Don't Let Your Message Get Hijacked on Twitter

These two common mistakes could mean the mark of death for any Twitter campaign.

twitter

A couple weeks ago, the NYPD launched an outreach campaign on Twitter. The goal was to get people to post happy pictures of themselves with NYPD officers using the #MyNYPD hashtag. Unfortunately, the whole thing backfired and the hashtag was hijacked by a vocal group of detractors.

This is sort of hijacking is a fairly common occurrence says Stacy DeBroff, founder and CEO of Mom Central Consulting. Consider the recent #AskJPM fiasco, where a JP Morgan Chase executive decided to host a Q&A, only to cancel the session after being flooded with taunting questions.

In situations like this, DeBroff says the campaign is easily derailed because of two common mistakes:

  1. Failure to organize contributions from brand enthusiasts
  2. Failure to plan a response to potential negative engagement

While Twitter is a great way to amplify a message, it is also a platform on which people can say whatever they want.

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