Introduction

Social media today has significantly changed the way business organisations operate by being a

double-edged sword - organisations either benefit greatly or suffer greatly from it. In this report, we

will analyse three organisations, Blackberry, Zappos and NASA , on the basis of their usage of social

media, and also the impact of social media on their respective business, reputation or crisis

management efforts. We will also compare and contrast their efforts.

Blackberry

Blackberry has utilised social media in many ways. First, Blackberry has a Facebook page to keep loyal

customers updated about their latest business issues, and gives potential customers who may

consider buying their product the relevant information about the products. Blackberry also has a

Twitter account, to keep customers updated, and an official YouTube channel to advertise the

uniqueness of their company.

Recently on 10 October 2011, Blackberry experienced a technical disruption. Users of Blackberry in

Europe noticed that email services were down in Europe initially, but it soon became a worldwide

phenomena. The service was down for more than 12 hours and users complained and demanded

explanations using Twitter for the cause of the breakdown. However, there was near silence from

Research In Motion (RIM), the maker of BlackBerry smartphone. It finally posted its first response on

one of its Twitter accounts @BlackBerryHelp (Refer to Appendix) .

Without giving any details of the breakdown or the estimated time of resolution, users were baffled,

especially so when RIM did not give any further response after its first post. Besides @BlackBerryHelp,

Blackberry had several other Twitter accounts, but none responded. The service updates took a

staggering 12 hours, leaving angry and helpless users of BlackBerry no clue on the estimated time of

resolution.

Impact of social media on business and reputation of Blackberry

Due to this unexpected interruption, Blackberry’s businesses suffered a substantial amount of loss of

$485 million, a sharp drop in its share price, and forfeited 1.2 million customers in the US within one

month from this social media blunder. In addition, Blackberry’s reputation plummeted, with surveys

showing that every one out of five customers residing in UK are contemplating the idea of switching

smartphone brands, away from Blackberry. Blackberry’s overall value fell by approximately 50%.

After this disastrous incident to Blackberry, RIM has not done much to improve its crisis management

efforts. Currently, RIM has been upgrading its products in order to win back the loyalty of their past

customers, instead of trying to improve on their customer service on the social media platform.

Zappos

Zappos uses a variety of social media platforms to interact with their customers and enhance

customers services. This includes the use of Twitter (@Zappos_Service), YouTube, Facebook , LinkedIn

and blogs.

Zappos uses Twitter to improve connectivity with its customers. Zappos focused on providing quality

service through its @Zappos_service Twitter account to answer customers’ problems, queries and to

shorten the time lag of customers considering to buy Zappos product and actually buying the product.

The team also has an actual online conversation with the customers. This is key to building customer

relationship with the brand. In addition, Zappos launched the Zappos TweetWall, which allows its

followers to see what Zappos products are popular in the Twitter community currently.

In addition to posting updates about their business, Zappos also hold contest on Facebook, such as a

contest to create the perfect look using their clothes and accessories whereby the winner can get the

entire look for free or win special items, and the “Fan of the Week” contest whereby fans send in

their photos with the Zappos box and the winner will have his photos publicised on Zappos’s

Facebook page. In addition, consumers can directly purchase at Zappos official site by clicking on “buy

now” buttons on Facebook.

Impact of social media on Zappos

Zappos has largely benefited from the use of social media in its business model. When customers

receive quality service from Zappos service team, it will enhance their consumer experience and

hence, expand the loyal customer base. Also, with more views on Zappos TweetWall, there will be

more conversations about their products. Customers can be influenced and also discover new

products to their liking through other users’ recommendations on TweetWall. Zappos can also secure

their Facebook customers through direct links to its official site. By spreading the word of popular

Zappos products over social networking sites, it capitalises on a larger global network, expanding

customer base.

NASA

Recently, NASA used social media very effectively to make 2 events - the retirement of the Endeavour

space shuttle as well as the Mars Rover Curiosity’s landing a major success.

The newly retired Endeavour space shuttle had its multi-day retirement flight to Los Angeles. The

flight could have been met with public apathy as did the shuttle’s recent flights to space. However

with effective social media usage, NASA turned it into a huge event. They created the Twitter hashtag

#spottheshuttle and encouraged people who spotted the shuttle on its final flight to tweet it. They

also organized social media fans to a “social meetup” to enjoy a more immersive experience of the

Shuttle’s last flight - they got to view the landing of the shuttle whilst being piggybacked on a Shuttle

Carrier Aircraft and tour the Support Aircraft.

NASA also leveraged the power of social media to generate excitement about the Mars Rover

Curiosity. The Rover has it’s own Twitter account that has gathered more than 1.2 million Followers

who love Curiosity “tweets” as her Tweets are full of and personality. Also, Curiosity was the first user

to ever check in on Mars at the social site Foursquare - this novelty garnered it much attention.

Impact of social media on NASA

NASA’s social media efforts have benefited both its reputation as well as financial health. Their actions

on social media has enhanced its reputation among the younger generation who for many years

never had the same perception of NASA as did the generation who lived through the Space Wars.

Financially, President Obama gave his personal commitment to the Curiosity team that he will protect

critical investments in science and technology. Furthermore, through the phenomenon of

“Crowdsourcing”, NASA is able to raise funds from ordinary people.

Comparison between companies

Social media has multitudinous impacts on differing companies, depending on how well companies

utilise it. Blackberry, Zappos and NASA has utilised social media in different ways. Both Zappos and

NASA have successfully leveraged on the power of social media, while Blackberry has unfortunately

failed to do so. The success of Zappos and NASA in their use of social media is largely due to the fast

response that the team gave to their customers. The use of @Zappos_Service to reply customers’

queries almost instantaneously has helped Zappos earn more loyal customers. Furthermore, NASA’s

proactive stance towards social media has greatly boosted its image of people from around the world.

On the other hand, the response given by Blackberry during the crisis made social media act against

the interests of the company. Blackberry users were using the social media to voice their discontent

with the company – and this created even more discontent among the users as it spread around the

Internet. Also, it appears that BlackBerry did not learn its lesson on not managing social media

properly - they aim to improve only their product quality while other successful companies like

Zappos are also focusing on improving customer service by engaging them through social media.

Recommendations

There are several key learning points that we can derive from the three business organisations

mentioned above. In the event of a technical glitch, business organisations should inform its

customers immediately, apologising whilst explaining the problem, instead of leaving helpless

customers in suspense. Other than informing the customers, organisations also have to keep their

employees updated on the organization's’ current situation. Organisations should also give notices to

the customers about the approximate time needed to solve the problem. Lastly, instead of developing

new technology, Blackberry should place more emphasis on improving their customer service and

crisis management efforts.

Summary

Our group believes that organizations have to proactively manage social media to reach

organizational objectives such as NASA and Zappos – if they don’t, their brand would be left to the

users of social media where small disasters can be magnified such as in the case of BlackBerry.

Appendix

Blackberry’s first response to the service breakdown.

Example of Curiousity’s Personality-laden Tweets.

Links

http://www.citeworld.com/social/20611/successful-enterprise-social-network-needs-be-steeped-

corporate-culture

http://www.siliconbeat.com/2012/09/21/how-nasa-used-social-media-to-make-mars-curiosity-and-

endeavor-major-events/

https://twitter.com/nasa

https://dev.twitter.com/case-studies/zappos-uses-twitter-generate-over-1200-conversations-month-

its-customers