Bad things can happen when you let amateurs use your social media account for a test drive. McDonalds New Zealand burned their Twitter account to the ground in 4 tweets. Their explanation: “New to twitter and letting certain staff use the account = not a good idea” did not do much to fix the mess that they had made. Big and small businesses have made more than their fair share of social media marketing blunders.

Here’s how amateur hour unfolded for McDonalds New Zealand on Twitter as @MaccasNZ:

  1. 1st tweet: “Decided to join @burgerkingNZ & @subwaynz and get Twitter. Follow us for promotions and cool stuff!” – this was the first thing that they put on. Nothing like telling your competition to watch out for the McDonalds machine.
  2. 2nd tweet: “Wanna win with McDonalds” – Many noticed that McDonalds left the “?” question mark out of the tweet. Still not a very exciting start on Twitter. They could have made the tweet much more exciting.
  3. 3rd tweet: “I think it’s time for McDonalds” – At this stage of the game, McDonalds is broadcasting on Twitter, and trying to get people to run right into the store.
  4. 4th tweet: “Shakey town Christchurch I think you could do with some McDonald’s #eqnz” – This is the tweet that destroyed the account and burned it to the ground. They just spammed the Earthquake New Zealand #eqnz hashtag that many felt was reserved strictly for earth quake related tweets. Imagine McDonalds trying to flip burger sales into an earth quake account?

Well shiver me timbers, New Zealand went wild. One in particular wrote: “We feel a certain ownership of the #eqnz hashtag and do NOT appreciate accounts that use it to spam or promote non-earthquake related content.”

Here’s one tweet that said it all:

McDonalds spams #eqnz

McDonalds spams #eqnz hashtag

As you can see, spamming a hashtag is never a good idea. As the fire kept on building on Twitter, McDonalds was not monitoring what was going on at all. Here’s their next tweet:

  • 5th tweet: “Grab one of the McDonald’s dinner box’s tonight”. – It’s always a great time to suggest a dinner box when you have made a good part of New Zealand upset. They had no idea that they just stuck their hand into a bees nest.

McDonalds could have saved the account by trying to make things right. How? They could have donated a $1 from every Happy Meal they sold and donated the money to help those hurt in the earth quake. But instead McDonalds denied that the Twitter account was not one of theirs. Then the following tweet appeared:

  • 6th tweet: “Sorry we got off on the wrong foot. We are a McDonalds franchise acting on behalf of McDonalds New Zealand.”

Their 7th tweet said it all:

  • “Also we are sorry for the mistakes in our tweets, New to twitter and letting certain staff use the account = not a good idea.” – What were they doing? Passing the Twitter account for everyone to have a crack at it? When is it ever amateur hour on social media for business?

Here’s a tweet that displays the sentiment that people have about those who spam hashtags. You can just feel the anguish of those who saw a great hashtag getting spammed by people who could care less about the #eqnz hashtag:

https://twitter.com/ssheere01/status/80132087738417152

Unfortunately, this is not the only example to people doing bad things on social media. Many companies have blundered big time in front of many people. Here’s a good one from the NRA right after the Aurora Shooting:

NRA social media Blunder

NRA social media blunder

So enough of this foolishness. What is our walk-a-way for today so that we can do a better job using social media for our business? Here’s some key points:

  1. Don’t trust just anyone to run your social media account. They need to know what they are doing.
  2. The person running your social media account should understand your business and your target market.
  3. Training is important to make sure that the person running your social media account has the knowledge and skills to run it properly.
  4. Make sure your business has a social media policy in place that clearly [in plain language] explains the do’s and don’ts.
  5. Ethics in business matter. Make sure that the character of the person running your social media account is good.
  6. Make sure leadership provides direction, support and guidance throughout the whole process. Lack of good leadership can produce bad results than can reach around the world.

The best way to sum this blog post up is with a comment I heard at a national police conference… “Don’t do anything stupid“.

If you have enjoyed this post, please share it with your friends. And please…. make sure they don’t do anything stupid on social media 🙂