Dear Brands: Here's How to Avoid Screwing Up on Social Media

"Shame on you, AT&T." "Very tasteless." "Pathetic."

These were not the responses AT&T expected after posting its Sept. 11 photo tribute on Facebook and Twitter on Wednesday. The company miscalculated the public's reaction to a picture, which may have been an homage to this authentically touching 9/11 Village Voice cover. The image also continued a visual motif that the brand had used in preceding posts on Facebook.

AT&T was hardly the only brand to weigh in on 9/11. Everyone from Boar's Head to the L.A. Lakers offered tributes, which were met by varying degrees of incredulity and disgust. As a journalist, I'm happy to see brands continue to screw up in social media. As a public service, though, I'd like to offer the following suggestions.

Refrain From Participating in Certain Holidays

Sept. 11 — though not a holiday per se — is an excellent example of a day many people commemorate, and would prefer to do so without the input of brands. Others include Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Veterans Day and Memorial Day. I realize that marketers are people, too, and have their own emotional reactions to the day. So why not put a message on your website instead of blasting it in social media? If you feel as though you absolutely can't avoid social media on such days, then stick to short, simple comments about saluting our heroes in uniform or mourn the loss of victims. Don't try to exploit the day to sell products.

In the future, you'd do well to follow the lead of Canon USA:

Refrain From Participating in Certain Discussions

As Sarah Hofstetter, president of digital marketing agency 360i, has previously noted, not every cultural moment deserves a real-time response.

A good counter example of this is Kenneth Cole, who has injected his brand into discussions about Egypt and Syria not to say anything profound, but to get a cheap laugh or generate conversation. If people are talking about Miley Cyrus at the VMAs and you have a pithy bon mot, you're probably on solid ground. If you want to poke fun at an incident in which people have died, though, you're probably best off staying on the sidelines. Leave that to the professionals like Bill Maher and Jon Stewart.

Even if you want to say something nice, you're best off avoiding doing so on Twitter, as Kmart learned the hard way last year during the Newtown shootings. Of course, Kmart would have received a better reaction if had avoided bundling its condolence with a promotional hashtag.

When You Apologize, Just Say "I'm Sorry"

People understand when you screw up and are willing to accept your apology. Since you're appealing to others' good will, don't risk compounding your initial error with a pissy apology. Case in point: Esquire on Wednesday ran the wrong picture next to a story on its website. It was a significant error and people were justly up in arms. But Esquire's apology — telling people to "relax" — didn't help matters.

A better example is Mountain Dew. When the brand ran a vile video on its website and got flak on social media, it not only offered a brief apology that appeared to come from a human but also bought promoted tweets to make sure everyone saw its mea culpa.

Don't Let Bots Run Your Feed

Finally, avoid looking like a bot by not letting bots run your feed. It may seem like a good idea to program your tweets for a few hours, but you never know when news will break that will make you look out of touch.

Many brands learned this lesson during the Newtown shootings when their prosy sales pitches suddenly looked heartless. Similarly, there's nothing like an actual human to assess feedback and formulate an appropriate response. Just look at Bank of America's HAL 9000-like unraveling on Twitter recently.

There are a million other ways to screw up in social media, but these are some of the big ones. For brands, this is primarily a defensive game. You can be faulted for not reacting quickly enough, but that's nothing compared to the wrath you incur by reacting inappropriately.

Image: iStockphoto, Boris Yankov