Twitterhashtagsgonewrong And How To Avoid It

Using Twitter to promote and advertise your business is a fantastic advertising method however it can also backfire in hilarious yet disastrous ways - after all once it is posted online, there is no taking it back.

We’ve taken a look at some recent and not so recent Twitter hashtag advertising campaigns gone wrong.

Last week, UKIP began a ‘#WhyImVotingUKIP’ campaign just in time for the European elections which users were quick to reply with sarcastic answers:

#McDStories 

Unfortunately for McDonalds their #McDStories campaign also went downhill as people’s negative stories and ridicule ensued!  

#RIMJobs

You’d have thought someone, anyone, in the Blackberry company would have noticed the flaw to their ‘Research in Motion’ hashtag before pressing Tweet.

Blackberry sent out a tweet promoting their job offers available in their ‘Research in Motion’ department. Unfortunately they chose to advertise #RIMJobs. We don’t think we need to explain how this went down!

#WaitroseReasons

Waitrose asked their followers to “finish the sentence: ‘I shop at Waitrose because...#WaitroseReasons.’ This tweet was soon followed by a series of hilarious tweets; including:

So how can you stop this from happening to you?

TIP ONE:

Take time to think about how your company is viewed by the public, and consider whether your hashtag or tweet can be hijacked by negative consumers. Make sure your hashtag uses CamelCase so that it can't be misread - we all remember the disaster Susan Boyle's PR team created with #susanalbumparty!

TIP TWO:

Understand your audience. How will your tweets be read by them? Are they young or old? What is their gender? What kind of people are they?

TIP THREE:

Understand and be aware. Hashtags provide companies and brands with an incredibly easy way to track activity surrounding a campaign. However they are also designed to invoke global trending conversations which can either be good or, as seen above, bad. Think carefully before you press ‘Tweet’ as once it is out there you have little control over what happens next.