Responding to an Inappropriate Social Media Post

Arielle | @_ArielleHope Let’s face it, we’ve all experienced that panicky, dread of embarrassment at accidentally posting something that you really didn’t mean to share. Maybe your little brother hacked into your account, or you were thinking about other things as you were typing out your post and posted those thoughts instead, either way those pesky, unwanted Facebook posts and tweets can haunt you (especially if one of your friends decides to immortalize the post by taking a screen shot).

Don’t be too hard on yourself. Slip-ups are bound to happen. The question is how can you come out of said embarrassment with your head held high? Well, depending on how bad the damage is you’ll want to delete the post as quickly as possible and rectify yourself by creating a new post acknowledging your moment social media clumsiness. If it’s your personal account it is usually much easier to come back from a bad tweet or post (unless you're Donald Trump).

Businesses have a much harder time dealing with a PR disaster like an inappropriate post, an insensitive statement, or a hack. They have their name to think about as well as their consumer’s reactions. But acting like the situation never happened is not the way to go. Sometimes it’s a case of an employee forgetting they are still logged into their company’s account.

As a way to protect your brand and company name you have to make sure you are quick about deleting and responding in an honest, but apologetic way. News on sites like Twitter spread like a racecar in its final lap. The longer it takes for you to respond the more damage you cause to your brand. However, the more credibility you have to your name it less likely you are to completely get black-marketed by your consumers.

Sometimes it’s just a matter of being light hearted about the situation. Don’t panic, maybe even remain humorous about the situation to let your clients know that mistakes happen, but it’s not the end of the world.

You don’t want to make your slip-up a bigger deal than it needs to be. Keep calm, assess the damage, be quick about your response or apologies, and remember that it’s bound to happen to the best of us.