The risks organizations run in not embracing new trends in social media don’t seem great at first glance.

On the surface, there is very little fear felt for those missing out on a few Facebook fans. The time spent not tweeting is re-invested into core business strategy or customer service and becomes a well-played investment for most anti-social enterprises.

This philosophy may not be as stable an investment as most may think. The ability to be agile and responsive across social networks is a major asset in today’s marketplace. Knowing how and when to interact may be the difference between dodging a bullet and facing a very public catastrophe.

Recently a few large organizations have learned a lesson in social media negligence the hard way.

January 2010 was a difficult month for H&M, a major clothing retailer. On January 5th, The New York Times ran a story detailing the discovery of bags of purposely destroyed clothes in an alley behind an H&M store in New York City. The clothes were sliced,  ripped and discarded as unsold inventory. Later that day, H&M was the top trending topic on Twitter as people trashed H&M’s decision to destroy clothing especially as many people suffer through difficult economic times.

H&M did not offer much of a response to the social uproar, besides a short apology through traditional media. H&M’s Twitter feed was corporate and cold in it’s own defense. Five tweets in total were issued on the matter. All linked to non-related pages on their corporate website, one asked for e-mail feedback, and another to an official response but was a broken link.

Currently, with no social media response, the blogosphere remains a one-sided indictment of a company’s poor corporate responsibility decisions. Without a response, reputation will continue to be negatively affected and only time will tell if profits will be influenced.

Ideally any response from H&M could have been presented in a social medium that people prefer to use. A blog post would have been ideal and working links to this post from their Twitter account would also have been very useful.

Any subsequent follow-up posts or tweets on the subject would have also been seen as meaningful attempts to reach the social sphere.

Is your organization ready to react to crisis in a social environment?

Catching the buzz of social media now will not only equip you to respond if disaster strikes but who knows, maybe you’ll profit from your involvement in the short-term as well.

Posted by Neil Gilbert