Small Business Social Media Disasters: Prevention, Coping, Moving On

A Brisbane restaurant learned a very important lesson in social media last month. Hopefully it doesn’t end up being a painful lesson for the small business. Freestyle Tout in Rosalie, Brisbane has been around since 1996. It is a dessert restaurant also searing tapas, cocktails, and savoury specials too. Freestyle Tout has a very active Facebook page, so owner Martin Duncan took to the page to ask customers a favour. The customers and Facebook users did not appreciate Martin’s seemingly harmless plea that makes perfect sense to any business owner:

Freestyle Tout Post

Photo Credit: LocBox.com

It makes perfect sense to a business owner, especially a restaurant owner to ask that the majority of seat holders order something to eat. However, it does not make sense in the world of social media, as evidenced by the overwhelmingly negative response to the post, which has since been deleted. At the time of the screenshot, there were 81 comments and 14 shares of that post. More activity than the 10 posts before that one combined. However, it looks like Martin has done the right thing since then, as far as social media is concerned. He deleted the first post and wrote two posts in response to the fury of the internet.

Freestyle Tout Post - 2

As you can imagine, the comments are a mixed bag of criticising the restaurant, praising Martin for taking a stance, and then fighting amongst themselves.

After the huge response that post received, he decided to make one more statement to his Facebook fans:

Freestyle Tout Post - 3

This one has a lot more likes and 85 comments. Still a mixed bag, but the sentiment seems more understanding. Since then, he went back to sharing delicious looking food on his page.

This is a case of turning a potential disaster into a positive. He ended up with radio, national, and international coverage about his restaurant. I doubt that sensible paying customers would avoid the restaurant, so his post handling of the onslaught of negativity has likely created a positive upswing for his business.

He followed the 3 keys of responding to a social media mistake: delete, address the issue, move on.

 


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