We’ve all put our foot in our mouth. It’s easy to watch others do it and think, I’ve messed up, but I would NEVER do that, see how to avoid social media blunders! We especially seem to see a lot of this on social media. From simple things like accidentally posting a personal message to a company page, to watching companies actually try to turn tragedies into sales pitches, I imagine we’ve all had at least a few, oh wow… they really just did that, moments. And unfortunately, we’ve probably all had a few of those, oh no… I can’t believe I just did that, moments.
So how do we stop those moments from happening on our own pages? Well, let’s face it, mistakes happen. Typos have gone out, pictures of Rox have been posted to the wrong page, and messages that were scheduled in advance have gone out moments after tragic events, when we wish we had time to remove them from the queue before going live. These things happen and they are learning lessons.
Again, mistakes happen. However, with some planning, these kinds of mistakes can hopefully be reduced, and the colossal mistakes such as having someone on your team attempt to use a tragic event to promote your own goods and/or services, can be completely avoided.
Slow down, step back, and strategize – not always an easy thing to do, I know, but it will save you time in the long run. Having a strategy and policy in place can help you have a clear understanding of what your organization’s voice is, what’s OK and not OK to post and what to do when that not-so-OK post slips through the cracks.
We’ve provided social media strategy and policy templates in past blog entries – this time we’d like to share our post-tragedy communications strategy to help you put a plan into place for what to do and what not to do on social media in the wake of a tragedy.
