It happens even to the best of us from time to time - something thoughtless, inappropriate, or downright dumb gets said on a social network, people react, and next thing you know you've got a big scandal on your hands. In the context of a small or medium-sized business, even a minor uproar on a social network can spell big problems for you in terms of unhappy customers and a dip in sales. Just like in every other aspect of business, mistakes will be made from time to time on social media. Even if you're extremely diligent with your social media policy, there's not really anything you can do about the fact that people are human, and sometimes they say damaging or offensive things.
Over the past few years, online marketing, and especially social media, has developed into a situation where there is less "businessy" talk, and more real human interaction between businesses and customers. Spouting slogans and pasting logos everywhere is no longer the best way to get customers - you have to have actual conversations with the people you are marketing to, and let them know that they're dealing with real humans, not some corporate machine.
If there's one thing this year's Google updates have taught us, it's that we can no longer rely on raw numbers to tell us how well we're doing when it comes to social media and SEO marketing. The Google Panda update back in February was a pretty big wake-up call that simply having a lot of content and attracting a lot of links wasn't enough to stay high up on the first page of search results. Counting fans, followers, and incoming links used to give us a good idea about how our campaigns were going, but as Google and other search engines move toward more engagement-based algorithms, it's up to us as marketers to respond appropriately.
