This is story which ran a year ago, take a look
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/08/14/can-best-buy-get-its-groove-back-through-social-media-leadership/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/08/14/can-best-buy-get-its-groove-back-through-social-media-leadership/
19 comments:
Man that stinks for Best Buy! I'd say Best Buy needed a GENERAL twitter account and it would be widely known that these C-level executives represent the voice of the tweets. So when the former exec resigns, th 37,000 followers are technically still subscribed as followers and an "interim" voice can step in...
Anymore, I think any company of any size would be crazy not to utilize social media. There is no quicker way to reach thousands of people, tens of thousands depending on how many followers your followers have. How beneficial social media is to your company depends on how it is used. If I were CEO of Best Best, I'd use social media to promote products and promotions (such as free shipping) to promote online sales in order to compete with companies like Amazon.
Quarter ending 4/2012 Best Buy saw operating revenues of $11.61 million while quarter ending 4/2013 Best Buy saw operating revenues of $9.38 million.
The use of social media did not cause revenues to increase.
http://www.advfn.com/exchanges/NYSE/BBY/financials?btn=company_data&istart_date=79&mode=quarterly_reports
Agree with Patrick that Best Buy is supposed to take control of those C-level accounts. Besides, I checked three Best Buy official twitter accounts: Best Buy News, Best Buy Support and Best Buy Deals and found out that people love deals so much but don’t care about news or support. Not many will follow all these three accounts. I think Best Buy should emerge these three accounts and offer deals, answer popular questions and share information with followers in one twitter account.
Wow. That's a tough week for Best Buy. It goes to show the value of people who can think through all consequences. In the future, it would be best for Best Buy to have a company twitter account, and the executives could use their own handles and direct traffic to a general Best Buy twitter account. Also, social media should be considered in the collection of agreements senior executives need to sign.
I agree with Yuxin Xu. Also, I feel like all of this "drama" doesn't reflect well on anyone at Best Buy.
I thought these points were particularly interesting: " When a company’s leaders are actively engaged on social media channels, how does it impact the brand when they leave?And when C-Suite executives tweet from a handle which includes the brand name, whose followers are they, and how much are those followers worth?". As the line between our personal and professional identities blurs, things become more complicated.
Also, why/ how does being on social media make an executive more trustworthy?
It's important due to the nature of a high turnover of high level executives that the company's twitter voice be branded with the company's name only. This can be tough since it makes the communication a little less personal. Most companies should have a social media department or at least a strategist that handles platforms like Twitter. It is not a good use of time for the CEO of a company like BBY to be tweeting...IMO.
This is surprising to learn that the C-level executives would have that much impact on their customers'brand loyalty through using Twitter.Soical media is gaining ground in other ways to advertise and promote products and services.
I would agree with Kirsten and Jay. Why would being active on social media make you more trustworthy. I might follow social media on a particular company but I would still do the appropriate research before buying.
For me, a C-level executives as active twitter user will leave the impression of willing to communicate and paying attention to customers’ needs. It’s a better way to show their compassion and value as an average human, not the professional titles and bureaucratic image. When customers consider them as people around us, it’s easier to trust and rely on the company or brand.
I think Best Buy is a company without a clear direction or effective leadership at this point. The article makes that pretty clear in my opinion. Even though this story is a year old, recent news suggests BBY still is flailing around aimlessly.
Effective use of social media is a must for almost any organization wanting to compete in our technologically advanced economy. With this being said I do not believe that actively maintaining a social media site is an appropriate usage of a C-level executive’s time; and also can lead to succession issues such as discussed in the Best Buy example. Instead a dedicated social media department should be incorporated to ensure all social media messages are in line with the corporate goals and values. This will also allow top level executives to do more of their core functions within a company, such as building a company strategy for the future. That is not to dismiss the importance of C-level officers’ communication with shareholders of the organization; I just believe other avenues of communication would offer a more appropriate avenue to do so.
I think every leader has their personal perspective on leadership insights and any comment that's sending out via social media. That kind of personal "content" shouldn't be sent by a corporate social media account but rather by executive's personal account. The corporate account should be used to send corporate value, culture, or mostly promotion and engagement, which I think should be handled by a dedicated employee. Overall, corporate and executives should be careful about what you send through social media.
I'd have to agree that general corporate owned Twitter account is needed. That would be the only way to answer the question of who the followers actually belonged to, the individual execs or Best Buy.
I don't see why the social media actions of the CEO's really matter in terms of Best Buy's success. People don't base their buying decisions off what the CEO is currently saying - their purchases are based on the products and store environment.
Social media is not just a communication tool, it brings a lot of potential benefits to a brand. It has changed customer expectations about brands and effective CEO leadership.
The comments about Best Buy needing to take over the C-level account is spot on! These accounts should be used to make customers more in tune with company culture, current events and even sales. These accounts they currently operate are clearly not bringing in the followers to make any kind of difference.
In today's market, customers demand more from companies around social media. I think it was a mistake for Best Buy to have the CEO and CMO managing the twitter handles directly. Best Buy should create a company handle that will be certain to always be the company handle, no matter if executives leave or not. This allows customers and followers of best buy to have a "go to" source for up and coming product releases and marketing campaigns.
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