21 Nov Please Stop the Brand Bashing. Now.

In the social media bubble, we love to slate brands that don’t do things according to best practice. Hardly a week passes without another company being hauled over the coals by bloggers who seem to revel in the opportunity to out a brand for poor use of hashtags on Twitter, ineffective blogger outreach or Facebook posts focused purely on gaining Likes and engagement. Well here’s a thought: how about we call it quits with the smug negativity?

What I’ve seen most of recently is Facebook bashing; a propensity to call out and openly deride brands that are rather too obviously going after engagement in order to protect their Page reach. But with all of the confusion and, in some cases, blind panic surrounding Facebook’s recent EdgeRank update, is this really surprising? Facebook has hardly been very communicative about the changes it’s made, so is it any wonder that more and more companies are turning to ‘Like this if…’ type posts out of fear of losing the fanbase they’ve worked so hard to build?

What’s With the Attitude?

I’m not defending brands that publish ridiculous Facebook posts and, actually, it’s doing them no favours at all, but I’m questioning why we feel the need to mock them. Do we not have the intellect to understand why this is happening? And if we’re managing our own Pages well and working to best practice, why should we care what others are doing?

Perhaps most depressing is that it’s not just holier-than-thou individual bloggers who demonstrate this predisposition to naming and shaming; some very wide-read blogs that should be above this sort of stuff regularly publish ‘news’ of xyz brand’s social media fail. And personally speaking, funny though it was for ten minutes, I think the Condescending Corporate Brand Page Facebook Page does us no favours whatsoever. It does little more than perpetuate the sneering, snarky and pious nature of many now working in the social communications industry.

I remember a time only a couple of years ago when the social media community was intensely supportive of one another, offering tips as well as sharing and celebrating best practice and success. But we seem to have become rather self-serving, closed and protective of late. Can we learn anything from the brands that get things wrong? Sure. But we can learn a lot more by observing the companies that are getting it right.

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