As more and more members of your private-independent school take their marketing and recruitment efforts into the digital world, there’s an increased risk for your school to fall prey to bad tweets or posts. We've covered numerous social media stories over the years, as well as shared a social media policy template. Today, let’s take a look at some recent social media mistakes in the Twitterverse and see how your school’s current social media policy should take these potential disasters into account.
Know Who Uses the School’s Account and How
Comedian Stephen Colbert found himself at the center of a #CancelColbert hashtag party when a racist tweet aired from his television show’s official Twitter account.
The tweet riffed off of a skit done on "The Colbert Report" that poked fun at the Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder, who recently announced the founding of an organization to help Native Americans. The organization was created to alleviate fan backlash from the football team’s potentially insensitive name.
Colbert’s initial response was to deny responsibility for the tweet. His show’s official Twitter account @ColbertReport was not run by him or anyone else on The Colbert Report’s staff. The account was run by the parent channel, Comedy Central.
Later, in a grand display of apology, Colbert dramatically and publicly deleted the @ColbertReport account, proclaiming that the only Twitter account to be officially from him would be his personal one, @StephenAtHome, of which he has complete control.
The lessons:
1.) The brevity of social media messages means that the potential for posts to be taken out of context and potentially insulting is increased. As Colbert himself says sarcastically, “Who would’ve thought [that] a means of communication limited to 140 characters would ever create misunderstandings?”
Keeping this in mind, your school’s social media policy should address what kinds of messages your school wants to promote, being aware that attempts to be witty or humorous could backfire. (That’s not to say you shouldn’t be entertaining on your social media networks, but you should be careful about potentially sensitive subjects.)
2.) Think twice about outsourcing your school’s social media marketing efforts to third parties who may not completely understand your school’s mission, or even give access to any administrator who asks to contribute. Your school’s social media efforts are the face of the school in a very public way with a potentially far-reaching audience. You need to be able to regulate what gets said about your school from its own pages, and the more people who have access to the account, the more opportunity there is for mistakes to be made.
Knowing that, your school’s policy should dictate exactly who has access to official social media accounts. No matter who gets the keys to the kingdom, the list of authorized personnel should be written down in the official school policy to mitigate potential social media disasters.
Know How to Use the Site!
Have you heard about U.S. Airways’s inappropriate tweet to disgruntled customers? Flyers took to Twitter to complain about delayed flights. A miscellaneous U.S. Airways employee responded with a TwitPic that within 22 minutes sparked a huge response from users and resulted in multiple apologies from the airline. (U.S. Airways’s social media manager has certainly “seen better days.”)
The airline’s claims the gaffe was an “honest mistake,” as the spokewoman explains: “It was in an attempt to flag the tweet as inappropriate…unfortunately, the image was inadvertently included” in a response to the annoyed customers’ tweets.
The lesson:
It is human to err, so it's likely that sooner or later, someone will post something they shouldn't. Ways to mitigate the potential for widespread damage include:
- Ensuring those with access to the school's official social media accounts know how to use the site completely, including making posts, flagging inappropriate material; and
- Responding quickly to public complaints or questions, even if that means directing them to the school's general website or FAQ page.
With some basic precautions, your school can tweet in peace, knowing that a social media firestorm can be—for the most part—averted.
Additional ISM resources:
Private School News Vol. 9 No. 2 Managing Your School’s Social Media
Private School News Vol. 9 No. 5 Social Media: Weighing the Risks
Private School News Vol. 12 No. 9 Forget Diamonds—Social Media Mistakes Are Forever
Additional ISM resources for Gold Consortium members:
I&P Vol. 35 No. 1 Faculty and Staff Use of Social Media: Sample Policy
