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It’s all over the news and hard to miss – comedian Gilbert Gottfried has been fired from his advertising gig for tweeting insensitive jokes about the tragedy in Japan.  While this garnered quite a bit of media attention, it certainly wasn’t the first poorly thought out tweet that made the news – less than two months ago, the entire internet went up in arms when fashion designer Kenneth Cole made a glib comment about the revolution in Egypt was about access to his spring line.

A poorly thought out tweet can cause big time pain and negative publicity, but it’s not just big companies and famous people that are starting to feel the sting when they screw up in the increasingly important sphere of social media. From individuals fired for complaining about work on Twitter or Facebook, to small businesses that felt the wrath of the internet for incredibly stupid publicity campaigns, there is a whole new minefield of social media etiquette to learn.

Here are 4 simple tips to keep in mind should you be on the wrong side of a social media screw up!

1. Mistakes Happen, So Don’t Blow Them out of Proportion
To err is human, right? Everyone knows that every tweet, even when coming from a big corporation is written by a person. With tools that let you update dozens of Twitter accounts from one window, it’s easy to make a mistake and post a personal/off message/offensive tweet that was never meant for a large audience.  The best way to handle mistakes is to be honest about them, quickly. The Red Cross did an excellent job when an employee accidentally tweeted about drinking beer from the official account. They responded quickly and took down the tweet, then made a lighthearted joke about the tweet and reminded people that the snafu was just a simple mistake – not a disaster like they deal with every day. It was an efficient way to defuse the situation and actually raised the profile of the Red Cross in a positive way.

2. What Happens Online also Happens in Real Life
In the wake of the earthquake in Japan, Bing got in some hot water for a terribly thought out charity campaign that would raise their profile on social media – for every retweet they would donate $1 to the Red Cross – up to $100k. This got up the nose of a lot of people on Twitter, and even spawned a #f**kyoubing hashtag. In the wake of a disaster, it would be considered poor form to tie relief efforts to a promotional effort. The Bing tweet was interpreted by many people to be the equivalent of paying people to shill for the company in exchange for a $1 donation to charity.  No marketer in their right mind would think a campaign with the same premise would be a good idea in the offline world, so it’s not surprising the reaction it got online.  Always consider how your tweets or posts could be interpreted before they go live.

3. Take the Lumps if You Earned Them
Sometimes we do phenomenally stupid things and there’s not much we can do about them. Such was the case of Connor Riley, a student who was offered an internship at Cisco, only to tweet the following: Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a patty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work. The tweet was poorly thought out, and quickly went viral. Riley was the target of some nasty attacks and for a brief time became a laughingstock online. So what did Riley do? She wrote a blog entry online explaining her actions, issued an apology, then protected her tweets and took down her blog. Google her name, and the ‘Cisco Fatty’ incident still comes up, but Riley handled the debacle in the most mature way she could and opened herself up for feedback, which takes guts.

4. Turn that Frown Upside Down
Yes, you’ve heard it a lot: when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. It’s good advice, and that’s why you hear it so much. If you screw up, deal with it quickly, apologize and accept your lot. If you’re really good you can turn a negative into a positive. The Red Cross turned its misplaced beer tweet into a fundraising campaign, and Bing finally apologized quickly and donated the entire $100k to the Red Cross. While a big mistake can hurt, the internet is generally a forgiving place. Finding the humour in the situation and offering to make amends will help to generate good publicity and that can help to cancel the bad.

Picture: Alex E. Proimos