In March 2009, Skittles re-launched their website with a new focus on social networks. Instead of the usual homepage, guests were directed to various social media platforms that Skittles was a part of. If you wanted to see what people were saying about Skittles for example, you would be directed toward their Twitter Chatter page, and if you wanted check out Skittles ‘Media,’ you would be sent to their YouTube page.

At the time, many critics praised the innovation and creativity that they displayed and felt that here was a company that understood social media. Still, 8 months have passed since the new site launch, and what was once thought of as a great way to use social media, has done the opposite and shown how not to use it.

Non-Existent Brand Monitoring

The idea behind the new Skittles site should be applauded. Skittles recognized the growing influence that social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook were having and they responded by looking for a way to combine social media and their company. In the process though, they forgot an essential part to the mix, which was to monitor and protect their brand.

By opening up their Twitter feed which allowed visitors to see everything that was being said about Skittles, they were not only allowing others to see the positive comments about them, but also the bad ones. People caught on and people would spam out comments with the keyword “Skittles” in order to show up on the Skittles website. It was a cool idea, but one that lacked control.

What Community?

Something that many fail to recognize that is that although Skittles fully engages the Twitter Search engine to look for tweets that include the keyword “skittles,” Skittles themselves doesn’t even have a Twitter account. The problem here is that Twitter was meant to be used as an community engagement tool and instead of interacting with their ‘fans’ and building relationships, Skittles has zero community outreach. How are we supposed to be compelled to buy Skittles or even gain interest in them when their is no one to interact with from the start?

An important part to any social media campaign is understanding how you can best engage your community. For some, that means using Facebook, and for others through Twitter. A company that is a great example of community engagement through social media is Whole Foods. Through their Twitter account, Whole Foods not only monitors what people are saying about them, but they are also reacting and building a relationship.

Short Run Solution

If you want to see the impact that the new site change had, one great way is to look at their site traffic. As soon as the new site went up, traffic soared. Just as fast as it went up, it came right back down. It wasn’t because it was a bad idea, but rather because it had little to no long run value. Skittles idea of weaving in social media platforms had huge value in the short run because they were the first to do it. In the long run though, they failed to adapt and address issues such as the Twitter Chatter feed.

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If you look at what has changed in the past 8 months, the answer is not much. Social media is always changing, and so should you. Being able to put a great idea into action is awesome, but its what you do after that is what matters. Skittles was the first, but won’t be the last.

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Joseph is the Director of Marketing at Viralogy.com & works in social media & sports consulting. Read more about him at http://JosephAYi.com

Tags: Advertising, Business, community, Marketing, online marketing, Social Media, the right way