Most people had no words when they found out what happened with the New England Patriots recently on their twitter account. The picture below is a real screenshot of a real tweet, with a explicit word scratched out.

Apparently, according to the Patriots’ twitter account, they were doing some sort of jersey giveaway on their twitter for people who retweeted their tweet. At first glance this sounds like a great marketing tool, get people away of the brand and give away free stuff… YAY! However, companies have to be VERY careful with stuff like this.

The Patriots’ claimed that they had some sort of system that automatically sent out the tweet to the winners with a picture of the jerseys and that it was essentially not reviewed by human eyes first, as there was too many winners. Next thing you know, the @Patriots twitter account was tweeting to this very racist account, causing so many people to be in an uproar, and they have the right!

This is a perfect example on how social media needs to be treated very carefully because in one tweet or post, your whole brand can be DESTROYED. I think that everything being posted on social media should go through human eyes and not through a system. I understand things like hootsuite posting stuff for the future and such, however someone should always approve of the content before it is just posted. It could really save a company one day!