mat t hewwo o dward.co .ukhttp://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tutorials/how-to-use-social-media-to-destroy-your-business-effectively/

Matthew Woodward

How To Use Social Media To Destroy Your Business Effectively

This past week Samy and Amy Bouzaglo have successf ully destroyed their business with Facebook.

If you didn’t know Amy’s Baking Company was recently f eatured on Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen NightmaresSeries.

Now anyone who watches that show knows how it goes down, but this t ime things were dif f erent. This t ime itf eatured Samy & Amy Bouzaglo.

You really need to watch the f ull episode to appreciate the mindset of the couple. Here is a very small taste-

Go and watch the f ull thing – it is shocking how delusional Amy is throughout. They even take all of the tips of fthe staf f and pocket it f or themselves!

Look what happened at the end of a night af ter a staf f member asked her if she was sure about a tablenumber-

That girl got them crazy eyes!

It ’s not all on Amy though, Samy is just as bad verbally threatening customers, making physical threats andacting aggressively.

Then someone let them loose on social media.

How To Destroy Your Business With Facebook

I hope you are ready f or what has been described as the most epic meltdown on Facebook ever.

Even Charlie Sheen will learn something here.

Things start with a nice message showing the couples strength, was kinda cute!

But as seen in the show – she isn’t all that great at taking crit icism =/

People gave the couple f lack because they were buying things from Walmart and then reselling themto customers as if they made them themselves.

Amy even lied to Gordon Ramsay about making the cakes herself . Which she was super proud of.

Then of course the Reddit communitygot hold of the story. You can probablyguess how it goes from here.

Samy takes over the updates for a while and starts to threaten legal action =\

Followed by his own series of threats…

Luckily they aren’t freaking outabout it at all.

If you have ever wanted to know what a meal cooked by Wonder Woman would taste like, today isyour lucky day!

Oh I forgot to mention Amy has 3 kids and by kids, I mean 3 cats that are her whole life between herhusband and her business.

Turns out we don’t actually know Wonder Woman’s identity after all )=

It is good to see that Amy and Samy are seeing the funny side though!

She is right, it ’s way past my bed t ime!

The Best Comment Awards Goes To…

Out of all of the comments though – this one is the clear winner.

I hope you’re sitt ing down f or this.

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The Morning After The NightBefore

Ever woken up in a hazey blur andthought – ahhhhh f uck.

That’s exactly what Amy and Samy did onTuesday morning.

OBVIOUSLY THE HACKERS THE DID IT– DUHHH!!!

A Fresh Start With A New Page

Samy and Amy went onto setup a second Facebook page to try and recover f rom the damage of the ‘hackers’.

Users were met with a warm reception-

And within moments meltdown round 2begins – ooops I mean the ‘hackers’took over again-

Seems they never learn…

Stealing Food Photos

They also got caught out posting picturesof f ood they had stolen f rom otherwebsites and claiming them as their own.

It became a race on their photo albums tosee who could reverse engineer the originalimage location f or each photo f irst.

They have a great explanation f or how thathappened though-

That’s how the internet works by the way ifyou didn’t know.

The Internet Fights Back

As you can imagine the response onlinehas skyrocketed.

We have had everything f rom meme’s(more of these at the end of the post)

All the way through to a psychologicalanalysis.

Greg Taylor posted his f irst-handexperience at the restaurant when thecameras were rolling.

Even the restaurant’s previous healthviolations are coming to light.

Not that the reviews on Yelp were doingthem any f avours anyway.

Then there is the f act that Amy served 14months in jail f or committing f raud with thisdocument and another popping up.

Oh and let’s not f orget the governmentpetit ion to investigate them f or the illegalstealing of t ips.

But none of this is new really, it ’s all beengoing on since 2010.

Do You Feel Bad For Them?

To be honest the backlash they have f acedis pretty terrible.

You can’t help but f eel sorry f or them in away.

What the couple f ail to realise is that Reddit is actually an intelligent community & most of the people that useit are well educated people with specialist skilled jobs in technology, networks & the internet…

Certainly not the type of people good enough to lick their, or their f riends boots though…

Measuring The Viral Ef fect

It ’s not all doom and gloom though, the couple have seen a huge boom in popularity across the web.

