Blog | Social Press Kit
View More ArticlesIt’s that horrifying realization that sits heavy in your gut. You know you’ve screwed up… bad. Your adrenaline begins to flood every ounce of your body and then your neurotransmitters kick in to try and sort through what went wrong, how it went wrong and what your next move is.
We like to call this: CPM—complete panic mode.
Not to worry, we are here to help you see it, own it, and avoid it.
Oh no, it happened.
Social media mishaps happen all the time. Unfortunately, it’s human error for the most part. We’ve seen it from the Google’s and Marc Jacob’s of the world to your local hair salon. No matter your company size, it’s essential you treat the situation the same. This will force you to become a more proactive problem-solver and owner of your mistakes. Social media errors can be as inconsequential and humorous as posting an Instagram Story of your family’s adorable new puppy on your company’s Instagram account, or as catastrophic as an employee tweeting out a racial slur communicated by the CEO. Yikes.
Read on for your essential guide to owning your social media mistakes and learning how to never let it happen again.
When faced with a social media slip up, we suggest you:
- Assess the potential gravity of the situation. Is this a legitimate crisis?
- Own it—major or not—and fast.
- Come up with a plan & use your resources!
How Bad Is It?
Don’t let your emotions get the best of you. Easier said than done, but we promise it will save you in the long run. The moment you realize a mistake has been made, take several deep breaths, and then dig deep to see what happened. Type it out, write it down, make a note in your phone—whatever it is, assess the situation internally and come to terms with the reality of what went down. The importance here is making sure you’re not overreacting for no reason. The less drama the better. Often times, companies will approach an insignificant social error with humor because really, who wants to egg on a digital fight?
Let’s take The American Red Cross for example. When one of their social media managers accidentally posted about #gettngslizzard on some Dogfish Head beer, they chose a clever, authentic and apologetic approach.
They noticed the unintentional post, came to a collective understanding that this was indeed not an actual crisis, i.e. they are The Red Cross, owned it and apologized with eloquence. This is the perfect example of employing the use of humor in an otherwise mild social plight.
Have You Owned It?
So, you’ve assessed the situation and have come to terms with the fact that the mistake is not just minor but potentially job threatening or, even worse, company reputation altering. Deep breath. The number one takeaway here is to own your mistake and act fast. Running from your mistakes has never served anyone any good and in fact, makes the situation worse. Rather than taking off for the hills, face it head on and call in for back-up. Your coworkers and boss are your allies (at least they should be) and a vital resource to you when something goes south. They want to expel the mistake just as much as you, so don’t be afraid to use them as a second set of eyes, ears, brain… you get it. Remember when US Airways accidentally tweeted a pornographic image? If you don’t, it went a little something like this.
An individual tweeted pornographic content in response to a customer Tweet and the company didn’t realize until about an hour later.
US Airways proceeded to put the phrase “actions speak louder than words” into full effect by immediately taking down the offensive tweet and formally apologizing to their follower fan base that same day with brutal transparency.
Their ability to swiftly remedy a social media scare of this scale speaks to the company’s emphasis on reputation. Brava US Airways.
What Are You Going To Do Next?
I think this is the perfect time to say, when you have access to the social logins of one or more client accounts, it is imperative that you handle them with care. This same notion is applicable to your own personal account. If you are an influencer or have a loyal follower base of any volume, it’s important to present yourself in a manner that is representative of your brand identity. You should always have a strategy in place for avoiding a social media mishap. Creating, implementing and investing in a plan of this sort will not only look good on you but the rest of your company as well.
When it comes to posting anything on social, whether it’s the social language, creative asset, or link, there are so many opportunities where things can and often will go wrong. Today, social platform tools like Social Press Kit have the power to transform your social media life. No more Word Docs, PDFs, Google Docs, text messages and email attachments. SPK allows your company to prepare and package ready-to-share approved campaign content: Facebook Posts, Tweets, Instagrams & other assets to streamline the social media posting process—perfect for influencers, donors, partners, you name it. Not only does it allow you to significantly minimize the chance of a social screw up (this is huge), but it also allows you to measure and track your social reach directly from the platform.
While dealing with social media mistakes can be stressful, they provide an important learning opportunity to help decipher why it happened and make adjustments to your training, management, and communication in order to be better prepared moving forward.