In an article about how even the military is adapting and using social media to increase visibility, a social media manager spoke about the changes she has seen among the top brass. While a few years ago, they would have been upset about both the existence and release of something like the Lady Gaga parody video, she showed it during a presentation and they laughed. In the video, soldiers stationed overseas perform their own version of a Lady Gaga song and the video went viral and became very popular.
In another online video that did not get the kind of viewership that the song parody did, soldiers are seen taking out their frustration on a printer after calling the company’s customer service line and being told they needed to pay for customer assistance. The soldiers felt that given that they were overseas fighting they could at least not be asked to pay for help in operating machinery that they needed to complete their mission.
In the first case, people within an organization who were goofing off made a video for fun and it got picked up worldwide because it was authentic, spontaneous and fun. In the second example, people in one organization took another to task. Which kind of video would you prefer to have out there?
While you cannot stop disgruntled customers from venting through videos, blogs or other online mediums, you can put effort into making your organization seem personable so that any gaffes will not be so detrimental. Whether or not you think that all publicity is good publicity, you have to admit that if the military can find the humor in a song parody video, then you can look for appropriate ways to loosen up and show your human side online.
Video is not only good for customer relations, it is also good for website optimization and search engine marketing – good or bad.
