While the scheduling tool on HootSuite, Tweetdeck and other such tools can prove very useful, should brands we wary about using them? Yesterday, the Daily Mirror unintentionally sparked anger following a pre-scheduled tweet reading ‘David Luiz urges Chelsea marathon men to drag themselves over finish line’.
Normally, this tweet, which contained a link to the story in question, would have been fine, but following the news of the bombing at the Boston Marathon many suggested that this was an attempt by The Mirror’s football team to capitalise on key words and bait traffic.
This was not, however, the case: the story and tweet had both been pre-scheduled, and the @MirrorFootball account apologised profusely, removed the original tweet and changed the article.
This isn’t the first time that a disaster has made a pre-scheduled tweet seem like a marketer’s worst nightmare. Here, we take a look at a few.
LiveNation
A Radiohead concert scheduled to take place in June last year was cancelled when some of the staging collapsed before the show, which led to the death and injury of several people.However, LiveNation, the promoter for the event, despite letting everyone know the event had been cancelled, had obviously pre-scheduled a tweet…which still sent.
American Rifleman
American Rifleman, a journal affiliated with the National Rifle Association posted a tweet wishing all shooters a good morning. The pre-schedule tweet struck a nerve, however, as it was tweeted at the time of the Aurora mass shooting. The tweet, and account, was later deleted.
Tesco
Tesco caused more of a giggle than a wave of shock when, shortly after the horse meat scandal became public, it sent a tweet about hitting the hay.The supermarket insisted that it had not been sent by a tongue-in-cheek staffer and had in fact been scheduled before the situation was discovered.
