How to Use Social Media – Or How Not To Put Your Foot In It

Social media is one of the buzzwords of SEO, and quite rightly so, because social media can be a great way to reach out to people, to find new customers and advertise your products, your work, or your services, or to simply raise awareness of a cause or a service. Whatever you use your social media account for, it's vital that you use it in the right way for you and your business, or else you or your business, could end up looking foolish, and even worse, you could even lose customers.

Take the recent Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) scandal on Twitter, which is when Kutcher, upon hearing of the dismissal of Joe Paterno, coach of the Penn State football team, tweeted the following:

“How do you fire Jo pa? #insult #noclass as a hawkeye fan I find it in poor taste.”

However, when the Two and a Half Men star learned of the reason for Paterno's sacking, namely his decision to cover up and not report a number of allegations of sexual abuse against young children by the Penn State assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, Kutcher was quick to delete the offending tweet and issue an apology, , saying:

“As an advocate in the fight against child sexual exploitation, I could not be more remorseful for all involved in the Penn St. case […] As of immediately I will stop tweeting until I find a way to properly manage this feed. I feel awful about this error. Won't happen again.”

This episode has been particularly damaging for Kutcher, as he is one of the founders and patrons of the Demi and Ashton Foundation, or DNA, which campaigns to end child sex slavery, and their Real Men Don't Buy Girls campaign which was created to stop men using child prostitutes, has been incredibly successful in the US so far.

So, following Kutcher's rather spectacular fall from grace, which has seen him withdraw from tweeting by himself indefinitely, and hand over the task to a professional company, and a number of other Twitter scandals, such as Weinergate, when the former US congressman Anthony Weiner (@RepWeiner) was caught sending intimate pictures of himself to a woman who was most definitely not his pregnant wife, and most recently, Brett Ratner (@BrettRatner), the film director who was forced to step down from his new job of producing the 2012 Academy Awards following his decision to publish a homophobic tweet earlier this month.

When you open an account on a social networking site such as Facebook or Twitter, you have to be aware that whatever you say will be read by almost anyone, so you have to make sure that your updates, tweets or other posts are going to put you in the best possible light. As social media is about engagement, giving yourself an online presence and inviting response, it's vital that when you use social media for you or your company that you get it right the first time, every time.

So before you hit that update button, read through what you've written, check for spelling errors, factual errors, check the syntax, and above all, make sure what you've written isn't offensive.

This may seem a little extreme, but it's clear to see that some celebrities and other famous faces who have used social networking sites have taught us all a valuable lesson: no matter what you use your social networking site for, make sure that you think before you tweet.

Do you have any funny, embarrassing or just plain stupid examples of bad social media from leading companies or celebrities? Or maybe you even have an example from your own archive? Contact us and let us know.