How Not To Use Your Twitter Business Account…
How Not To Use Your Twitter Business Account…
Not too long ago, the Twitter account for The Walking Dead tweeted out a major spoiler after the mid-season finale aired on the East Coast. A great many people including myself were pissed off by this. However, there were a lot of people that had no problem with the spoiler. I’m guessing their logic is, “Fuck everyone else, I already saw it!”
Here’s the thing, they learned from their mistake and promised not to do that again. But, was it really a mistake? It happens all the time, specially in sports. In fact it just happened to me again, this time with the Hall of Fame Game. I was about 30 minutes behind everyone else watching it live. I prefer to watch TV from the DVR so I can skip the commercials. I try hard to avoid social media at times like this because I know some fucking idiot is going to post a spoiler. However, sometimes, it’s just unavoidable. Some times I have to jump online for a second and check a social media account for something completely unrelated. Never fails, someone has posted a spoiler to whatever it is I was watching. It is so damn frustrating.
So, now that game or show is ruined because some fucknut network person had to tweet the ending! But, should the networks do that? A lot of people think they should, they have that “fuck you” attitude for not watching it live. I tend to disregard those people because their fucking stupid or at the very least shallow. But, the networks, when they tweet out the spoilers, they aren’t doing anyone, any favors at all. In fact, they’re actually hurting themselves by doing it. So, in my opinion, no they shouldn’t tweet out the spoilers directly.
When a network or the like, posts these kinds of things, they show that they have a really poor concept of what their social media accounts are for. TV and sports is a business. They worst thing they can do is tweet out a spoiler. The reason why is simple. They don’t make any money by giving away that information on Twitter.
Let me explain. Let’s say, I’m a football fan and I’m watching the first game of the pre-season on the NFL Network. For whatever unrelated reason I have to check my twitter feed. I open up Twitter and there it is, the score to the game I’m watching on my DVR. Well, as a customer, I’ve now learned that I can’t follow the NFL Network on Twitter because they’re going to ruin every game like that. If I can’t follow them, I don’t see all of their other tweets. Now, they no longer have a chance to make any money from me.
The solution to this makes every happen and it’s better for their business. All they have to do is post a link to their site. A simple tweet like, “You won’t believe who won? Click Here to see!” Anyone that wants to know can click and see it. Anyone that doesn’t want to know is safe. They have kept me as a follower and more than that they got everyone that wanted to know the score to visit their site, and what is their site filled with besides the score? Advertising! It doesn’t matter how many followers you have on social media, if you can’t get them to you website, you’re wasting your time on social media.
So yes, I get it when someone jumps into the conversation saying the obvious. it just pisses me off. I fucking know I can avoid social media and maybe not have the game or TV show I’m watching ruined. My point is bigger than that. My frustration is at the idiots who are running a business account on Twitter and failing at it because they don’t understand how to effectively use their Twitter account. And, I can’t help but get angry at the people who jump into a conversation that I have specifically directed at a person or business. Then to top it all of their response is doesn’t solve the problem at all. They offer up a smart ass answer. It’s pathetic.
There are probably thousands of people that didn’t appreciate having the game spoiled by the NFL Network and they didn’t say anything because maybe they felt it’s their fault for being on social media. It’s not their fault. It’s not my fault I had to jump on to social media. It’s the fault of the network or business for being clueless as to how to run a successful social medial campaign for a business.
