Social media crimes of passion can happen during everyday social media interactions or during crisis situations. You can plan your responses in advance—yes, even for issues you don’t even know are coming—and prevent a social media crime of passion from damaging your brand’s reputation.

A 2012 Pubcon presentation will explore this theme along with several case study examples. These are the sources for further reading, as well as resources for creating a Social Media Crisis Plan.

Case study sources

KitchenAid

The Wednesday night it happened

• Mashable: KitchenAid Tweets Joke About Obama’s Dead Grandma [UPDATED]
• AdWeek: KitchenAid Mistakenly Tweets Joke About Obama’s Dead Grandmother; apology doesn’t stop backlash after debate

The next day, Thursday

• CNET: KitchenAid apologizes for tweet about Obama’s grandmother
• Mashable: How KitchenAid minimized its Twitter damage (see the very interesting timeline chart)
• FastCompany: How KitchenAid spun a Twitter crisis into a PR coup

The strange second apology on Saturday

KitchenAidUSA’s Twitter account:

1. Part 1
2. Part 2
3. Part 3
4. Part 4

Dave Ramsey

What I learned from Dave Ramsey on Twitter, by Courtenay Rogers

Nestle

• Social Media Crisis Management: Three Case Studies, by Elisha Tan
• Lessons learned from the Nestlé social media crisis, by Breakthrough Communications (more background on the FIRST heavy-handed move by Nestle that may have started the Greenpeace crisis in the first place)
• Google Image Search for Nestle Facebook Crisis

Wild Hare

Wild Hare’s Yelp Page (see also other excellent responses from the owner)

O2

How the tone of a tweet can make a difference in crisis management [O2 case study], by Ross Densley

How to create a Social Media Crisis Plan

While there are plenty of one-off articles and tip-heavy blog posts, these sources consistently offered most specific advice:

• Don’t be scared, be prepared: How to manage a social media crisis, by Jay Baer
• Social media crisis blog and weekly newsletter by Melissa Agnes

Photo: Lillian Sproule, criminal record number 746LB, 31 October 1928. State Reformatory for Women, Long Bay, NSW. