People behind the brands in social media. What could go wrong?

Brands hire large teams to manage their multiple social media accounts. Social media needs to stay vibrant, so companies rarely establish rigorous approval systems for posts. However real time interaction and speed come at a price.

Epic fail#1. Content is simply inappropriate, too personal or is not in-line with brand equity. For example a junior employee would react to a crisis situation without thinking of the consequences. This could lead to escalation of the conflict and not the other way around.

Epic fail #2. The employee creates posts that are meant to be personal and them from the company’s or brand’s account. One of the famous examples of such mistake was a Tweet that was posted from KitchenAid Twitter account by mistake from one the social media managers.

The Tweet was quickly deleted and company’s head of branding apologized to the President Obama as well as those who could have been offended by the post.

She has also mentioned that the person who has created this Tweet would not be Tweeting for them any longer. I think company’s reaction was well timed and appropriate.

Similar epic fail happened to RedCross.

RedCross also handled created crisis well via posting the following Tweet.

The open question is: what is the ultimate way to make sure that company would not have to manage the social media crisis created by their own employees?

I think it is important pay a big attention to the hiring process of those who will be managing company’s/ brand’s social media. Those people need to share the values of the company/brand and their current presence in Social Media should not be embarrassing or inappropriate from the brand perspective. If the person and brand share similar values such epic fails would not happen in real life.