Tag Archives: twitter

Business Blunders, Online Marketing, Social Marketing

Gap Learns The Power of Social Media

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By now everyone knows the power of social media. Several years ago words like Facebook and Twitter meant nothing and now those two social media giants are cornerstones of our lives.

Every little while a really great example comes along that highlights the power of social media that I think is worth mentioning.

In this case, Gap learned just how quick and powerful social media can be.

For over 20 years Gap has had the same logo that we’ve all seen in malls, stores and advertisements literally all over the place. But, they felt it was time for a change and they needed a new logo. (You can read the message from Gap’s North American President here.)

After unveiling the new logo, which Ad Age said looked like “something a child created using a clip-art gallery”, the social networks went wild.

New and Old Gap Logo

Facebook, Twitter, blogs and just about every other social media outlet were, on mass, voicing some pretty big disappointment. And, of course, it didn’t take long for the mockery to begin either. Check out http://craplogo.me/post.php … kind of makes you wonder how much Gap paid their agency?

After less than a week, Gap has gone back to their old logo and said this:

“Ok. We’ve heard loud and clear that you don’t like the new logo…We only want what’s best for the brand and our customers. We are bringing back the blue box tonight.”

Just like that, the customer spoke loud enough and the company responded.

This truly highlights the power of social media and echoes just how important it is for brands to monitor social networks for feedback on their products. (This applies to big and small companies alike!)

Now, there is a chance that this was all a publicity stunt because in all honesty, when was the last time there was this much buzz about Gap? If that was the case, then kudos to Gap on doing that really well, but if that wasn’t the case… then, sheesh… didn’t you show a lot of people the logo before unveiling it?

I wonder if Henry Ford had access to Facebook in 1920 he would have known people really wanted cars in a color other than black? =)

SEO, Social Marketing

Google and Yahoo Now Include Real-Time Tweets

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Last Monday Google launched ‘real-time search’ which integrates stuff happening around the web including live tweets from Twitter, public Facebook pages, MySpace stream data, and more.

In past months while Twitter was gaining substantial fame there was talk in the industry that Twitter may become a better way to search for something that is ‘current’ due to the real-time nature of the platform. While I never put much stock into this, it is clear now that Google has no intention of losing their position as being the leader in searching for information… archive, real-time or otherwise.

With this update, Google remains at the center of the search hub and is now even stronger and can provide more relevant data to searchers.

Yahoo, one of Google’s biggest competitors, obviously was not far behind. Last Thursday Yahoo started including recent Twitter posts in their web search results as well. Their approach is a bit different and Yahoo appears to be only interested in the hottest of topics. Yahoo claims that their search algorithm can determine the most relevant tweets and then figures out where to include that information on the search results page.

We are definitely seeing a merging of new social media and traditional web searches, which should make for a more interesting SEO (search engine optimization) landscape.

Online Marketing, Random Thoughts

The Importance of Friendly Error Messages When Sites Go Down

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Everyone knows that websites can go offline. From the smallest little website to the huge websites operated by major Fortune 500 companies. It’s simply a fact of life that people have to get used to.

At Elite Answers we spend tons of time and countless resources safeguarding our servers, creating redundancy, drafting emergency plans, etc, etc, all in an effort to make sure that when our customers want our service it is there for them. And, in the vast majority of cases it is (…goal achieved!), but I’d be a liar if I said we never have even the smallest hiccup.

The equation is rather simple, websites run off of computers and anyone who has ever touched a computer knows that they can crash.

Even with the best backup plans that could possibly be designed, a few minutes of downtime or an error here-and-there is bound to crop up over the years.

When catastrophe does strike and a website is down for a few seconds to a few hours, it is important to communicate that back to the users of that website. The “not knowing” what is going on is often the worst part of the experience when someone goes to their favorite site and finds out it isn’t there.

That is why showing an informative error message is so important.

If a visitor to a website just sees a dreaded “404 Page Not Found” error or an “Internal Server Error” message then they don’t know what to think. How long will this website be offline? Do I have to wait seconds, minutes, days or hours?

But, if instead, the website has a friendly “We’re doing routine maintenance” or “Something unexpected happened, but we’re working on it”, then at least that is being conveyed to the website visitor.

I recently went to update my Twitter status and the website was offline. Instead of getting a nasty error, I saw this fun graphic. I think Twitter has the right idea with this message because not only does it convey that things will be back soon, but it is simple, clever, creative, and humorous.

Twitter Maintenance Screen

Personally, I think this looks a whole lot better than a nasty default error message. Don’t you agree?