Big Social Media Mistakes

It’s not to be mean or place ourselves on a pedestal. It’s to provide you with examples of mistakes that you should never make on social media. While it may give you 15 minutes of fame, it’s totally not worth it. You’ll spend more time defending yourself than actually doing whatever it is you do. For example, take a look at the following social media fails. They were epic mistakes that will tarnish a brand’s name for some time to come.

During the first presidential debate in October 2012, President Obama mentioned his grandmother. This angered KitchenAid, who sent out the following tweet to its 24,000 followers: “Obamas gma even knew it was going 2 b bad! She died 3 days b4 he became president. #nbcpolitics.” At least the company promptly removed the tweet and issued an apology. It turns out that a member of its team had accidentally posted it from the company handle instead of from their personal account.


 Macy's Blasted for Relationship With Donald Trump Earlier this month, Macy's was pressured to drop spokesman Donald Trump after Trump's publicity stunt, in which he offered to donate $5 million in exchange for President Obama's college records and passport application. More than half a million people signed an online petition asking Macy's to sever its relationship with Trump, and the retailer's Facebook and Twitter pages were bombarded with anti-Trump comments. 

Sports fans can get very passionate. And, sometimes that passion can frustrate people. Especially the people associated with a sports organization. But, just because an upset Kansas City Chiefs fan tweeted that that owner is greedy doesn’t give you the right to respond unprofessionally. But, that’s exactly what happened to the fan in September 2012 after he received a direct message on Twitter from the team telling him to “get a clue.” The fan took a screenshot of the message, posted it to Reddit, and the rest is another example of an epic social media fail.



Microsoft briefly got political in September, when one of the people who manages its Twitter account dissed conservative talking head Ann Coulter from the Microsoft account, rather than from his personal account. Microsoft replied to a tweet from former U.S. labor secretary Robert Reich with the following post: "@RBReich your granddaughter’s level of discourse and policy > those of Ann Coulter." Ouch.


For a chance to win a new Camry, Toyota asked people to tweet the hashtag #camryeffect during its Super Bowl ad campaign in 2012. However, the campaign accidentally sent back tweets that were considered spam to anyone who used the hashtag. This forced the numerous accounts created by Toyota for the campaign to get suspended by Twitter. Smooth.