Social Media Success Stories (5) – When Facebook Goes Wrong, Twitter Can Save The Day!

“We live we learn” as the saying goes and I’m certain that Jonathan Rivera never imagined in his worst nightmares that Facebook would terminate his Real Estate Referral page without a warning!

Excellent idea but unintentionally bad naming, his page URL was http://facebook.com/socialrealtors !

And since REALTOR® is a trademark owned by the National Association of Realtors (NAR), the association emailed Rivera requesting that he changes the URL of his page. Although he had the page up and running for two years before NAR took notice, he was very complaint to their legitimate request and contacted Facebook about changing his URL.

To his dismay, Facebook’s reaction to his request was terminating his page! As shocked and disappointed as he felt, he was determined to take massive action in order to regain his rightful page.

His first step was asking people to help him out by sharing a Tech Savvy Agent blog post of his unfortunate story on their Facebook walls.

The reaction was staggering! Many people sympathetically spread out his story. But, as the case is with all of our social media success stories, it was Twitter that saved the day!

Mari Smith, a very influential name in social media and one of our notable Social Divas, sent one tweet that blasted off his story! Even Scobleizer retweeted it!

The buzz was so loud that it finally woke up Facebook from its nap! And it was a matter of one day that the page was back with a more fitting name this time: The Official Real Estate Referral Group.

It turned out that Rivera’s sad story was a blessing in disguise because the massive buzz attracted more and more people to his page. (Today, his page has reached 50,000+ fans)

He definitely deserved all that recognition because he was bold enough not to give in to Facebook’s injustice by seeking help from influential social figures.

In appreciation of all the support he got from fellow bloggers, “Facbookers” and “Twitterers”, he created a thank-you video for everyone:

Perhaps the most precious lesson we can learn from this story is never to take social media for granted. In other words, you shouldn’t leave all your social eggs in one basket because you never know what may happen at any point in time.

What if Facebook shut down completely tomorrow? Have you ever pondered this possibility? If it was the only communication channel that you have with your prospects, you will lose them instantly!

Your best bet is to take precautions before the unthinkable happens by creating a database of the people that matter to you most on social media

What did you think of Rivera’s story? To me, it made realize that nobody is perfect, including Facebook! What a shocker! I can’t wait to find out your take on that.