Last week, Bell Canada delighted and subsequently enraged the blogosphere and Twitterrati by bringing Twitter via SMS back to Canada, and then telling people it was going to charge them 15 cents a Tweet for the privilege.
It was a public relations and social media disaster that forced Bell to quickly backtrack.
In hindsight, the most interesting part of what went down is how Bell Canada is missing from the social media landscape. For a company with more than 10 million customers, you would think Bell would be far more proactive in using social media to engage and build relationships in new and different ways.
Instead, it appears Bell Canada isn’t playing in the social media sandbox at all. I spent some time, for example, looking for Bell blogs, but couldn’t find any. On Twitter, there are accounts for “bell“, “bellcanada” and “bce” but no updates. On Facebook, there are groups for Bell employees and a “Bell Canada Sucks” group, but no a corporate consumer-facing groups.
It just seems strange for a company that communicates with consumers using traditional media and marketing/advertising tools isn’t taking advantage of social media. It seems even more puzzling given Bell’s business rival, Rogers, recently hired a director of social media.
I recognize that it’s still early days for social media, and many companies are still trying to get a handle on whether social media fits within their communications, marketing and sales strategies. And I appreciate the ROI on social media is still far from clear so many companies are trying to justify making an investment in social media at a time when they’re being cautious about spending money.
But it just seems odd that Bell Canada is doing nothing with social media at a time when it’s important to, at least, be experimenting.
Technorati Tags: blogs, social media, twitter
3 Comments
I’m not surprised. Bell’s strategy is to make it difficult for customers to leave its services, rather than get customers to love and embrace its services.
Bell is to busy behaving like an incumbent telco to adopt social media.
You’re right. It’s too bad. Maybe there’s a good business opportunity for you.
Bell continually does things to alienate themselves from so many people. I am not currently interested in what they do with Twitter however it is just another nail in the Bell coffin as far I am concerned. This is just one more example of Bell’s greed.
Charge more and charge often seems to be all they understand.
The world is changing and I for one hope to see the likes of Bell disappear from the landscape. I realize this is unlikely but just how long can one company piss off the population before it comes back to bite them?
Keep finding new ways to charge people Bell and see where that takes you.
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