This week, the Red Cross has a potentially damaging and embarrassing tweet. The Red Cross response and handle of the incident is a fantastic example of crisis social media planning. The rogue tweet was posted on accident by the Red Cross Social Media Specialist, Gloria Huang.
The Tweet was meant to be posted to Huang’s personal Twitter. The tweet was removed, and instead of responding in a formal and impersonal fashion, Red Cross responded with:
Social media is a place for casual conversation and the Red Cross took this potentially disastrous situation and used humor to respond effectively. Many companies and organizations make the mistake of using traditional public relations to respond to situations online. Twitter followers, Facebook friends and other social media users expect a real response from organizations, not a stuffy press release. Red Cross used this rogue tweet as an opportunity to reinforce its online voice. You can check out the Mashable.com article here.
At the end of the day, the Red Cross actually ended up benefiting from the rogue tweet. Dogfish Head beer caught wind of it’s presence in the tweet, and urged it’s followers to donate to the Red Cross.
Strategically Communicating 
This is awesome! I think that as long as there is the potential for embarrassing posts to come out of the closet, it will continue to happen. The American Red Cross employee must have been trying to post to her own personal blog. It could happen to anybody, that’s why it’s hilarious.
By: sytsma6 on March 4, 2011
at 11:35 pm