The year 2012 has seen a handful of social media mishaps. Some of them are just unfortunate wrong-time-wrong place disasters while there are a few others that could have been avoided but for carelessness and indifference. In this article, lets check out a few of those disasters and see what we can take away from them.
Plain unfortunate
McDonalds used a couple of trends on twitter #mcdstories and #meetthefarmers to promote the brand. But unfortunately the #mcdstories trend went wrong when customers used it to recount their bad experiences at McDonalds. This apparently was never anticipated by the promoters.
This could happen to anyone; its plain unfortunate. The only thing that this teaches us is to perhaps treat customers well and serve quality products. From the social media side of things, there was nothing really wrong – it was a good idea, only, one that went horribly wrong.
Knowing when its NOT funny: Dont act on an impulse
There were some brands that took things a little too far while trying to be funny. For example, the Home Appliance brand, KitchenAid posted an offensive tweet, when Obama mentioned that his grandmother died three days before he was elected. This was after the first-of-three Presidential debates. It said, “Obamas gma even knew it was going 2 b bad! ‘She died 3 days b4 he became president. #nbcpolitics”
The twitter handler probably thought it was funny, but social media marketing 101: Never offend any person or a belief, much less the President of the United States of America, as a brand. Its bad for marketing. It need not be taught; its quite simply, common sense. The tweet immediately went viral, earning them negative publicity.
Such errors also happen when people act on an impulse. If the social media rep thought about it for some time, he might have come to his senses. But the prospect of posting such a joke, expecting many people to appreciate it might have made him/her post it on an impulse. They did not see beyond it – besides the joke, there is this big picture of how it will affect the brand they are trying to promote.
Not being careful enough
NRA tweeted, “Good Morning Shooters. Happy Friday! Weekend plans?” just as news about the Aurora theatre shooting was unfolding. This is clearly the classic case of scheduling tweets in advance. However, it does look insensitive and careless at such a time.
Its true that scheduling tweets and posts saves a lot of time during the ordinary days, but it is better to have a qualified person working for you, if your organization is big enough and what you are going to say would affect people.
These are some social media disasters from which we can learn valuable lessons. Some of them could be avoided – like the Obama one and even the NRA post. The McDonald campaign was honestly unfortunate; they intended something and the opposite happened. Do you have any such incidents to share with us? Share your comments and stories via comments below.
