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You can never predict social media behaviour 100%, but taking the time to do a quick side search can save you the embarrassment and headache of becoming the next to be added to the social media fails list.
Do yourself a favor and learn from hashtag fails and social media blunders from the past, so you don’t end up in hot water like the following companies:
Unfortunate Hashtag Oversights
Giving your hashtags a once over is always a good idea. Combining words and creating acronyms could lead to some very interesting results. The following companies probably should have given some russia telemarketing database more thought to these unfortunate hashtag fails:
This hashtag was created by the PR team for British singer Susan Boyle, and while the idea was to promote her new album, I think we all know why this was branded as one of the worst hashtag fails of all time.
susan-fail
While the intention for this hashtag was “Susan-album-party,” it was interpreted in another way by users on Twitter. “Su’s-anal-bum-party” caught on like wildfire and was trending in no time. Just not for the right reasons.
This one is downright embarrassing and one of the biggest hashtag oversights to date. On the bright side, it did create a huge buzz online and got Susan Boyle a lot of attention. Not sure if it helped her sell her album, though. To put out the fire, the PR team deleted the tweet, but the damage was already done.
When combining words to create hashtags, always read it over and look for potentially embarrassing combinations. Capitalizing each word – #SusanAlbumParty – in the hashtag could have avoided this issue, especially when creating custom hashtags.
We apologize for the poor image quality, but I think the fail is pretty apparent here. It has become fairly common for companies to make job announcements on Twitter, and many have started to use hashtags to promote job openings. Canadian tech company, Research in Motion (RIM), the creator of BlackBerry, did just this to announce they were hiring. The only issue was that the hashtag they chose had a slang meaning that they overlooked, causing the company a great deal of embarrassment. It also didn’t help that local newspapers picked up on the mistake and used it to create some pretty cheeky headlines themselves.
The Lesson Learned:
Always consider alternative meanings when using hashtags. You may even want to consult Urban Dictionary just to be on the safe side.
Acronyms can get you in a lot of trouble on Twitter if you don’t do your homework before using them. Burger King found this out the hard way. While the intended meaning for the hashtag #WTFF was intended to mean “What the French Fry” to promote the company’s new low fat fries, they overlooked the fact that the acronym stands for a profane statement.
“Many individuals who were posting random things on Twitter or simply wanted to rant online by using the common hashtag were immediately funneled to the same conversation,” says hashtags.org, derailing the company’s promotional efforts with the conversation becoming buried within the mix of rants, and uses of the hashtag for other reasons.
The Lesson Learned
If you are going to use an acronym for a hashtag campaign, make sure that you are abundantly clear about other potential meanings.
More Unfortunate Hashtag Oversights Worth Noting
Here are some other hashtag oversights that ended up going viral for all the wrong reasons.