The mob mentality of social media

We just experienced the "mob" mentality of the social media world in the past week. On our Facebook page, we talked about one of our new programs, One Guy/Gal. The purpose of the program is to use people who are the age of the people we want to attract to the credit union. One part of the message talked about using different social media tools if they so desired. Somehow, one of our Facebook fans took that as us having teenage design and run our social media marketing. And after a tweet on this subject by that person, the Twittersphere was filled with several others "piling" on about the ludicrous behavior by us. Fortunately, someone who saw the tweet actually took the time to read the entire Facebook promotion. They then tweeted how everyone was wrong and had they taken the time to actually read what they were commenting on they would have understood it better.

It is classic mob behavior and shows how easily all of us can become followers and never question whether there is any truth to what is being talked about or not. In most cases, the axiom that the "Truth shall set you free" is a true statement, but in the world of social media, finding the truth is next to impossible unless we think for ourselves. And for us, it was a couple of days before any of this conversation showed up on any our sources to detect these types of conversations about our brand.