It seems like a bold move.
One of the country’s biggest pub chains has this week called time on all its social media accounts, stating that it does not believe the channels are a ‘vital component of a successful business’.
JD Wetherspoon, or ‘Spoons’ as it is more commonly known, has shut down all of its Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts and claimed that the move will have ‘no impact’ on its PR.
It will in future communicate with customers through its own printed magazine, website and the press.
So, could this be the start of businesses moving away from social media?
Effective use of social media?
On the face of it, Wetherspoon’s social media figures look pretty impressive – 100,000 Facebook followers, 6,000 on Instagram and 44,000 on Twitter.
But a bit more research suggests it was not doing social media particularly well.
Graham Jones, our expert social media training tutor, was certainly not particularly impressed, saying that its social media following was ‘tiny’ by customer terms.
He said: “Wetherspoon has 920 pubs and 44,000 Twitter followers which is 47 people per pub. That might seem good when compared to Greene King who have 3,000 pubs and a mere 14.2k Twitter followers, or 4.7 people per pub.
“So it might seem that Wetherspoon is doing fantastically when it is set against a competitor. But if each Wetherspoon pub only had 47 customers a week, they'd be in trouble.
“Indeed, if it were 47 a day, they'd have problems. So even though the figures on their own seem impressive, actually they are rather unimportant for their business.
“The social media following is large in social media terms but tiny in customer terms. That means giving up social media is not a real issue for them from a marketing perspective.”
Negative
The decision to leave social media has been positioned as something of a social responsibility crusade – an interesting move for a company that serves alcohol at 9am.
Wetherspoon’s chairman Tim Martin told BBC News that social media is ‘addictive’ and that it can be damaging and that if people limited their time on these channels to half an hour a day ‘they’d be mentally and physically better off’.
He said: “On a personal level many of us are fed up with social media and think it has got damaging effects and lots of people are on it far, far too much.
JD Wetherspoon chairman Tim Martin has deleted the pub chain’s social media accounts, partly because "…people spend too much time on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, and struggle to control the compulsion." Presumably next he'll stop selling alcohol for the same reason. pic.twitter.com/KFYpDXTPia
— Marshall Julius (@MarshallJulius) April 16, 2018
“It doesn’t do them any good, it doesn’t do the country any good.”
And there is little doubt social media is suffering something of an image problem at the moment with data breaches, fake news and trolling among the issues the major players have struggled to grip.
On top of that, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is just weeks away and organisations may be nervous about the implications this will have on their social media activities.
So are other companies likely to follow suit?
Here’s Graham again: “The problem for Wetherspoon is, as they say, not wanting to be associated with the negativity of social media.
“That's a growing issue for corporates. And you can expect the Wetherspoon’s action to have triggered discussions in many boardrooms already.
“We may well be at the start of a tipping point for the business use of social media.
“Also, I imagine the complexities of GDPR and being unable to rely on the likes of Facebook to help them in that regard is looming large in thinking at the moment.”
Stuck in the middle
A bigger issue for Graham, which he believes could have impacted Wetherspoon’s decision, was that it lacked the financial muscle to make a big impact on the social media world.
This may have forced it to consider whether results justified the investment in social media.
He said: “Wetherspoon might seem a big business and may well be officially defined as such.
“But its annual turnover of £1.7bn is what Starbucks gets in a fortnight or what Amazon gets in three days.
“The studies I have seen show that it is either massive businesses that gain from social media or tiny businesses.
Hands up whoever spent money in a Wetherspoons because they saw something on social media!
— Mr Wows (@WowWows) April 19, 2018
It never happened.
How do you even know Wetherspoons have closed down their social media?
— Botizen Helene (@botizenhelene) April 18, 2018
“But firms the size of Wetherspoon are trapped in an area where they find it hard to make social media work. They simply cannot afford the level of investment needed which companies like Starbucks and Amazon can do.
“Meanwhile, they are not like solopreneurs who can spend half the day on Facebook selling their wares.”
PR stunt?
Mr Martin said he would have to have been ‘off his rocker’ to stop using social media as a PR stunt.
But it is worth pointing out that the announcement generated significant coverage for the brand.
'spoons deleting its social media accounts is one of the most transparent PR stunts for some time - social audience relatively small, reach of today's headline far greater #wetherspoons
— Rob Gillett (@theeditbyrob) April 16, 2018
Feels like a slick PR stunt. What % of Wetherspoons regulars & target market are heavy social media users? https://t.co/ROzwzCXFws
— Rob McKinlay (@rob_mckinlay) April 16, 2018
Sky News just sent a nationwide breaking news push alert on JD Wetherspoon shutting down a barely active Twitter account with fewer followers than failing sixth division football club York City. pic.twitter.com/GVZqmPVRPb
— Jim Waterson (@jimwaterson) April 16, 2018
Pretty much every national newspaper has covered the story and it has been a topic of debate on a number of radio stations and rolling TV news channels.
Short-term publicity perhaps, but there is an argument that the pub chain generated more coverage from cancelling its social media accounts than it did from using them.
Reputation management
We are, of course, speculating on the reasons behind the decision and maybe it is just as simple a decision as Mr Martin presents.
While he sounds pretty confident that it won’t impact the pub chain’s marketing, a possible problem going forward is how it manages its reputation on social media channels.
The decision to leave may well free up the time previously spent fighting fires on social media, but people will still be able to say negative things about the company and its pubs without it having a social media presence.
How will it monitor and handle such negativity in the future?
Presumably this is a question it has carefully considered, because as well as the negativity, the company has previously had to battle social media hoaxes.
Just last November, it had to clarify a story which emerged from a spoof Twitter account that claimed it had banned staff from wearing Remembrance Day poppies.
So what does this all mean?
As Mr Martin’s himself said this move away from social media goes ‘against conventional wisdom’.
And it is unlikely that Mark Zuckerberg and co are spending any amount of time worrying about this decision and the possibility of a mass business exodus.
But Wetherspoon is not alone. Tesla and Playboy (so I am told anyway) deleted their Facebook accounts in light of the networks data crisis.
The most likely outcome, at least in the short term, is that this announcement, together with the publicity it has generated, will trigger organisations to think again about how they use social media and whether they are using it effectively.
And they may ask themselves questions as fundamental as ‘why do we do social media?’
I’ll leave you with the final thought of Graham.
He said: “For too long, businesses have adopted social media on the basis ‘everyone does it’. That’s daft and without any strategic thinking. Yet it is commonplace.
“This may prompt many firms to start to take a serious look at social media.
“Indeed this may be the first proper consideration of social media for large numbers of companies who have been using social media merely lured by the “numbers game” of more followers than their competition.”
Media First are media and communications training specialists with over 30 years of experience. We have a team of trainers, each with decades of experience working as journalists, presenters, communications coaches and media trainers.
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