of crisis, Toyota's social media team, which was only a few months old at that time, decided to address the situation via Digg, http://digg.com/, which had outsize influence on Google News searches.

It proved to be a great move. Before in the 1980s, there was similar auto crisis happened on Auti who faced a gas accelerator recall. But now under the 24/7 scrutiny of social media, Toyota had to create a new way to get their message across.

On February 8, Toyota served up Jim Lentz, president of Toyota's North American sales operation, to the publics in the form of a Digg Dialogg. Lentz appeared on a dedicated video site, was interviewed and asked many questions from the publics.  Within two weeks, the Dialogg received 1.2 million views, and there were 3,200 questions. The Dialogg gave Toyota the appearence of achieving social media branding nirvana: Transparency. The survey by YouGov shows that Toyota hasn't completely recovered afterwards, but was in mostly good news.

Kimberley Gardiner, Toyota's national digital marketing and social media manager said, if the same thing happened today, she'd probably choose TweetChat on Twitter instead. In fact, Toyota has held several chats on Twitter later. It also uses Facebook, as a way to reach out to Toyota owners, while Twitter addresses those consumers who might be skeptical about the brand.

Now many celebrities and entities like to hold online chat and dialog with social media users, as a way to interact with targeted audience and be aware of the public opinions and questions. This is specially effective during a crisis, be accessible, be sincere and be willing to talk is a must in order to mitigate negative public relations.

Reference:
Wasserman, Todd. How Toyota Used Social Media to "Digg" itself Out of a PR Nightmare.

Social Media for Business Use

Nowadays, more and more merchants become aware of the importance of social media and the profit it can generate. Therefore, social media users are more familiar with the business presence of social media -- public Facebook profile, Twitter page and Youtube account of an individual, a brand, or a company.

For business entities or a celebrity, creating their page on various social media sites definitely enrich the ways for more effective and direct communication between the companies or individuals and the public. Social media monitoring is indispensable for more and more companies for them to know the public opinions. Not only social media professionals are hired to manage the social media accounts for the company, but some are even doing something like content scanning on social media. Once I was complaining on the Facebook by posting on my wall about a clothes by ***, and just two or three days later, customer service staff from *** talked to me on Facebook asking about my problem with their clothes! Social media sites of celebrities reduce the distance between them and their fans or general publics. Before there is little way to communicate with them other than reading their news on newspapers or writing letters to them (most likely get no response). But now, people are able to follow the person they are interested of what they did, are doing or will do, people are even able to show their support, ask questions and doubts,and get feedback!

On the other hand, with more people sponsored to be a representative -- who can be your friends, people might be enough of their social media feeds chocked up with posts which might be out of their interests or business. The result can be that people who tweet are unfollowed by their friends. What I think and suggest is that people should settle down the theme and goal before opening a social media account. Whether it will be an effective communication tool for business reason, or a reflection of one's professional life, or just a record of daily life for an individual. Doing this will make an appropriate role of you by using social media effectively.