In the age of social media, everything a brand writes, publishes, says or does quickly becomes a permanent part of history. When you have thousands – or even millions – of fans subscribed to your email marketing list, social media accounts and any other communication avenues, there is seldom opportunity for a mulligan. A single off-base message can have a drastic consequence to a business’ brand.
In most instances, however, these errant status updates are unintentional. For example, one social media specialist tweeted last summer that her business (Lehigh Valley Economic Development) had begun observing summer hours, asking if the company’s followers did anything to celebrate the season.
However, the brand manager believed the tweet portrayed the company as a slacker that left work early to play golf and quickly fired the associate. This was a two-sided blow to the brand’s reputation – first, it brought Lehigh Valley Economic Development’s work ethic to question. Then, it suggested the brand couldn’t take a joke when the employee was fired. Either way, the company suffered some bad press.
The Need for a Brand Editor
Instances such as Lehigh Valley Economic Development firing suggests one important thing for modern brand management: the need for an editor.
In the days before social media, many companies spent hours developing content and relevant messaging. Now, however, companies are facing pressure to create content at a faster pace to stay in consumers’ news feeds. This leads to stray messages making their way through approval and on the internet.
A brand editor should serve a purpose similar to how the role would work in a traditional newspaper setting. This person should be reviewing the content and assets and approving it before it can be used by marketers and salespeople. By doing this, the editor ensures that irrelevant – and potentially damaging – messages don’t make their way to consumers.
If Lehigh Valley Economic Development had used a distributed marketing automation platform, the whole situation may have been avoided. These solutions can be used to avoid similar situations by providing sales teams and marketers with the assets marketers need to tailor content specifically for the intended audience, making it easier to ensure relevancy.