Yes companies should build engagement with consumers through social media - such as twitter.

In this scenario, McDonalds used a negative trending hashtag to promote what they deemed as a positive. BAD MOVE! #McDStories has created a pre-existing negativity towards the McDonalds brand. Corporate McDonalds should have researched their trends and associated hashtags around their brand name, which would enable them to avoid the negative and move forward in promotion of positive aspects around the McDonalds name.

Yes, but I dont think fast food companies should go that route. With fast food everybody has an opinion and unfortunately, you cannot satisfy everyone. Other businesses that require customer engagement should use twitter to interact with their fans or supporters. I think twitter in the music industry is fantastic, twitter in the apparel industry is also good too. Anything that allows customers to add their feedback in order to help the business grow. However, with fast food, I can see a lot of backlash going towards major coorporations because there are way too many short cuts being used. Especially in a society that encourages healthy eating and so on.

Companies need to create some relationship with their customers because everyone has different values; by finding the values a person may possess that are beneficial to the brand and specifying the message to those people, it is easier to penetrate that market.

A problem, however, is the need to be careful with what kind of conversation the brand is trying to start. In the case of the McDonald's attempt at a hashtag, I was immediately able to think of the issue that inevitably did arise.

Companies should use twitter to engage with customers. This allows them to get feedback from customers and gives them a sense of where their target market stands and how they can conform their on line presences to better cater to complaints of customers. However i believe that they should also use their mind. if a company is associated with such a bad rep as McDonald's then they shouldn't engage in social media operations as it only sparks more negative comments and can harm any other on line initiatives they try to engage in.

Although McDonald's first Twitter venture did not pan out as expected for the company, criticism weather it is positive or negative is still feedback for McDonald's. Maybe they should take this information they received and spin it around in a positive light to address consumer's issues that were brought up. Every large company will have customer's that will share negative and positive experiences.

Yes, companies should use Twitter to build engagement. However, it really should be obvious that everybody needs to be aware of what they share online. Everybody (including companies) need to be aware of the positive and possible negative feedback they may receive from a simple post. Burger King is on Twitter but nothing went wrong did it? What Burger King tends to do is advertise their current promotions. Twitter is an effective tool for every company, McDonald's needs to rethink their posts to avoid further bashing.

i think that companies should use twitter to build engagement because there are many twitter users that use social media so tis the best way for a business or company to build their reputation. also many companies need to know how to deal with constructive critisicm because many twitter followers can be negative towards business

Companies should turn towards social media for their promotional campaigns. Social media helps consumers engage with a brand, and if the company has strategically planned their campaign it can prove to be successful and generate a larger percentage of profit. However, in the case of McDonald's; the corporation has not strategically planned their campaign, especially since there is a lot of negative feedback from customers about the ethics of McDonald and their quality of meals.

Yes, all companies should use twitter to build engagement. For every business there are haters and lovers, in McDonald's case they didn't handle the complains properly. they shouldn't be using Twitter if they don't handle complaints properly.

Twitter is an amazing tool to engage with customers, however, with any media it must be a strategic decision. Fast-food has big lovers and haters, so to unleash a statement to the twitter world and not expect backlash than think again. If a brand decides that social media is right for them, then the next step is to create a way to control the message. Twitter allows you to post anything about anything. I would suggest Facebook to be a better strategy because those people that "like" your page, are actually fans. You can then post questions, discussions and photos and steer the conversation. So, YES, social media is a great tool for businesses... if used right

The reason why McDonald screwed up its Twitter campaign is because it did not have a good Twitter strategy to counter these vile unhappy McDonald's eaters. What they can do was to make sure that its good news Twitters message go out only to those who are happy to hear it, meaning its happy fans, not some losers who are looking for an excuse to lent out their frustration in life. So, yes, maybe customers must be treated equally, true, but in term of customer relationship that nurtured good customer relationship with your good customers, well, you have to draw a boundary, it is your site, so politely remove those vile comment makers, there are those various Tweeter tools available after all, and just give out your messages to your happy customer base, which in case of McDonald's, huge. But, you can keep track of those unhappy customers too, and see what sort of comments they make in other Tweeter sites they go. Those trouble makers themselves are interesting people to research for McDonald's (like, how to counter their vile comments, or to see if there is anything valuable you can salvage from their opinions), but, they are not to be invited to your customer relationship sites.

twitter is a great social media site that can connect consumers to businesses, when done properly it can benefit both. Businesses have to be smart on how they use this site, they have to put in the effort in communicating with their followers and make them feel heard and important. Every business has negative and positive feed towards it, as a business its their job to get the positive feed back out to the public. McDonald's not doing their research as to what is being said by the public was a poor decision on their behave and twitter being a site that allows you to view what is being said on your company, McDonald's had "messed it up". when using twitter businesses must act as listeners and tweeter, that is the best way to be on twitter.

I believe companies should use Twitter and other social media web sites to build engagement with their consumers.

Due to the negativity in this article, McDonald's should "Think before they tweet" and should have properly researched that the same hash tag did not previously exist (which it did). Although they believed this planned to create positive feedback for McDonald's, their posts were offensive and controversial to their followers. If they properly researched this before going ahead with it they could have saved the negative feedback and this wouldn't have hurt their brand image.