A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post about the social media campaign launched by D’Amico, a restaurant and catering mega-force here in Minneapolis.

The word on the cyber-street about the campaign had been highly negative for weeks, but it seemed like D’Amico either wasn’t listening to the feedback or – more distressingly – didn’t care.

Well, my post seemed to have struck a nerve and I received a lot of feedback on it, from people who agreed with my assessment, those who thought I was an overacting blowhard, and even D’Amico themselves.

D’Amico heard us …

Recently D’Amico made some big changes to their social media strategy that I think are important to note and to applaud.

• They condensed accounts: As noted in the previous post, their initial strategy was to go wide and shallow, which some people interpreted as “spammy.” Going narrow and deep makes them seem more authentic.

• They acknowledged our frustration: One of the main D’Amico accounts now sports a wallpaper message from the Director of Operations, Lynn Ulrich, that basically says, “we tried something new…you didn’t like it…we’re trying something different.” This is a very transparent and classy way to handle the feedback.

• They’ve personalized their messaging: Accounts for D’Amico’s humans sound more, well…human. The gratuitous hash tags have been scaled back and replaced with more conversation content.

So, is it working?

The jury is still out on whether this change in strategy will be effective for D’Amico.

Since social media monitoring and measurement is one of our KaneCo capabilities (D’Amico is not a client) we have access to tools to get a quick snapshot of how their online community is reacting to their changes:

Since July 22, there has been a notable decrease in negative comments (shown in red) about this company, and I think that’s worth noting.

The challenge for them will be to increase the number of positive comments (shown in green) they are receiving from the community – a percentage that has remained unchanged.

(For those of you who are curious, the grey areas on this chart represents “neutral” sentiment – mainly consisting of news and information D’Amico has posted about themselves.)

While the negative comments they receive have been very specific to their social media efforts …

• “@DAmicoandSons who planned your strategy? The name/number thing is really off putting- all d’amico tweets seem impersonal and broadcasted”
• “Anyone else getting annoyed by D’Amico & Sons on Twitter???”
• “I was suddenly followed by a large number of D’Amico accounts. It’s a very creepy feeling. I blocked them all.”

The positive comments they’re receiving are still only in reference to the services the company provides …

• “with my kids + nephew + a yummy d’amico chicken salad croissant + a good book – at the Beach! Gorgeous day!!”
• “Haven’t had this in a while, but I’m craving D’Amico’s sunday brunch breakfast pizza!”
• “Having an amazing lunch at D’amico & Sons! The Hot Italian truely is hot”

Good luck, D’Amico.

Let me be clear, my previous post about D’Amico was not part of some personal vendetta. I wasn’t vying to get hired by D’Amico. No one paid me to write that post. (If anything, it put me in the middle of a D’Amico “drama firestorm” that distracted me from my day-to-day workload.)

My objective with the post was simply to give voice to and summarize the thoughts I was seeing surfacing in continuing waves from my feed and analyze them from my perspective as a social media strategist.

While I’m not seeing feedback on the new campaign in my feeds, I do think this company’s efforts to respond to the concerns of their social community should be recognized.

Too often we are more inclined to place blame rather than to reward the acknowledgement of it.

And that is a shame.

I think the D’Amico campaign offers a good lesson for any company entering the social space, and it is this…

If you decide to employ social media as a communications tool …

• You will not be able to fully control it.
• You will make mistakes.
• You will get called out and criticized for things you say and do (whether they are valid points or not).

That’s not just D’Amico’s reality. That’s the reality of social media, and one we will all have to face eventually.