Habitat will continue to capitalise on social media

Despite recent controversy over use of Iran hashtags on Twitter, the retailer still plans to use web 2.0 tools to boost revenue

Twitter users reacted angrily to the Habitat messages with Iran-related hashtags

Furniture store Habitat will capitalise on the use of social networking to better communicate with its customers and increase sales.

As online retail grows despite the high-street slowdown, the firm is now looking into how to use Web 2.0 tools to attract users to its web site and create a more interactive environment online.

“There is definitely a space for social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter in our web strategy and we will be spending time and energy on further exploring that,” said Jacques Dekock, chief information officer at Habitat.

“Using social media to reach out to all the Habitat aficionados out there – clients who really love our products – and drive web traffic seems quite fitting,” he told Computing.

The retailer is now under public scrutiny for having tagged its advertising posts on Twitter with keywords - known as hashtags -related to Iran and the country’s political unrest.

“I have had tons of emails referring to [the Twitter incident] over the past couple of days. But that was not intentional, we have already acted on it and have apologised to Tweeters,” said Dekock.

“Twitter is a fabulous channel to communicate with customers, but needs to be used carefully – if something goes wrong, the news can spread very quickly for all the wrong reasons as we have learned from this incident,” he said.

The ill-timed marketing plan caused upheaval amid the user base of the micro-blogging service and prompted removal of the messages and an official apology from Habitat.

"The top 10 trending topics were pasted into hashtags without checking with us and apparently without verifying what all of the tags referred to," the retailer said in a statement.

"This was absolutely not authorised by Habitat. We were shocked when we discovered what happened and are very sorry for the offence that has been caused."