In the last case study, we discussed the importance of brand marketers ensuring strong strategic foundations for social media, as this directly affects how the brand can be perceived. In Dell’s case, its structured approach was a success, with the company earning millions through its Twitter and generating a lot of discussion among consumers through its blogs. In this article, we will show a different side of the story and explore an example of a bad social media strategy and how it affected the brand.
While Australians may not be familiar with Habitat, it is in fact a leading furniture retailer in the UK, with over 80 stores across Europe. When the company decided to jump on the social media bandwagon by creating a Twitter page, at first glance it seems like they started in the right direction, with a nice Twitter page that reflected the company’s clean brand image. However, it was the lack of strategy and content that had Habitat in hot water.
In order to drive traffic to their Twitter post, Habitat used various hashtags in their tweets to appear in popular discussion topics. For non-Twitter users, #hashtags are the keywords used on Twitter to help people filter and search for tweets. For example, tweets about the 2010 World Cup had the hashtag ‘#WorldCup’, which means that every time people searched for this topic, tweets with this hashtag appeared. Therefore, they are used to make relevant tweets appear in relevant searches. However, the problem with Habitat’s use of hashtags was that they were irrelevant to the content of the tweets, using others that had nothing to do with furniture, shopping or renovations. Instead, they made the mistake of simply putting popular hashtags at the time of their post. They used hashtags like #iPhone, #Apple, and even Australia’s rejected Masterchef contestant, #Poh. Clearly, Habitat saw an opportunity to generate more brand awareness, as by using these hashtags, they would show up in popular searches. The result for end users was that when they searched for, say, #iPhone, the Habitat tweet came up, only to find that it had nothing to do with their search. Twitter users obviously viewed this negatively and heavily criticized the luxury furniture company for taking advantage of popular topics to spam.
To make matters worse, in response to the backlash, Habitat removed his spam tweets. Unfortunately for the company, they are still visible through Twitter search. Many bloggers have commented on the lack of transparency on behalf of the company, with many criticizing that Habitat should have publicly apologized for spamming Twitter and compensated those who received it.
Clearly, Habitat didn’t have a real Twitter strategy to begin with. They opted for simple attraction marketing to drive traffic to their website. But the core lesson here was that they didn’t strategize on how to add value or spark conversation about their brand, products, or home décor topics. Instead, they created spam by taking advantage of popular topics. Although Habitat has finally apologized for its spam, the damage to its brand has already been done. Since then, Habitat has learned its lesson. Instead of simply advertising their products, they have generated conversation by responding to customer needs and queries and, most impressively, by providing decorating tips for individual users.
