Community Managers Need To Pay Attention To News
July 20, 2012 
Author 
In This morning, there was some horrific news of a shooting at the Batman screening in Aurora, Colo. At least 12 dead, dozens more wounded in this unthinkable event.
So you would hope that any pro-gun organizations would stay quiet. And not expect to see, well, a Tweet like this:
They’ve since deleted the Tweet, but the damage has been done. Twitter users already ReTweeted it several hundred times. And it’s likely to cause even more PR issues for their brand as we can see from the initial backlash. Even if unintentional, it feels heartless.
The lesson? If you are going to schedule any web content, don’t just set it and forget it – if something breaks in news or things change, you have to be prepared to react. Or it’s possible the community manager didn’t see the news yet. But that’s not an excuse, it’s part of every community manager’s job to be aware of larger issues happening on our world.
Hat tip Jenn Pedde for catching this.
Update: Drew Olanoff at The Next Web shares what another brand did today. Unreal.
Heather replied | Jul 20, 2012 (1 comment)
It was an accident. We need to remember that there are people – one person probably in this circumstance – that are behind social media. They didn’t mean it intentionally, and probably hadn’t seen the news yet. I am glad they removed it, and one mistake should not hurt the entire brand.
Adam Singer replied | Jul 20, 2012 (599 comments)
Heather – that’s the thing. One mistake *can* and *does* hurt an entire brand in social. Which is why you can’t relegate social marketing programs to interns or those who aren’t going to stay on top of news / use proper judgment. Brands aren’t putting enough value on social and missing just how pivotal it is.
Lisa replied | Jul 22, 2012 (1 comment)
This bog is so cool!
Kelly replied | Jul 23, 2012 (1 comment)
The reality is this did nothing at all to tarnish the NRA’s ‘brand’…if you sit back and notice what’s going on all over twitter in the aftermath of this heinous incident, you’ll see that they fairly own this country. Very sad.
Kat replied | Aug 5, 2012 (2 comments)
Great article and I totally agree.
Managing the social media community of not only our own agency, but also several clients (including some in the aged care industry) means that I have to totally be aware of any news items that may put us or our clients in an awkward spot as outlined above.
Community managers need to remember that what they’re tweeting/posting has to be:
1) in-line with organsiational values and policies.
2) supports the objectives of your business or the business of your client.
3) Avoids issues of contention and risk.
4) Aligns with stakeholder demographics.
Know that what you tweet/post can spread like wildfire within seconds and that if this happens, there’s no turning back so you have to just be engaged and on top of what is relevant to your community.
Cheers!
Joe replied | Aug 13, 2012 (1 comment)
As horrible as it was I don’t think they should have deleted the Tweet. A proper follow up would have been more appropriate. This should have included another Tweet publicly apologizing linking to a blog post with a further explanation.
As this article noted, it was retweeted many times so deleting it won’t hide anything.
Walter Weeks replied | Nov 2, 2012 (1 comment)
Companies have to be aware of the news when using social media sites such as twitter or facebook. They need to find the right balance when posting a tweet because one inappropriate tweet can spread very easily. All it takes is for a few retweets for the message to be seen by thousands or potentially millions which can have potentially devastating consequences for the PR of a firm.