Social media can build a fan base, build trust and build connections.
That is, of course, if you use it properly.
You can also use social media to answer criticisms or communicate with fans and customers that have questions.
That is, of course, if you use it properly.
But if you are really good, you can get 3,000 comments on a single Facebook status update within just a few hours.
How? It’s a simple process really. Here are the steps:
1. Organize a huge music festival.
2. Build anticipation for discounted pre-sale tickets.
3. Hype up the pre-sale tickets for a few hours before it happens on Facebook.
4. Crash your servers during the pre-sale, failing to deliver tickets to thousands of raging fans.
5. Don’t respond to crazed fans during the server failure.
The Premise…
On Octber 1st, organizers of the Ultra Music Festival released pre-sale tickets for the festival.
Ultra is an electronic music festival held in Miami each year. I’m a big fan of electronic music, and have been to the festival before, so I figured I’d give a shot at getting some discounted tickets.
I didn’t really have my hopes up, though, because each year the pre-sale tickets cause a fiasco that crashes the servers and leaves thousands of people upset.
I’ve never tried to get pre-sale tickets before. But this year I decided that I would sit around and try for a few hours. Not just to get the tickets, but also to observe what happens on Facebook when the inevitable happens, and how Ultra handles it.
What Ultra Did Right…
To be fair, the people at Ultra did a lot of things right.
The ticket pre-sale launch was, for all practical purposes, a product launch for the festival. And they did an amazing job of building up hype and commotion around the launch.
They e-mailed their list a week in advance with a “warning” saying the pre-sale will be happening soon. Then, a few days prior to the launch, their list got an update with the actual date and time of the launch.
They continued building the hype the day of the launch with a promotion giving away free sets of tickets every half hour prior to the the pre-sale going live.
In other words, they kept people’s attention by keeping them informed, getting them involved and allowing them the opportunity to win free stuff. Really, it was a text book example of how to run a product launch.
Well done Ultra! So where did it all go wrong?
What Ultra Did (Very) Wrong…
Perhaps Ultra just focused on marketing and not delivery, perhaps it was all just part of a genius evil plan to turn the tickets into a scarce commodity, or perhaps it was just a huge oversight…
But as wonderfully as they handled the launch, the actual delivery was handled equally as bad.
Before the pre-sale was officially live, their servers had already crashed. Thousands of eager fans flooded the website and brought it down.
This was something I was expecting. But clearly this was not the case for thousands of others.
Although the servers were quickly “fixed” they still couldn’t handle the influx of traffic – timing out constantly (even for people who clicked the purchase confirmation). And as active as the Ultra reps were on Facebook prior to launch, they were equally as inactive during the pre-sale.
The Consequences…
Ultra’s neglect for the fan interaction on Facebook had a few consequences.
The first of which was confusion. People had no one to turn to for answers. Were tickets sold out? Was it just a matter of the servers not being able to handle the traffic?
The confusion opened up the opportunity for people to take advantage of the situation and lie to unsuspecting fans in order to get them to leave the site. Multiple people claimed the pre-sale tickets were sold out long before they actually were to try and decrease the competition for tickets. Others used the tactic of “letting people know” the tickets were on sale on other sites as well (which they weren’t).
In general, there was a lot of criticism of how the launch was handled…
And a few conspiracy theories as well…
But of course there were a few “sensible” minds in the midst of the angry crowd as well…
All in all, the Ultra Facebook page turned into a battle between people criticizing the festival for all sorts of reasons and people defending it. And a battle between those who purchased tickets and those who couldn’t. The page turned into a “civil war” of Ultra fans.
Was This Fiasco Really Necessary?
It seems that Ultra reps were around to see what was going on because a few people complained about their comment being deleted from the page. Seeing some of the comments that didn’t get deleted makes me wonder what was bad enough to get cut.
But instead of filtering the comments, the comments could have been prevented altogether.
All the people at Ultra had to do was answer some of the looming questions that people had. One message saying “tickets are not yet sold out, we are just having a trouble with the influx of traffic, and you can not buy tickets anywhere else” would have answered about 90% of the comments.
Instead, it took Ultra over 6 hours to respond stating that the early bird tickets sold out in seconds. This makes me wonder if they even knew what was going on with their own tickets because an hour into the sale I had early bird tickets in my shopping cart before they timed out.
The Reality of Social Media
It’s important to remember that social media is a tool, and how you use it can have drastic effects on your business. Once you make a promise, you can’t really take it back. And if you fail to deliver on it, you will end up with a lot of unhappy customers.
That being said, I don’t think that many of the fans were sitting around analyzing the situation like I was. They probably didn’t notice that Ultra’s late response was actually inaccurate.
The more popular you get, the more critics you get as well. And an angry response to your actions means people care, right? So will this “failure” actually effect Ultra Music Festival in any way?
What do you think? Was Ultra’s failure an “ultra failure”? Is bad attention better than no attention? Was this all a planned conspiracy on Ultra’s part?
Eugene Farber recently launched Content Strategy Hub, a blog dedicated to teaching entrepreneurs how to use content to benefit their business. To learn more, check out the Content Strategy 101 series, or contact Eugene on Twitter @eugenefarber.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for letting me hijack your blog today!
It’s our privilege, Eugene, thank you for the contribution!
Wow! Truly amazing- thanks so much for sharing all the information Danny
Thanks, Harleena, we’re really grateful to Eugene for posting it here!
Welcome to Firepole Marketing – we look forward to seeing more of you here!
Excellent point and damage control is essential for businesses. Social media strategy and having your fanpages managed so that you can provide clear official responses and answer questions/information in a timely fashion is essential.
Yup, I couldn’t agree more, Justin.