The title of this post comes from the Polpeo’s crisis management drill on the “Social media in the news” discussion forum, I decided to explore this topic further.  While Public Relations as the concept of controlling a public image has been around as long as politicians have, the official industry of Public Relations has really only been around for a hundred years or so. One of the elements that I’m sure has risen the blood pressure of every PR director since its inception is social media. While in the past, companies have had days to strategize a response to a publicity crisis, according to Poleo’s site, companies now have less than an hour of a timeframe to form an appropriate response.

Social media is a double edged sword for both private and non-profit organizations.  On one hand, it’s a fantastic way to get your message into the world.  On the darker side, you have no control over the reactions your message will receive, and what’s more, an embarrassing gaffe can turn into a viral nightmare.

I can’t imagine how stressful it must be to work for someone who is constantly putting the reputation of the company at risk through innappropriate social media use.  I’d guess that someone who is working in the PR department or has this person as a client must always be waiting for the other shoe to drop.  On the other hand, companies must be particularly careful in who they let at the helm, take for example, the Digiorno’s frozen pizza mishap, where the employee responsible for tweeting clearly did not do enough research on the trending domestic abuse awareness hashtag #WhyIStayed.  Digiorno’s cringe-inducing answer to this hashtag?  “Because you had pizza.” Oh my god. Or the face-palm reaction I had to the Spaghetti-o’s Pearl Harbor  tweet.

I learned a lesson in social media hiccups the hard way when I had my own fixable, but embarrassing, social media mix-up before. While I was working in the Marketing department of a history museum I was asked to post about one of the toys in an upcoming exhibit, and when I googled the toy, I misunderstood who had manufactured it.  This was communicated to me by five different viewers in about five minutes.  Point taken. I never posted anything again until I was 110% sure I had my facts correct.