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Restoration Hardware’s annual catalog set a record with 13 sourcebooks, 3,000 pages and 17 pounds. This tree killing giant print job has created a huge backlash on social media. One article describes the catalog as sending “critics on social media into an indignant tizzy.” But how big of a problem is this really?

It is true that people are making negative comments in social media. A simple search on Twitter reveals comments calling the catalog “wasteful,” “appalling,” “reckless/unnecessary marketing” and “a risk for shoulder injuries.” My quick search reveals the comments below. There is even a Tumblr page called Deforestation Hardware that is organizing a mass return of the “unwanted mailings.” Is the backlash massive?

The negative comments on social media are only “1/10th of 1%” of those who received catalogs reports Restoration Hardware CEO Gary Friedman. The problem is these 1/10th of 1% are vocal and active on social media. Plus there has been enough to generate traditional media stories about the controversy in mainstream pubs such as Time Magazine, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Boston Herald, Huffington Post, and CBS News. When social media reaction gets picked up by big news outlets comments get a huge boost of attention that may overhype the backlash.

I found a 5:1 positive to negative sentiment rating for “Restoration Hardware Catalog” on Socialmention. In my brief Twitter search above, I also did see positive comments about the catalog. So have these negative social media comments been blown out of proportion when picked up as a “backlash” news story by the traditional press? This is especially a consideration when only 1 out of the 10 stories I read mentioned the “1/10th of 1%” statistic to put it into perspective.

How much buzz constitutes a trend worthy of a news story? Visible Measures monitors viral videos and claim that 5 million views is the earned media threshold for when news media picks up something as “viral” and that story in turn boosts attention even more. What about journalistic standards? Amanda Hess from Slate reports that Shani O. Hilton, BuzzFeed deputy editor-in-chief told her, “There are no rules. “We’re all trying to figure it out.”

Overblown or not, Huffington Post’s Robbie Vorhaus says “This could become one big PR fail.” How should Restoration Hardware react? Vorhous indicated they should publicly admit that “the mass mailing model of a group of catalogs is outdated and no longer fits with a company dedicated to customer satisfaction and sustainability.” But is this really a “controversial, wasteful campaign that fuels extensive anti-brand sentiment?” Maybe the true number of negative comments doesn’t mater. Once traditional media labels it as a blacklash, it is a backlash no matter what.

But sometimes what consumers say doesn’t always match what they do. I did find research that print catalogs are in fact a successful marketing tool. For example, online retailer Bonobos started delivering a print version of its catalog last year and says 20% of first-time website customers place orders after getting the catalog and spend 1.5 times more than those who didn’t receive it. The same research also reports 58% of online shoppers say they browse catalogs for ideas, and 31% have a retailer’s catalog with them when they make a purchase online.

We will have to wait to see if Restoration Hardware’s Social Media Catalog Backlash will hurt sales. But this year the retailer’s net income was up 217% from last year despite similar news stories in 2012 about the social media backlash over its 992 page catalog.

How many negative comments makes a backlash and how should brands react?

This past weekend I presented at INTEGRATE a marketing communications conference associated with the graduate IMC program at WVU. As with my PRSSA National Conference presentation last fall everyone was tweeting my speech. This is a new phenomenon. Whether I like it or not, my speech will simply be Tweeted. I really have no control of it in terms of stopping this activity. However if I embrace it and plan ahead, I can focus the activity, and direct it for my benefit. This is the same for any organization.

Keith Quesenberry INTEGRATE 14 WVU IMC — Tweeting Is Now Simply A Part of My Presentations Making My Audience Much Larger.

So let them Tweet if they want to, just do a little planning ahead to take more advantage of it. Here is a list of ideas I put together for our Center for Leadership Education Business Plan Competition at Johns Hopkins this past Spring. How to integrate Twitter into your next live event:

#1 Create An Event Hashtag. Put it on all event materials. Encourage people to put the hashtag at the end of every Tweet about the event so anyone following the stream will see all posts related to the event like #Integrate14, #PRSSANC #jhubizplan

#2 Tweet With A Purpose. The point of tweeting from an event is to give a commentary of what is happening, announce results and highlight statements made by speakers (or people asking questions) that are interesting, but remember you are limited to 140 characters.

#3 Give Credit Where Credit Is Due. When curating relevant points from speakers give them credit by using a format like “[name] says [their statement].” and use the speaker’s Twitter handle to attribute a statement to them such as @Kquesen. If you can’t find the Twitter handle right away, search Google for “their name” + “Twitter.”

#4 Pictures Are Worth 1,000 Characters. Use links to multimedia content mentioned by speakers or relevant to your observations such a websites, blog posts, papers or videos. Don’t forget you can take and tweet photos!

#5 Follow The Leaders. Follow other people whose handles appear in the livestream. This enables you to make connections beyond the event day.

#6 Keep It Up. Try to keep conversations going. Agree that an important point was made or ask a follow-up question. Keep your phone going to by bringing a charger!

#7 Follow Through. After the event reconnect with new followers by sending a “thanks for connecting at the ____” for possible future partnerships and supporters. Also a collection of the most interesting conversations that occurred on Twitter during the event can be pulled together for a follow up blog post.

#8 Get Help. Finally here is a free Twitter chat tool that automatically adds the event hashtag to each tweet, and the feed automatically updates as you chat with other users in real-time: http://www.tchat.io/ Or if you want to post to multiple social channels at once. Take a photo and add commentary in Instagram from which you can then post to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, FourSquare and Flickr all at the same time – still use the hashtag.

#9 Give Prizes. At the INTEGRATE conference they give away a prize or three (social media gift baskets) for the most Tweets and other social media updates to the event hashtag by individual users. This can help jump start and motivate social conversation. That event is three days long so they give updates of the leaders of the Tweet race throughout the program.

#10 Storify It. One of the coolest things at INTEGRATE14 this year was the Storify page described as “On May 30-31 2014, West Virginia University’s Integrated Marketing Communications graduate program presents INTEGRATE 2014. In this story, you’ll see tweets from my experience, as well as those of my classmates, professors & the speakers of each session. Will be adding posts all weekend.”

My presentation starts on slide 219 and you get the main points of my talk from the collection of various audience comments and pictures via their Tweets to the conference hashtag.

Are ready to take your live event to new social media heights? What social media tricks have you used at events?