A celebrity makes an inappropriate joke on social media and has to apologize, a company responds incorrectly to a complaint, or an organization uses social media for a completely misguided campaign… Reports of such social media blunders regularly appear in the news. Social media is very sensitive to this; once you make a mistake, it spreads within seconds and is almost impossible to fix.
In this article, you will read where things often go wrong, and we will show you 5 examples of major (and often painful) social media blunders.
Common mistakes
'We need to do something with social media, but we can't quite figure it out and we aren't really skilled at it…' is a common issue at companies. It is, of course, very tempting to simply leave the social media policy entirely to an intern, or to 'just do it on the side'. In theory, this could work perfectly well, provided you know what you are doing. Otherwise, making a misstep is just around the corner.
Without a clear plan with guidelines and a good strategy, a mistake can easily be made. A mistake on social media can be extremely damaging to the image, especially for large companies. Conversely, a strong social media policy can lead to a significant improvement in image, service, and ultimately revenue.
Things often go wrong on these 5 points:
- Being present on social media without a good plan
- Bad timing of posts
- Violating basic rules for the use of social media and the company
- Failing to properly take statistics into account and measuring important factors
- Pay no attention to competitors
Curious about a few (un)savory examples? We selected 5 major social media blunders that show you how not to do it. In most cases, these blunders have resulted in (considerable) reputational damage.
5 major social media blunders
1. Bic and #HappyWomensDay
Bic celebrated 'National Women's Day' with the quote below and shared it on social media. Naturally, this resulted in a storm of negative reactions. Except for the quote 'work like a boss,' virtually every quote in this campaign was misplaced. If you're going to do it, do it right!
2. BlackBerry makes a fool of itself
This one is quite obvious: posting messages on BlackBerry's Twitter account using an iPhone is not a strategic move. Unfortunately for BlackBerry, no matter how quickly they tried to remove the message, it soon became trending on the internet.
3. IHOP sends sexist tweet to 242,000 followers
IHOP, a major American restaurant chain, made a huge mistake with this tweet in which it attempted to humorously link pancakes to breasts. ''The butter face we all know and love, flat but has a GREAT personality''. Not very tactical.
4. Coolblue makes a mistake (but also fixes it well)
Okay, email isn't exactly social media, but quite recently, recruiters from Coolblue made a mistake. They still had Mark in the CC field during internal email correspondence. This screenshot was posted by Mark on the Coolblue Facebook page and spread like wildfire on social media.
Coolblue handled this well by making a video in which Marjolein and Manon apologized and were pelted with pancakes. Click here for the Facebook video.
5. New London Luton Airport employee is a little too enthusiastic
This post on Facebook was not a tactical move by a new employee at London Luton Airport. The photo below was used with a slightly overenthusiastic and quite misplaced accompanying text. The photo turned out to be of the Southwest Airlines Flight in 2005, which had skidded during takeoff. A 6-year-old boy died in the accident.
Luton Airport claimed to have clear social media guidelines containing everything regarding what is acceptable and what is not, but the new employee was not yet aware of these. This proves once again how important these guidelines are and how important it is that the employees managing social media are aware of them.
So: Think carefully about your social media policy, keep common social media mistakes in mind, and ensure that your social media posts are not used as examples of major social media blunders!