Social media consultants will tell you that social media is all about immediacy. You can share, connect, and collaborate with your clients and audience in a grand way, with little overhead. But is immediacy important? In other words, is first best?
In what is probably one of the most anticipated Supreme Court decisions this decade, the Affordable Care Act decision caused quite a media stir. Immediately following the announcement, news networks from across the country began pouring over the court documents, updating their statuses, tweeting headlines and crafting articles. Social media consultants and managers for these outlets hit Facebook and Twitter, itching to get “the scoop”.
For some, like CNN and Fox News, their race to be first undermined the first rule in communications- be correct. Both networks had “Dewey beats Truman” headlines up for several minutes following the decision, giving other networks and news outlets the chance to “scoop” them on the truth. [Update: There’s now a great summary of the situation on SCOTUS blog if you are interested: http://www.scotusblog.com/2012/07/were-getting-wildly-differing-assessments/.]
So why is a social media consultant blogging about this situation? Because just like news organizations, employees and companies get anxious to post the news, update or photo first. They tag, share and hashtag in haste, acting much more like CNN and Fox News during the situation above than the professional, respectable organizations that they are. So what happens? People make mistakes. Companies make mistakes. And they suffer the consequences.
As a social media consultant I tell my clients all the time to remember that the Internet is permanent. As quick and as easy as it is to post an update, it is as quick and as easy for someone to take a screen shot or share the page. The Internet as it is said, lives on in infamy. Of course you can correct the mistake, but that doesn’t mean it is erased. What may be a seemingly innocuous picture of your weekend may result in problems at work. A quick post about a new client may violate a non-disclosure agreement, or worse yet, harm your client relationship. Tagging the wrong person or using the wrong hashtag may enter your content into the wrong conversation stream, making it useless.
So take a lesson from the media chaos of Affordable Care Act decision- take time to think strategically about the messages you post. Take a moment to consider the words you chose, the images you post and the people you tag. Get it right, don’t get it first.
