When a tweet/post can’t be deleted fast enough…
Edited: This is by NO MEANS a slam on the organization, contractor or individuals of the situation described below. It is just a good example of a teachable moment for applicants and employees.
Within the last 24 hours, a local organization accidentally had a tweet posted to their account with some not so nice verbiage about a politician and their recent vote.
When I went to bed, I told my husband, I am pretty sure X company represents that organization and the employee probably did it by accident thinking they were logged into their own personal account. Being in our geographic area, there are not that many of us who do social media and a lot of us are very familiar with each other or are even friends. Watching News Feeds on Facebook this morning confirmed my hypothesis.
I feel very sorry for the company and the individual. They are good people who work hard, but an itchy trigger finger caused a bad situation. The contractor is a class act, they came out quickly and owned up to the mistake, suspended the employee and promised to investigate. I know the employee feels horrible, any of us would. But what this can turn in to is a teachable moment in how something like this happened, how to keep it from happening and teaching others about the ramifications of posting something like what was posted.
Being in social media and managing a number of accounts for different clients, I very easily could see how this could happen. Forgetting to log out of an account on one app or platform and then another one is automatically tied to it and you forgetting about which account you were last logged into is easy to do. One time I posted a video on my personal account which I really wanted to go on to a client’s. I thought I was logged into the right account, but the partner app had me logged into a different account. No harm was done, but I learned my lesson to always double check to see who you are logged in as and to always log out of a client’s account and back into my own personal account before I close an app.
The question really boils down to… should a tweet with language such as that ever really have happened? Being a person who often finds themselves in a position of hiring individuals or contractors, I often check applicant’s digital footprint. Does the person, contractor or employees of the contractor represent me or the company for which I am hiring well? Whether an individual likes it or not, even on your own personal accounts, you are still representing your employer or clients. People can figure out who is linked or represents one another. It isn’t very hard to do with just a little research. So before that next posting or tweet, “think” will this reflect badly on my employer or someone who I care about.
Is it really worth it to yours, your employers or your client’s reputation to post that one itchy trigger tweet or post? Once it is posted, it never goes away, even it if it deleted. This is a lesson that unfortunately is often learned too late and can very much change someone’s life with either loss of employment, lost chance at an interview, loss of clients, loss of admission or scholarship money. It is never a good idea to vent or create controversy on the internet, it will always come back to haunt you. Some may argue then one isn’t being their true self if they aren’t expressing how they feel. There are other places to vent, just don’t do it on social media where you will cause harm to either yourself, your family, employer or clients or even your community. It may make you feel better in that one second that you click on the Post button, but in the long run, it just isn’t worth it.
#Twitter #TriggerFinger #LessonLearned #DigitalFootprint #DigCit #DigitalReputation #SM #SocialMedia