Huang was spared her job, and craft brewer Dogfish Head received a bevy of attention and spearheaded a Red Cross blood and fund-raising drive, offering a “beer-for-blood” trade-off.
In March, Chrysler was the next company involved in damage control because of a rogue F-bomber:
This time, the culprit was an employee at New Media Strategies (NMS), an outside social media agency hired by Chrysler.
Chrysler reacted by cutting ties with NMS, who in turn fired the employee responsible for writing the message. Chrysler deleted the tweet and told its 8,000-plus followers that its Twitter account was compromised.
The result? Many were outraged. According to Ragan.com, people called the company “heartless in firing someone who made an honest mistake,” and “tone deaf in understanding social media.”
“From a PR perspective, people have the choice to delete a tweet, and it’s going to depend on the situation. Do I want to delete a tweet, knowing that deleting without explaining can be worse than the tweet itself? Or do I not delete?” Evans says. “These issues bring to life a process that people who deal with social media or an online community need to have in place.”
But not all rogue tweets are posted on accident. Sometimes they’re written on purpose, but aren’t received well by Twitter followers. Take fashion powerhouse Kenneth Cole, for example. Amid civil unrest in Egypt, Cole personally posted a tweet that garnered more negative attention than a poor showing at Fashion Week.
Cole soon apologized for his insensitive post, but many were left wondering if his brand or business would suffer.
“If it’s an ongoing issue, yes; if it’s isolated, no,” Evans says, pointing out that not all negative press is necessarily bad for business.
When you think of insurance, a few specific types spring to mind: life insurance, auto insurance, homeowners insurance, renters insurance, disability insurance… but where can people or businesses turn when something goes desperately wrong with their online presence?
Recently a blog on Media Bistro suggested the idea of social media insurance for companies and individuals. But insurers still have to figure out if there is real, quantifiable risk involved when people post on Twitter and Facebook.
Evans believes the risk is definitely there, especially for people who write questionable tweets.
“Twitter isn’t for everybody. Coming from a PR background, one of the best things you can do is have someone who’s media-friendly, intelligent, and won’t fly off the handle. Attention-getting techniques and blunt comments might seem off-hand, but if it works for you, that’s fine,” she says.
Business and Internet Lawyer Erik Syverson agrees about the potential risk, but says it may make more sense for companies to have social media insurance opposed to Twitter-happy individuals.
“From a company’s end, they might already have some sort of coverage for this and not know it,” Syverson says. “It’s best if companies have an experienced lawyer look at their existing policies to see if social media insurance would be necessary.”
Syverson says he “saw the writing on the wall” in regards to the connection between the Internet and the law, especially on sites with user-generated content where people feel safe or anonymous.
“I realized there could be a lot of litigation over defamation because social media enables hundreds of millions of users to generate content, and I saw a need for expertise in the area,” Syverson says. “A lot of lawyers don’t know how the Internet even works.”
And for the hundreds of millions of users on Twitter and Facebook, Twitter and social media insurance could come in handy, too.
“It could make sense to pay an insurance premium if you’re going to use social media to have some sort of insurance pad on it,” Syverson says. “It might be like employment insurance [in the case a post compromises their job], but I don’t know how the claims process would work. It could be dicey and lead to a lot of litigation or claims of bad faith insurance.”
Syverson advises individuals who lose their job because of a Facebook or Twitter update to talk to an experienced lawyer, who can help determine if the post is a fireable offense based on a lot of variables on a case-by-case basis. Be warned, however, that your job protection isn’t guaranteed.
“I wouldn’t be interested in [Twitter insurance],” Evans says. “It’s a fascinating idea, but it comes down to the fact that you can’t protect everybody.”
But despite the Twitter- and Facebook-related lawsuits and job loss in the news, Evans still thinks people have a right to post what they want.
“You’re going to be held 100 percent accountable. However, young adults don’t always realize that what they’re posting could resurface in 5 or 10 years, and once something is online, it may be forever,” she says. “The good thing about [social media] is that if I don’t like it, I don’t have to listen to it.”
Despite the mutterings about Twitter insurance, product specifics are still unknown, but it may be available to people in five years—depending on if the industry sees a legitimate need for this type of insurance.
How you can avoid social media disasters that could endanger your company or job – Tips from @prsarahevans
– Create a social media sharing strategy
– Stop and think before you tweet
– Create a do not tweet list (Religion, politics, etc.)
– When in doubt, run it by someone
– Have a plan in place just in case something should happen
– Stick to crisis communication protocol
