What happens when your online communication skills really suck

Taking social media too seriously can really damage your image

Amanda Bobben rented an apartment from Horizon Realty. The apartment is… “moldy”. Or that’s what Amanda Bobben said in a tweet read by 20 followers. A tweet that Horizon Realty says it has damaged the company’s image and the tenant should pay $50.000. No one knows how Horizon Realty got to read the tweet, and it probably doesn’t really matter anyway. What matters is that they sued Amanda and that’s the best example of how online communication can damage your image worse than any opinion. How? I’ll explain.

No wonder social media is a great medium to invest in. Actually, social media is one of the best ways to promote yourself, your company or your products. But what happens when you take too seriously any small thing that you might think it’s able to damage your image? Well, Horizon Realty Group from Chicago did that. The results? Well, they sure looked lame and scared.

For a company like Horizon Realty, the financial crisis is indeed a problem. The prices for apartments and houses dropped seriously, so commissions aren’t as big as they used to. That means lower incomes and, eventually, lower profits. Social media seems to be the cheapest and the best way to promote yourself. We all know, when it comes to companies and reducing costs, the first cuts are always applied to the marketing budget. Well, now they’re going to spend more on marketing.

Exaggerating is bad for the business

Amanda Bobben just droped a line on Twitter. Probably, her tweet might have had the chance to be retweeted by one of her 20 followers. But in the end, probably no more than 100 people were to really read that line she wrote:

Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment is bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s okay.

The tweet isn’t actually a damage to Horizon Realty’s image. It’s more like a damage to Amanda’s capabilities of choosing the flat she wants to live in. From my point of view, it’s her only fault that she didn’t check the apartment before moving in. In any normal circumstances, before paying the rent, you check the place you’re going to live in. It’s not like she payed the rent and while she was out, some guy from Horizon Realty came and planted the mold.

The mystery: How did they find her?

Leaving the “who’s fault is it” subject behind, I’m trying to imagine how did they manage to find that tweet. Are the “online communication experts” from Horizon Realty searching for the company name on Twitter and keep pressing the refresh button? Because it’s actually stupid to do that.

And that’s why I say exaggerating is bad for business. Taking too seriously the social media and everyone’s opinions is called exaggerating. That’s not an online communication strategy, that’s not a done job, it’s just stupidity.

The solution

If Horizon Realty managers are really scared of what people say, they shouldn’t have done such a big mistake and under no circumstance sue the tenant. What they could have done was to contact Amanda Bobben and offer to pay her bills for one month. Or to call her and offer her a new apartment. Would you like to know how the result would have looked like?

Wow, the guys from Horizon Realty found me a better place to stay! They’re cool!

But that would have been just as exaggerated. What I would have done? Ignore her tweet. Because it’s not my fault or my company’s fault because she didn’t check the place in the first instance. Anyway, here’s a merely different opinion.