An amazing aspect of social media, for brands, is the ability to listen to your fans and customers. They will tell you when you do something great, but more importantly, they will tell you when you fail. The real-time web has given brands an opportunity like never before, the chance to listen and respond to actual people making legitimate claims about your product or service. The information is there, it’s the brand’s job to pay attention.

If you don’t already know, I work for VaynerMedia, doing online and social media consulting for brands, with a focus in the sports industry. Two of my clients include the New Jersey Nets of the National Basketball Association, and the New York Jets, of the National Football League. I find it important to check out the competition. Sometimes, it’s from a competitor’s weaknesses or mistakes, that you find the keys to success. Yesterday, while I was running through the social media outlets of teams in both the NBA and the NFL, trying to find things they were doing right and wrong, I found this:

http://www.facebook.com/memhisgrizzlies

Notice something strange in that URL? There is no “p” in Memphis. Pretty large mistake. I don’t necessarily want to highlight the fact that the Grizzlies made a typo when claiming their Facebook URL. However, I do want to explain I gave them fair warning before writing this post.

Yesterday afternoon, I tweeted out, “Check out the Memhis Grizzlies on Facebook! http://www.facebook.com/memhisgrizzlies #iThinkTheyForgotTheH” Then, a bit later, I tweeted to the Memphis Grizzlies’ official Twitter account, “@memgrizz i think you forgot the ‘h.’ http://www.facebook.com/memhisgrizzlies”

Now, I don’t mean to call out the Grizzlies, because I do respect that they are on Facebook in the first place, and attempted to get the custom URL. Plus, I’m a USC grad, and a big O.J. Mayo fan (even with the whole taking money while in college and refusing to cooperate with an investigation thing). It happens (at USC). I just want this to be a warning to players, teams, and brands in general, how important it is to be careful about the little things. Even more importantly, how crucial it is to listen to your fans.

The fact that the typo existed in the first place is pretty bad, I admit. However, it’s worse that I bothered to let them know and they were unable to react. While it may be impossible for athletes and teams to respond to every tweet, it is important that someone is at least watching and monitoring, because more often than not, fans are worth responding to.

Note: There is a possibility they did see my tweet and have submitted a request to Facebook to change their URL.

What do you think about the Grizzlies’ mistake? How do you feel about the level of interaction you receive from some of your favorite athletes and teams? Feel free to discuss in the comment section, below.

About Sam Taggart

Sam is a Creative Strategist for VaynerMedia, a social media agency based in New York City. Sam previously worked as an Account Executive for the New York Jets as well as the New Jersey Nets and spent time working with former NBA player Jalen Rose as well as NFL safety Kerry Rhodes. He now focuses on creative strategy across VaynerMedia's portfolio. You can follow Sam at http://twitter.com/gosam & visit VaynerMedia at http://www.vaynermedia.com.

Web | Twitter | LinkedIn | More Posts (49)