By Rebecca Canan

As communicators, we often have to deal with snippy and critical comments from others in social media, yet stick to the high road in speaking for our organizations.  But what happens when the urge to snark back is just too tempting?  Nestlé’s recent experiences offer up a case in point.

Here’s what happened:  Nestle posted a status update on its Facebook “fan” page, requesting that people refrain from using altered versions of the Nestlé logo when posting on the company page; otherwise, the posts would be removed.  Not surprisingly, a few people complained that Nestlé was acting overly authoritarian for an open social media forum.  Now, this in itself would not be a huge deal—a lot of brands are concerned about their logo usage and brand integrity.  But here’s where the plot thickens.  Rather than letting a few unfavorable comments go or respectfully acknowledging them, the company moderator got into a petty, sarcastic, and heated comment battle with fans.  Here are a few tidbits (highlights added by me for extra drama):

Crazy, right?

All the uproar happened very quickly—the thread started on Friday morning UK time and quickly grew to ~200 (increasingly angry) comments.  The moderator attempted to apologize on Friday afternoon: “This (deleting logos) was one in a series of mistakes for which I would like to apologise. And for being rude. We’ve stopped deleting posts, and I have stopped being rude.”  Hmm, fine.  But insufficient—still sounds curt and somewhat condescending, IMHO.

I tried to find a statement from the company explaining this mishap (note to Dana: I think we have another press room FAIL) but haven’t seen anything substantial, despite people on Twitter buzzing about it all weekend.  With the backdrop of negative attention due to other issues (e.g., a scathing attack from Greenpeace about palm oil use/sourcing), Nestle has a lot of eyeballs focusing on its actions right now.  It could be a great opportunity to really listen, engage in dialogue, and make changes, with one change—the company’s social media posture—well within Communications’ control. To that end…

• Tip #1: Carefully select and coach your social media page moderators.  (CEC members can get some help with this Blogger Appropriateness Screen.)
• Tip #2: Be accountable (as a company) to demonstrating respect to your customers/stakeholders, especially on public sites like Facebook.

Any other (productive and respectful) advice for the Communications team at Nestlé?