Q. How to get Twitter completely wrong?

A. Use an international conflict for your own benefit.

If you haven’t already heard then you will no doubt be astonished to learn that fashionable furniture gurus Habitat has been utilising the current conflict in Iran for their own benefit on Twitter. Sounds a bit crazy huh? They have in fact been using hashtags such as #Iran and #Mousavi to get their name and products into the hotly debated discussions going on in Twitter about the current issues in Iran.

The company deny that they authorised these tweets, which may be true but it does not excuse them from their lack of respect to what is a serious issue, one which they have blatanly used for spamming purposes. Looking at their history of tweets it is clear to see that Habitat are just big fat spammers, and on this occasion they got it very, very wrong.

In the past Habitat have used top trending topics such as #apple and #iphone linking them to products and pages on the Habitat website that are in no way related to the #hastag.  In a sort of apology sort of admission to the #Iran fiasco Habitat stated:

The top ten trending topics were pasted into hashtags without checking with us and apparently without verifying what all of the tags referred to. This was absolutely not authorised by Habitat.

This demonstrates that the company have a complete lack of control over their online activites and have completely been abusing social media tools such as the Trending Topics for their own benefit, and in this instance their arrogance and complete lack of concern has backfired, resulting in outrage across the net.

This debacle highlights the issue of whether businesses should be using social media tools such as Twitter at all. We at 360innovate are firm believers that social media networks can be used for businesses purposes. However, businesses looking to go down that route, who do not seek the use of an agency, should ensure that they think about which social media tools are most suited to your business. In this instance choosing to go onto Twitter was a logical choice for Habitat, many B2C companies are using Twitter very well to connect to their target audience and if well planned relationships can be formed between business and consumer. Habitat failed to achieve this not only by abusing the #hashtags but by misunderstanding what Twitter is all about. Instead of using Twitter as an engaging communication tool Habitat used it as vehicle for self promotion, in the process losing all credibility and the interest of their target market- we really don’t need to be told 5 times about a 20% off sale…

Which leads onto the next point anyone looking to use any form of social media for a specific purpose must really think about what they are hoping to gain and plan how they are going to achieve it. Your business may be on the most talked about social network in town but if your floundering around in the dark you may actually do more harm than good- Habitat being a prime example of this!

Image courtesy of Marketing Pilgrim.