Check out this snap f rom Google Trends-

According to Alexa their website has also seen a 20,000% increase in traf f ic in the last month

They also managed to add over 70,000 organic likes to their main Facebook page.

Granted all of this was born out of bad publicity – but they now have the perf ect f oundation to capitalise on.

What Should They Do?

Now is the perf ect t ime to ride that PR wave to success.

First things f irst though they need to repair the damage they have done. The best way of doing so, especiallywith the blogosphere is to be totally honest and upf ront with people.

A heartf elt transparent apology explaining the actions and stresses the couple were under would go down verywell right about now and allow them to begin rebuilding rapport with people.

But bef ore doing that they should get someone to rebuild the website with conversion and value in mind.Capture user data & leverage the social media success to build vast social signals to the site.

Give the blog a quick overhaul, publish the apology and hey presto – a whole new load of viral traf f ic will arriveto capitalise on

To really repair the relationship with bloggers they should host a bloggers only night where likeminded peoplecould meet and engage with each other in a relaxed atmosphere with great f ood.

For the most part bloggers are straight down the line and honest. If they have a f antastic night dining andsharing knowledge with other bloggers – they’ll tell the world about it.

I wish somewhere local to me had a similar night every month! Hmmm.

I know they already have a relaunch planned but you have to apply to be invited via a PR f irm. That meansanything produced is going to be f ully controlled and as such biased.

They should host a night specif ically f or repairing damage with the wider internet community that will of f er atrue ref lection of the improvements they have made. In essence they are in control and responsible f or anyf eedback received, good or bad.

Lessons Learnt

Throughout all of this though there are quite a f ew important lessons f or us all to learn.

Social Media Is A 2 Way Street

A lot of businesses struggle with social media and just don’t get it. Having the ability to interact with customersin an instant and personal way really does baf f le the business world.

Social media provides a f antastic opportunity to build engagement, trust and relationships with people who inturn inf luence other people.

But this is a 2 way street, while it is a f antastic tool to engage your target audience directly – it is also theperf ect weapon to destroy your business and its reputation. Especially if you’re crazy.

Crit icism Is Opportunity

Amy clearly has a hard time dealing with negative f eedback to the point everyone around her protects her f romit.

But crit icism is just an opportunity to improve. An opportunity to improve & be better at what you do today thanyou were yesterday.

I look at f ailure in the same way. If you f ail at something, next t ime you are much more likely to succeed due tothe f irst hand lessons learnt.

External crit icism is exactly the same – except it is other people telling you how to reach f urther success.

Ask For Crit icism & Feedback

I actively ask f or crit icism & f eedback f rom my readers. This f eedback has helped shape the blog in a big way.

Everything f rom the design, how things are laid out, the content I write, how I write it and the types of things If ocus on.

All of this is driven f rom the user f eedback & crit icism I get. If I get an email with some crit icism I try to explorethat with the reader to get a deeper understanding to build upon.

I send out this email as part of my auto responder series-

That one gets some very interesting responses and I have being able to improve the user experience of f theback of it!

Readers love it when you actually listen to what they have to say & then actually act on it.

I also send out this email-

I’m essentially asking my audience what they want, and then I give it to them.

A lot of the tutorials posted across the last 2-3 months have come of f the back of user requests. These arealso some of the most popular tutorials.

Don’t Insult People & Lie

Remember the bit about social media been a 2 way street? If you start abusing people, typing in angry capslocks & telling blatant lies you are asking f or it.

Some of the things that Amy and Samy have said to potential customers is disgusting. Imagine asking arestaurant if you could have a reservation and being told ‘WE DONT LET SLUTTY BITCHES LIKE YOU HERE’.

Doing things like that in public is always going to spark a reaction.

Even if that comment wasn’t aimed at you, anyone reading that instantly has a negative association with Amy &Samy. One that they will share with their f riends, people still actually talk in real you know!

