Help our Facebook Page is under attack: learnings from Nestle and 3 actions you could take

Posted by: Krishna De | Posted on: April 19th, 2010 | 12 Comments | Posted in: Facebook, Networking online, New media, Social media, social media marketing

I have written about Nestle and the campaign that Greenpeace has been orchestrated both online and offline previously (lots of useful links in that article for the background to the situation).

A couple of days ago I saw a message on Twitter that Nestle had responded to Greenpeace – so I went to investigate. They responded to Greenpeace on the 13 April 2010 and your details on their website in the Media Centre.

You will also find a link to a statement about the fact that Nestle Chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe repeated the Company’s call for a moratorium on the destruction of the world’s rainforests and blamed the biofuel industry for the growth in deforestation at their AGM.

In the meantime the Nestle Facebook page has grown to almost 100,000 fans (they had around 93,000 fans on the 23 March 2010).

Nestle clearly want to be seen to be a ‘social brand’ – checking on the media page of their website they feature that they have content on Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook .

So if you were managing the Facebook page for Nestle what would you do?

Here are a 3 actions I would recommend Nestle (or any brand under assault on Facebook) take in relation to their Facebook page:

1. Change your default setting of what non-fans see when they come to your Facebook page – It is good to see that Nestle has now changed their Facebook Page so the default setting is to see their official posts rather than a mix of fans comments (which are many and mostly unsupportive of Nestle) if someone new comes to the Nestle Facebook page.

I recommend that you are deliberate with the link that you want people to see as the default view of your Facebook page.

2. Make it easy for visitors to your Facebook page to learn how you are responding to the crisis: It’s disappointing that there was silence on the Facebook page from Nestle about their response to the situation between the post on the 19 March 2010 and the post they added to their Facebook page on the 13 April 2010 about their response to Greenpeace.

With the volume of posting from fans of the page it will be easy for people not to see or find the Nestle response (though action taken in point 1 can assist non-fans of the page to quickly understand your position). ‘No comment’s’ could be interpreted that they do not care about the situation an I am sure that is not the case.

With a little customisation it would be easy to add a specific tab on the Facebook page with their statement and action plan and even have a link in the left had side of the wall so that people new to the page can quickly find out about Nestle’s point of view.

3. Develop and communicate a Facebook page moderation policy: Nestle received criticism back in March for the approach they took in deleting posts. However they could develop a policy that is visible on their Facebook page about what kind of content is acceptable and what kind of comments they reserve the right to delete.

There are lots of learnings from Nestle in relation to managing a brand under attack in social media and I will be covering this in depth at a course I am leading this week for PR and communications professionals. Whether or not you have a presence in Facebook for your brand, you can come under attack as we have seen so many times with Facebook being used to lobby against and organisation or product or a celebrity.

So if you were the external communications advisor or head of PR for Nestle, what other actions would you take in relation to your Facebook page? What have I missed?