Scheduled tweets are tricky. No, not the scheduling part (that’s easy), but the part where brands (and sometimes people) tweet at hours when they’re clearly not online.
I understand why companies do it–especially when the goal is to pass along deals and information to customers and prospects. It makes sense. Tweets are hit or miss at best anyway, so it’s smart to spread your message out across the day (and/or night). What you shouldn’t do, however, is assume the status quo.
You can’t schedule it and forget it.
In the wake of Friday’s horrific school shooting, Stacey Acevero tweeted out:
“Probably a good idea for brands to show some sensitivity this afternoon.”
Which led me to her post about Smirnoff, and a completely unintentionally ill-timed tweet.
Read it, it’s worth it. Then ponder this: Smirnoff has since deleted the tweet but does not appear to have acknowledged what happened. Does that make a difference?
Photo by Roshan Nikam (Flickr).
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for the shout Daria. The fact that they deleted the tweet is sad, because it looks like they are “hiding” from taking responsibility for it. But clearly, there are screen shots of it, and I like to say that whatever goes on the internet, stays on the internet forever. Owning up to the tweet with a simple apology or acknowledging what was happening would have been enough, in my humble opinion.
Stacey Acevero recently posted..Why Scheduling Social Media Posts Isn’t Always the Best Idea
Hi Stacey,
I’m agree: an apology never goes amiss. And when it’s for something completely unintentional, it should be easy to say we goofed and we’re sorry if we offended anyone. No brand (and no person either) should itself so seriously that it can’t say “oops.”
Hi Daria,
That is the downside of automation and not making processes that involve some kind of check before these automated processes. It happens to all of us . We are humans and we make mistake. What was wrong was not apologizing for a mistake however honest that was. I think they need a course again in “social” part of social media .
Ashvini recently posted..Is your boss your customer?
Hi Ashvini,
It’s a good reminder that companies need to put in checks of their pre-automated content in response to external events (not just the internal ones, which hopefully they are already factoring in).
More broadly, if companies don’t own their mistakes then what message are they sending to their employees about innovation and taking risks?