In the last case study, we discussed the importance for brand marketers to ensure strong strategic foundations for social media, as this directly affects how the brand can be perceived. In the case of Dell, its structured approach was a success, as the company earned millions in revenue through its Twitter and sparked many consumer discussions through its blogs. In this article, we’ll show a different side of the story and explore an example of a bad social media strategy and how it affected the brand.

While Australians may not be familiar with Habitat, it is in fact a leading furniture retailer in the UK, with over 80 stores across Europe. When the company decided to jump on the social media bandwagon by creating a Twitter page, it seems at first glance that they started in the right direction, with a nice Twitter page that reflected the clean brand image of the company. However, it was the lack of strategy and content that had Habitat in hot water.

In order to drive traffic to their Twitter post, Habitat used various hashtags in their tweets to appear in popular discussion topics. For non-Twitter users, #hashtags are the keywords used on Twitter to help people filter and find tweets. For example, tweets about the 2010 World Cup had the hashtag ‘#WorldCup’, which means that every time people searched for this topic, tweets with this hashtag would appear. Therefore, they are used so that relevant tweets appear in relevant searches. However, the problem with Habitat’s use of hashtags was that they were irrelevant to the content of the tweets, they used ones that had nothing to do with furniture, purchases or renovations. Instead, they made the mistake of simply putting in popular hashtags at the time of posting. They used hashtags like #iPhone, #Apple and even the rejected Masterchef contestant from Australia, #Poh. Clearly, Habitat saw an opportunity to generate more brand awareness, since by using these hashtags, they would appear in popular searches. The result for end users was that when they searched for, say, #iPhone, the Habitat tweet would appear, only to discover that it had nothing to do with their search. Obviously, Twitter users viewed this negatively and heavily criticized the luxury furniture company for taking advantage of popular topics to send spam.

To make matters worse, in response to the backlash, Habitat removed their spam tweets. Unfortunately for the company, they are still visible via Twitter search. Many bloggers have commented on the lack of transparency on behalf of the company, with many criticizing that Habitat should have publicly apologized for spamming Twitter and compensate those who received it.

Clearly, Habitat had no real Twitter strategy to begin with. They went for simple pull marketing to drive traffic to their website. But the central lesson here was that they didn’t strategize on how to add value or spark conversations around their brand, products, or home décor topics. Instead, they created spam by taking advantage of popular topics. Although Habitat has finally apologized for its spam, the damage to its brand has already been done. Since then, Habitat has learned from its lesson. Instead of simply announcing their products, they have generated conversation by responding to customer needs and inquiries and, most impressively, providing decorating advice for individual users.