Last night in Aurora Colorado, during a midnight screening of the new Batman Movie, a 24-year-old gunman dressed head-to-toe in protective tactical gear, set off two devices before spraying the theater with bullets from an AR-15 rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun and at least one of two .40-caliber handguns that police recovered at the scene.
What causes someone to plan, setup, and carry out a horrific act of violence against innocent human beings? There is no excuse! Absolutely nothing that can bring back the 12 dead out of 59 people that were made victims through this heinous act. Let’s pray that this number does not continue to climb over the course of the next few days.
Let’s pray for the families who lost their loved ones and those who are sitting beside the bedside of others.
A Big Brand Twitter Fail
When I woke up this morning, I opened my email and twitter screen only to see references to Colorado and the despair that many tweeps felt. Of course, I immediately turned on CNN to find out what was happening.
Over the day, the hashtag #Aurorashooting and #Aurora was trending around the world. Celeb Boutique, an online fashion store from the UK, who provides celebrity fashions at high street prices also viewed the hashtag and posted the following tweet:
Giving the Devil Their Due
Not investigating the reason behind the hashtag was not a smart move on behalf of the community management team. Many people on Twitter were out raged about their indecency. Some were encouraging their following to speak up as well. Some sent a mass of tweets to Celeb Boutique in complete disgust.
When I read it, I was not quick to judge and was going to tweet out a statement that would have said. “Some people on Twitter don’t review the reason behind a hashtag. Do you?” I know for a fact that I have done that, and for that reason I was quick to turn a blind eye on their massive mistake that potentially could affect their brand on Twitter.
However, then I saw this when I reviewed their feed. Can you spot the indecency on this thread after apologizing profusely that the twitter post was made in error before understanding the story behind the hashtag?
Understanding the Importance of a Community Manager
So many times when I’m selling a Social Media strategy the company states that in order to save money they will hire a college student at minimum wage to do their Social Media. A student will do it for next to nothing and they know all about this computer “stuff”. Yes, they certainly do know a lot, but do they:
- Understand marketing?
- Will they understand the voice of your brand?
- Will they be conscientious on how and what they post?
- Will you allow them the time to read magazines, newspapers, and white papers to give them something of relevance to post and keep abreast of the news?
- Will they represent you full circle? Will they take their job seriously as a public relations representative of your company?
NO, any brand who does this is clearly not taking their social media efforts seriously and could potentially open themselves up to massive public relation faux pas such as this one that happened today.
Yes as a person on Twitter, I can excuse the first post and claim that it was their ignorance of the situation. As a business owner, I would be inclined to fire the person who made that post because they clearly weren’t the right person to represent my brand online.
As a person on Twitter and as a business person, I cannot excuse the retweet about today being fabulous Friday after apologizing for their initial mishap. They simply brushed it off and did not recognize the gravity of their statement……on to the next tweet.
And out of sheer respect to the incident, I will not hashtag this post in relation to violence that transpired today. It doesn’t belong there.
