Social media offers a lot of benefits to organizations around the world. For instance, customers are able to get real-time responses and clarification about different products and services without having to go to the offices. Other than that, organizations are able to create a strong relationship with their clients over social media platforms. The most common social media platforms used by organizations today are Facebook and Twitter. However, social media can also be misused such that it causes problems with the customers and may result in a reduction in sales. This paper will, therefore, discuss two companies that have social media problems.

One of the companies that have social media problems is German skincare company, Nivea. On 3rd April 2017, Nivea posted an image advertising their invisible deodorant range saying “white is purity.” The post was aimed at women in the Middle East but was posed in the official Nivea Facebook and Twitter pages which have millions of followers from all over the world. This caused an uproar in social media as the post was termed as racist. Thousands of people went on social media and called Nivea out for the racist connotations in the advertisement. The post was later pulled down, and the Nivea spokesperson apologized saying that the Nivea brand represented diversity and tolerance. The organization accepted that the post was misleading, but the intention was not to discriminate against any ethnic group. Such a mistake has the potential to cause a lot of harm to different aspects of an organization, but Nivea acted fast and apologized for the social media immediately people started showing their displeasure about the post. Nivea Company can avoid such future problems by ensuring that all advertising strategies being used are in line with the values of the organization in which racism is not one of them.

Another company that has had social media problems in the past is the transportation network company, Uber. During his campaigns, President Donald Trump had said that once he is elected, he will ban countries with majority Muslims from entering the United States. After his inauguration in January 2017, Donald Trump issued the travel ban preventing citizens from seven countries in the world with the majority as Muslims. As a way to protest this move, taxi drivers in New York who are mostly immigrants held a temporary strike on journeys from one of the airports in the country, JFK airport. However, Uber saw an opportunity to make money from the protest. Uber announced that its services would remain fully operational even during the protest. This move enraged thousands of people who went to social media to push the hashtag #DeletUber where people were urged to delete the Uber application as Uber was not protesting against the travel ban. This meant that Uber was in support of the travel ban limiting Muslims from entering the United States. To prevent such a problem in future, Uber should stand in unison with other taxi drivers to fight against such punitive rules which are not fair to some groups in the society.

There are also other companies such as Kmart, Kitchen Aid and Kenneth Cole that have made similar mistakes over their social media platforms. Although the companies later apologize, the consumers still remember the mistakes years later, and the corporates may end up losing their customers in the process. Therefore, it is important for organizations to take their social media interactions seriously to avoid the negative effects that come with such problems.

 
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