One of the questions which companies face, and one for which there is no easy answer, is: How do I use social media to benefit my business? In fact, there are still some companies which do not think social media has any particular relevance to them, dismissing it as a fad, and a large number of people doing little more than chatting to no real purpose.

Whether you like it or not, whether you understand it or not, social media is relevant, and can have a significant impact on your business. Here is a concrete example of how it was a major influence in forcing a household name to perform an embarrassing u-turn. Gap, the clothing retailer, has had the same logo for over 20 years, one you’re probably familiar with – a navy blue square with ‘Gap’ in white. The company decided that it was time for a rebrand, at least for their home page; the new logo had ‘Gap’ in black on a light background, with a small blue square over the top of the ‘p’.

Not exactly a revolutionary change; in fact the company didn’t even issue a press release about the change. Well, the company’s customers didn’t like the new logo – and social media gave them a voice. Enough of a voice for the company to sit up, take notice and take the decision to revert to the old logo. Of course, since Gap was already using both Twitter and Facebook, it had already provided people with a forum where they could voice their displeasure, but these days Twitter can be used in the same way, regardless of whether the target of comments has an official presence there.

More than 2,000 comments were left on Gap’s Facebook page; and Mark Hansen, President of Gap Brand North America, acknowledged that the company had slipped up. “We recognize that we missed the opportunity to engage with the online community. This wasn’t the right project at the right time for crowd sourcing.”

Whether you have a Facebook page or a Twitter account, if you aren’t at least monitoring those sites to see what your customers are saying about you, you could be missing out on valuable feedback. And if nobody is saying anything about you, well, that’s valuable feedback as well. Of course, it’s important not to become obsessive about social media; it’s reasonable to ask whether Gap hasn’t overreacted to a relatively small amount of negative reaction just because that reaction was so visible. After all, 2,000 negative comments should be balanced against the number of people who visit Gap stores every day; and changing a corporate logo often meets with resistance initially, but after a while people will get used to the new look and wonder what all the fuss was about.  It did at least become clear to Gap that a large number of people were paying attention, and chatting to a very real purpose; it might not have caused their brand lasting damage had it been ignored, but it may perhaps have served them very well in terms of publicity.  No one can now doubt that Gap listens to some of its best brand evangelists.   

Finally, social media isn’t appropriate for every company. Actually, I think it would be more accurate to state that not every company can make use of social media in a proactive way, whereas almost any company of any significance in its market can glean valuable market information by monitoring social media. And even that’s not straightforward – the use of abbreviations, emoticons and slang changes so fast that it can be impossible to tell whether describing a product as ‘bad’ is positive or negative!

If you need some guidance through the minefield of social media, get in touch. We don’t pretend to have all the answers, but at least we know what the questions should be.