No "Undo" In Social Media

As quick, instant and easy as it is to send a positive message or promotion on the various social media platforms, it is as just as quick, instant and easy to send a bad one.

Whether intentional or accidental, tongue-in-cheek, politically incorrect, or otherwise, a bad statement can be broadcasted over the Internet via a social media platform. And just as a positive news item can go viral on the Internet because of social media platforms, a poor or mistimed statement can have the same fate, albeit a disaterious one.

Yes, there is a delete button, but that doesn’t erase the statement forever. If just one person sees it and responds to it, it can live forever in cyberspace and still spread. And even if no one sees it before it is delete, web search engines like Google continuously patrol social media platforms and record a history or “cache” of what is being submitted and broadcasted and there is no way of deleting it from there.

Every Tweet, Facebook or LinkedIn status update must be made carefully and when statements are made through social media platforms, public relations professionals must as certain they are appropriate just as if they were going in a press release.

Always Being "On"

While the evolution of social media has many exciting advantages, it also has carries some drawbacks. Public relations professionals must be aware of the negative aspects of social media because they can be just as harmful as the advantages can be helpful. The drawbacks range from being on the preverbal corporate clock every second of the day to producing statements that reflect poorly on the image of organization or company.

24/7 & Every Second Counts

It goes hand-in-hand with the continuous news cycle and takes the 24-hours a day, seven-days a week approach of the Internet to a new level. Whether it’s the media, consumers or rivals in the business field, everyone is always “on” in the social media universe. And because one of the advantages is being able to "respond" quickly, a public relations professional must be able to deal with any type of negative situation just as immediately while using social media.

And just as having a message go viral can be a great for a company or organization, it can just easily be disastrous with negative attention. Since social media platforms are continuously growing with users, the effects of a negative viral event could have a crippling effect.

Adam Singer of The Future Buzz pointed out there are "400 million active Facebook users ... 50 million Tweets per day ... 133 million blogs that create 900,000 blog posts every 24 hours ... and around 77% of internet users read blogs…" 

With that information in hand, it's important to remember that people tend to notice the bad more then the good. There’s a lot of people on the Web to see the bad news if and when it hits.