post by Stephanie Nelson
So the day I’d been dreading finally came this weekend. I made a major error on a client’s social media accounts that had people upset.
Before we go any further, let’s not be cute about this: I’ve made errors before. I’ve even made them on client’s posts. But either (a) I caught them before they published, (b) I caught them after they were published but before they had many eyes on them, or (c) they were seen but people weren’t upset, they just let me know about the error and we went on our merry ways.
The error was easy enough for me to make. One client was closed Sunday and Monday for the Memorial Day holiday. Everyone else was only closed on Monday. I got mixed up, and I posted that the one client was open on Sunday. Wellllllll…when folks showed up, they weren’t happy to find my client closed. So what do you do when you make a mistake on social media?
First, I posted a public apology to those that commented with their displeasure. I used my name and my connection to the client in the post so that people would know it wasn’t my client that had made the error.
Second, in Facebook and in Instagram, I edited the posts to reflect the correct information. Since Twitter does not have an edit function, I deleted the tweets on the subject. I REALLY struggled with this decision – rule #1 in social media management is that you do not delete posts! But I also couldn’t afford for the incorrect information to remain viewable, for fear of angering others that came to the client’s location to find them closed.
Third, I called my client and let him know what happened. I explained how it had happened, what I had done to make amends, and apologized to him, too.
All in all, things turned out ok for me. I know it could have been A LOT worse, and people could have been a lot more upset and a lot less forgiving. I know this because I’ve seen it in social media a ton of times…and really felt for the social media manager of the brands I’ve seen it happen to.
So you tell me…Have you messed up on a social media post? Was it bad? What’d you do to fix it?
Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net