Tweeting is becoming an important tool to amplify campaign messages and to allow us to keep up with the general news from our key stakeholders and also competitors. However, without good awareness training, things can go terribly wrong.

Examples of the bad business tweeting.

You do not have to look far to see examples of how things can go very wrong…

• Impersonating an Employee on Twitter and Facebook
• When good companies give bad tweets
• 5 stories twittering gone bad
• A Collection of Ill-Advised Status Updates - One Woman Marketing blog

There are some good resources to lead the way to avoid those “Social media faux Pas” examples..

• Good tweet vs. bad tweet
• Cease and desist: 10 bad Twitter practices to be stopped immediately!
  Which is a recent blog post by Emlyn Chand on Oct 12, 2011. I like that a lot!
  

Avoid being the next blogger’s case study

It is better to try and avoid you, or your company, or you AND your company being mentioned by 1001 bloggers as yet another case study on the topic of bad business tweets! Here are just some things to think about, in no specific order!

• Understand the agreed tone of voice for your Twitter account
• Treat your followers ALWAYS with respect.
• If you manage many accounts in a tweet tool, use very different icons for the business accounts, double check before sending
• Keep a tight control on Twitter account access codes.
• Do not assume that when someone says they have tweeted elsewhere, that they can tweet for your company without training on your company social media policy, and your twitter way of working.
• keep the conversation objective, polite, civil and honest

As your conversation will stay online forever, anybody can see it and track how you have responded, as the above examples show. Many of those bad tweet examples from 2009 and 2010 are still talked about today, so keep this in mind!

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