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15/10/2013 by
6419 views

What Not To Do: What Causes A Social Media Disaster?

Companies are still increasingly using social media for all sorts of things: marketing, webcare, and many more. As we have seen, social media disasters are still occurring on a regular basis. But what are the most common mistakes made among brands?

social media risk management

At the moment I am analyzing about a 100 social media disasters to see if there are certain patterns to be found when it comes to causes of these social media fails.

Can variables such as country of origin, day of the week, hour of the day, or type of social media channel have anything to do with the types of social media incidents/crises that occur?

Unfortunately, I am not far enough into this research to be able to give you definite answers to these questions. However, I am able to give you some of the major causes of social media scandals.

So what are these causes exactly? Let’s take a look at a few, in no particular order.

1. Being emotional

What I’ve found repeatedly, is that some people responsible for handling social media for a brand or company can’t control their emotions when it comes to negative comments directed at them or their company.

The case of Applebee’s, in which a community manager started responding to every individual person complaining in the middle of the night, or Amy’s Baking Company, in which the owners of a restaurant started calling its complaining customers names, are great examples of being overcome by emotion, and saying what should have never been said.

applebees

2. Using a dramatic event as a publicity opportunity

This one could quite possibly be the most common made mistake: using a dramatic event for commercial purposes. Done most recently by AT&T on 9/11, brands can’t seem to shake the need to use everything that happens as a chance to get some publicity out of it.

Whether it’s through a photo, hashtags, or a donation in exchange for a like or a retweet, it happens quite often. Some guilty brands and companies? Bing, Kmart, Gap, Urban Outfitters, American Apparel, Kenneth Cole… The list goes on.

kmart

3. Social Media ignorance

As much as it pains me to say, a lot of social media teams are quite ignorant when it comes to the know-how of social media. From accidental account swaps to hashtag fails and awful Twitter webcare, all has been done.

American Airlines used twitter bots to reply to customers, Microsoft insulted Ann Coulter because of an accidental Twitter account swap, and CelebBoutique failed to check the origin of a hashtag (Aurora shooting) before using it in a tweet. Sigh.

microsoft

4. Campaigns gone wrong

Every social media campaign is meant well by the brand or company initiating it. However, every time a campaign is launched in which potentially angry or dissatisfied customers are asked to contribute, brands should think twice.

A so-called bashtag is a hashtag gone completely wrong. People use it to spread negative stories and comments around the social media sphere. McDonalds’ #McDStories and Qantas’ #QantasLuxury are the quintessential examples here. Other campaign fails? Mountain Dew’s Dub the Dew campaign.

mountain dew

5. Claiming you’ve been hacked

This is a big one. As we’ve seen many times before, brands and celebrities alike claiming they were hacked after getting caught doing something wrong.

Anthony Weiner might just be the biggest example of them all, claiming his Twitter account was hacked after uploading a picture of his private parts to his public account instead of through a private message.

Other guilty people: Oprah and Alicia Keys, pretending to use a Microsoft Surface tablet and Blackberry respectively as ambassadors while people could clearly read they were sending messages from an iPad and iPhone. Were they hacked? Probably not.

alicia keys

My Opinion

It is so interesting to find that there most definitely are patterns when it comes to causes of social media crises like the above mentioned. There are many more, and hopefully we can find other variables that influence the happening of a social media disaster as to be able to prohibit them happening in the future.

So what can we learn from these causes? What can we do about them? Well, I’d say first and foremost: educate your social media staff. It is easy to send something out into the social media world without thinking it through, now more than ever.

So, discuss new initiatives, like using current events for promotional purposes or launching a social media campaign, with your social media team, but also with outsiders from other departments. What do they think? Can it harm your brand or company?

I think the age old saying is appropriate here: think before you act. It’s easy to say, but so important.

What Do You Think?

What could be other causes of social media incidents? We’d love to hear from you!

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About The Author
Marion aan ‘t Goor is a Social Media Risk Management Consultant at Foster & Fleming. You can connect with Marion via Twitter and LinkedIn.