To then go on and claim they were hacked was just kicking people when they were down. The lie was sotransparent especially when they used the same tone on the second page that wasn’t ‘hacked’.

The most stupid lie though has to be when Samy claimed the pictures they were posting was of their f ood andthey hadn’t stolen them. I’m going to post his explanation here again because it was just that stupid.

Can you believe even af ter that they arestill posting stolen images & claiming they

still posting stolen images & claiming theyare of their f ood.

Own Your Mistakes

Each and every time the couple haveinsulted someone, received crit icism orbeen caught out with something they havejust ignored it or opened up a dif f erent lineof attack.

At no point have they actually stopped,took 60 seconds to step back, think aboutwhat has said, process it and then respondappropriately.

Instead of owning their mistakes they justgo on the attack – it ’s borderline childishbehaviour but we all make mistakes right?

Just step up to the plate and admit whenyou’re wrong – you’ll get a much warmerreception than going on the attack or tryingto cover up lies with lies.

Never Marry A Crazy!

If there is one thing we should all learnthough it is that you should never marry acrazy, no matter how much younger andbetter looking they are.

Samy f ronts the money to keep the f ailing business af loat and without him the company wouldn’t exist.

Hats of f to Samy you are a brave man – he is the real hero here!

How To Deal With Social Media Criticism

A while back I made a tutorial called how not to launch a website f eaturing UK mobile provider EverythingEverywhere.

Since they launched in the UK they have had huge amounts of f lack to the point every single one of my f riendshave had issues with them.

This has quickly led them to be dubbed as ‘Nothing Nowhere’ – check out some of the f eedback they get onFacebook.

They literally get a f ew pieces of cripplingf eedback posted every hour. Peopleconsistently claim of misselling, having nosignal, poor customer service, arrogantmanagement & the general unwillingness toresolve issues.

Nothing Nowhere (Everything Everywhere) have really made a mess of their launch in the UK – but notice howthey aren’t having a meltdown over it?

Even though they know they suck and are clearly having serious companywide issues they f ocus on the rootproblems and ignore everything else.

Granted its usually the same dreary bland response and f rom what I can gather customers still don’t actuallyget any help but it helps to maintain order.

It ’s pretty hard to troll someone that doesn’t take the bait. Amy f uelled her own f ire with how she dealt withsocial media crit icism and although Nothing Nowhere aren’t perf ect, they are doing a good job of managingthings online.

Extra respect to them f or not deleting the bad f eedback and keeping things honest and open!

I bet those pesky hackers are to blame f or the poor perf ormance of the network though. For sure.

They Aren’t The Only Ones

Abercrombie & Fitch have also managed to destroy their brand overnight with a single interview.

CEO Mike Jef f ries gave an interview to Salon Magazine way back in 2006. He was asked why they ref use tomake clothes f or larger women, his response-

“In every school there are cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids. We goafter the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot offriends. A lot of people don’t belong in our clothes and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary?Absolutely.”

Now 7 years ago that was pretty of f ensive, but in today’s world of backwards polit ical correctness it hascaused a storm.

It is only the last couple of weeks that social media and the blogosphere has gotten hold of this.

Comments f rom 7 years ago now appear to be f resh and new f rom the company which is causing them a litt lebit of a headache.

Articles like this one on Business Insider and this one at Elite Daily.

Benjamin O’Keef e created a government petit ion against the company.

There is even going to be a f ull on protest in the streets of Chicago.

All of this is born out of comments f rom 7 years ago that the social media world have circulated the past week.

Talk about a big f at mistake!

Notice how companies that exclusively make clothes f or larger women and exclude skinny women don’t get thesame treatment though?

Strange world.

Amy To The Rescue!

There is no doubt that the meltdown of Amy Bouzaglo & her business this week might have broken the f all ofAbercrombie & Fitch.

The blogosphere, social media crowd and media in general have f irmly had their attention on Amy as the storyhas developed throughout the week.

Without that girl things could have gotten a lot worse f or Abercrombie & Fitch.

You should f atten her up and put her in an advert to say thank you.