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.

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