JPMorgan Chase & Co. is just the latest company to suffer a self-inflicted social media firestorm.
Using the hashtag #AskJPM, the company invited the public to engage with Vice Chairman James B. Lee by submitting early questions for a tweet chat designed to provide insight on Lee’s experiences and thoughts on leadership. For a company recently defined largely by scandal, I’d wager that a public tweet chat wasn’t the best move down the road to reputation recovery – and the overwhelmingly negative public response confirms that engaging via social media isn’t always a good idea. Read this story from Al Jazeera America for more details, or this one from Bloomberg, which called it “snarkopolis.”
And for a walk down memory lane, and an opportunity to learn from the mistakes of others, read this wrap-up from Mashable about 8 Hijacked Hashtags Gone Horribly Wrong (Or Right).
Both media stories provide a good reminder to carefully kick the tires on any social media campaign before launch. It’s not possible to out-think every possibly negative scenario, but some social media and communications teams might have been saved a crisis drill by reviewing their strategies a little more closely.
