Facing Your Social Media Fears

It’s officially Halloweek and in 4 days, there will be thousands of Captain Americas, Elsas and your occasional Marilyn Monroe skipping through the streets, sacks full of candy in hand. Along with the cute-as-a-button costumes, there will be plenty of ghouls, vampires and monsters dressed to scare, because that is what Halloween is for. But what about Twitter birds and Facebook thumbs? Yes, studies have shown that social media can in fact be quite scary too.

While one might not generally consider social media to be frightening,  recent reports indicate that the Internet and social media can cause social anxiety and fear- there is even such a thing as ‘Pinterest Stress.’

From Ebola and online privacy to embarrassing viral photos and high fructose corn syrup, the Internet and social media have fueled fears and spread them around well, like a virus. The good news is that since Halloween is the time to embrace fears, we’ve come up with a few ways for brands and PR pros to combat online spooks, and also avoid a frightening fail.

Check, Double-Check, Triple-Check

Oh, the accidental-post-mistake. Grammar errors, tagging the wrong @handles and plain-old misspellings are among the list of cringe-worthy fails. We’ve all been their there and we know how embarrassing it can be. It’s easy to overlook simple mistakes when 140-character inspiration strikes, but by checking, double-checking and triple-checking your posts, you’ll be perfectly fine! And don’t worry, it couldn’t possibly be worse than some of the social media fails out there. *Cue StubHub’s Happy-F-bomb-Friday employee tweet, or KitchenAid’s Obama’s-grandma-insulting employee tweet.*

#Hashtags

Hashtags are probably one of the greatest assets to social media optimization. For brands, customized hashtags make perfect branding labels for campaigns and products. However, many a company have used trending hashtags to jump into viral conversations without reading the context of the hashtag first. And I mean MANY. Talk about scary. The easy solution to this? Simply learn the context of trending hashtags before you insert them into a post! Take DiGiorno Pizza for example, who in September used a hashtag about domestic violence to sell pizza. Talk about a big DiGior-no-no.

 

Keep Calm, and Sit and Wait.

If it’s breaking news or a real-time crisis, don’t jump on the first tweet or article you read and take it to heart. Take a breath and wait it out before sharing it with others. Chances are reporters and news outlets are scrambling to access information- as well as release it- as fast as humanly possible. Mistakes are bound to happen. Like when NBC reported that last year’s LAX gunman was shot and killed by police, and then later tweeted a big “JK” for the mistake.