5 (ish*) Great Examples of What Not To Do on Social Media

Whether you’re the CFO of Twitter inadvertently leaking the news of a potential acquisition or a well-meaning social media manager getting a little too caught up in a heated sports rivalry, no one is immune to the lasting sting of regret and embarrassment that comes from an ill-conceived social media post. In the age of tweet and delete everything is permanent, indelibly chiseled into the psyche of the internet hive mind. The internet, like the elephant of the old adage, never forgets. This is a difficult truth to contend with for any company seeking to generate positive buzz, community good will, and brand equity online. Corporate social media homeruns like #ShareaCoke or Nike’s #makeitcount have demonstrated the incomparable power of leveraging social media in a positive manner, however, there’s no denying that it’s the epic social media blunders not the successes that often have the most staying power in the cultural conversation. Just ask Kenneth Cole or US Airways, social media mismanagement can be hard to live down. Here’s five great examples of practices to avoid to ensure your brand isn’t trending for all the wrong reasons.

1.) Don’t Tell Your Audience They’re Wrong

Bungie, the developer behind the popular video game franchise Destiny, learned this lesson the hard way late last year. Last December Bungie released the first major expansion to Destiny that brought a slew of changes to the way the game worked. Fans first caught wind of many of these changes through a preview article in Game Informer. Before the new content was released, Destiny fans took to social media to sound off on the changes coming to the game. Much of the fan reaction to the coming changes was negative. This was due in large part to the fact the new features were complex and not fully detailed in the preview article. In an attempt to assuage the fears of fans and extinguish the flames of controversy, Bungie community manager David Dague (known as “DeeJ”) took to twitter. Addressing player concerns, DeeJ tweeted (and then deleted) the following:

“Game Informer got it straight. Player reactions to some of the information is what is wrong.”

DeeJ’s tweet did the opposite of what he intended. Fan reactions now became even more aggressive and hostile.

The relationship you cultivate with the people who consume your social media content can be a tricky one to manage. Heeding the wisdom of the retail proverb “the customer is always right” (in this case, follower) can help make things far less tricky. Regardless of how much followers like your product, they will cease engaging or even turn hostile if they feel alienated or unheard. Social media content that appears to call the consumer “wrong” only serves to alienate followers. To DeeJ’s credit he later acknowledged this piece of social media interaction to be “the worst Tweet I have ever sent in my life”

2.) Don’t Drink and Hashtag

Digornio’s infamous use of #WhyIStayed proves that context is king when it comes to properly leveraging the power of trending topics. #WhyIStayed was being used to promote awareness of the problem of domestic violence in the wake of the Ray Rice scandal. Digornio’s social media manager, unaware of this context and merely seeing #WhyIStayed trending, used the hashtag to sell some Pizza. It’s not delivery, it’s a PR disaster! Woops.

In addition to ensuring that you’re not piggybacking improperly on a popular hashtag, it is equally important that you give a great deal of thought and consideration to any original hashtag campaigns your brand tries to initiate before rolling it out. Not properly considering the risks and not accurately predicting the fallout of a hashtag campaign can lead to some disastrous results. Remember #McDStories and #MyNYPD?

3.) Don’t Miss Your Window

Learning to make the most of limited time opportunities on social media is of critical importance. During the 2013 Super Bowl, Oreo gave other big brands a lesson in how to make the most of a fleeting moment that millions of eyes are zeroed in on. Early in the third quarter of the contest there was a power failure in the stadium that resulted in a half hour stoppage in play. Restless football fans (along with all the one day a year football watchers who just tune in for the halftime show) turned their eyes to social media. Within minutes of the outage occurring Oreo tweeted this out to its approximately 80,000 followers:

Several other companies would follow suit with similar blackout themed tweets, but none of them made the same impact as Oreo’s with its over 16,000 retweets. Being late to the party means someone else is properly harnessing the power of the moment and garnering all the clicks.

4.) Don’t Smother Your Audience

Yes, consistency is key. If you’re not posting regularly it’s hard to gain and keep followers. Nevertheless, there is such a thing as over producing social media content. Specifically, if your approach to social media is to constantly promote your products to your followers, people will grow weary of your presence in their feed. It’s important to give people quality content in focused dosages not just promote ad nauseam. This point doesn’t even require a specific example. Everyone has someone in their digital social sphere who over produces and over promotes. Whether it’s a big box store constantly trying to convince you of the “amazing deals going on this weekend only” or your overzealous relative who won’t shut up about their blog (I’m looking at you Dad.) This kind of behavior accomplishes the opposite of its intent, it pushes followers away instead of bringing them in.

No one likes to be smothered.

5.) Don’t Test Out New Material (Not If It’s Offensive Anyway)

If you’re unsure whether a piece of content is just edgy enough to be brilliant or just plain offensive, it’s probably best to delete, not tweet. Newly appointed Daily Show host, Trevor Noah, recently provided the social media world with a great lesson in the importance of carefully considering how your old content could come back to bite you, especially if that old content is jokes that are little more bigoted than they are funny.

Jokey anti-semitism and misogyny: not great for your personal brand.

*This post opens with several excellent examples of what not to do before the “official” list begins. Accidentally tweeting NSFW images, representing the arab spring as a fashion revolution, and accidentally revealing your internal business strategies to millions of followers are all, in fact, great examples of what not to do.