Community Moderation Reality: Nobody is Minding the Store

First read/listen to this post/discussion about the recent Dunkin Donuts "fail" when their Facebook page was spammed and nobody responded for 12 hours. I commented on the original blog post that this is Facebook's fault for not providing any kind of tool for admins to alert them when new comments or wall posts are posted, and I was glad to see others agree with me.

There seems to be an expectation that every brand engaging in social media has a dedicated community manager (if not a team of them). However, as Olivier Blanchard points out, this, sadly/scarily, is not the case at all. He points to a recent study by King Fish Media that reports while 72% of all companies surveyed claim to currently have a social media strategy, only 9% of those have full-time positions dedicated to managing social media responsibilities. Olivier points out the reality: "A full 6 out of 7 out of the companies with Social Media programs don’t fund a full time role for that program?"

Now overlay that with the Dunkin Donuts flap and why is anyone surprised? Our expectations--"our" being those of us involved in the social media space as well as consumers following brands on Facebook, Twitter, etc--assume that there are staff dedicated to managing the accounts we follow; in reality, this simply is not the case.