The Biggest Social Media Disasters
Social media, it’s all fun and games, isn’t it? Until it isn’t.
Every social media manager’s worst nightmare, every Buzzfeed writer’s dream – those big brand social media disasters have the almighty and infinite power to make or break your presence in the wilderness of the digital world.
Sometimes it’s the smallest of mistakes, a tweet sent from a business account that was quite clearly meant to be from a personal one. Other times, it seems to have been an actual plan that nobody in the marketing department thought through. Either way, we could all be in danger of falling prey to it so until that happens, sit back and enjoy our list of some of the biggest, baddest blunders. We can’t promise they’ll never happen to you but the more you know….
When you’re social media manager is so young, they don’t remember a globally recognised disaster. We share your sharp intake of breath. They did try to apologise but the damage was already done.
Check out number 6 and 7 on this list from Buzzfeed (what did we say about those Buzzfeed writers?). Hours after the terrible Aurora shooting, they were embarrassingly unaware of how insensitive their tweets were.
Automated tweets were once considered very convenient but when you don’t really think them through, well, this happens.
Oh, Mia Farrow, she wasn’t allowed to forget this one very quickly. We can only assume that she herself wouldn’t have used that particular search term to look for pictures of her own children but it still makes for awkward reading.
What’s the takeaway from this one? It’s probably to check your facts. Queen Elizabeth = still alive and well. Plus, Elizabeth isn’t traditionally spelled with an ‘r’ but that’s a side note on spellchecking…
We’re going to have to put a very big NSFW warning on this one. Instead of showing the actual photo, we’ve just gone with a picture of a plane where it’s supposed to be parked. Anyway, fair warning, its’s so graphic and such a massive error that one team member actually exclaimed “Blimey!” – very on brand.
Another slightly insensitive social media moment after a terrible disaster and another airline but this came from the company itself. Malaysian Airlines rather strangely tried to make a joke about their own lost plane. Ill-advised, to say the least.
What can we learn? The marketing team is here to help with a few simple lessons:
- Always have an approval process so that junior members of the team cannot ruin your brand reputation.
- Make sure you research what you post before you post it.
- When going for a humorous approach make sure that it can not get received in the wrong way.
- Avoid automated tweets since errors can easily happen without human supervision.
- Avoid shameless promotion of your services or products in relation to disasters.
So, what if all this isn’t entirely your thing and you don’t want to suffer the dreaded social media disaster? Or do you just need help with hashtags, some much-needed Twitter training or a friendly Facebook consultant? Blimey Creative is ready and waiting to socialise with you, just pick up the phone and dial 0115 981 6276 or email us at hello@blimeycreative.blimeystage.co.uk
Or, you know, you could head over to our Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest or Google + pages to get in touch….