When Tweets go bad

Did you see this tweet that went out on the Kitchen Aid twitter account last week?

Yes – that’s a bit more than an “Oooops” tweet. According to reports what happened here is the person tweeting meant to send this through their personal twitter account. Which in no way makes it ok. This throws up a whole load of watch outs for brands using twitter.

1. Your staff need to be trained, and re-trained, on how to use twitter

2. If you are using a tool to manage multiple accounts, do not allow your staff add their personal account

3. All staff, even those that don’t have access to your official twitter account, need to be trained on twitter. The most shocking thing about this tweet is the person was willing for it to be seen by the presidential debate stream (see the hashtag). So all staff should be told how to behave on twitter (with some humanity would be a good start for this person). Why is this important ? Because it is really easy to work out where people are working and your brand can, by association, be linked to these tweets.

4. The line “these are personal tweets and do not reflect the thoughts of my employer” mean didley squat.

5. Make sure that someone else is monitoring the tweets (as happened in this case) so you can quickly respond

6. Don’t panic, but act quickly, and respond appropriately

That is what Kitchen Aid did. They reacted quickly, apologised quickly and took action swiftly, See below

About these ads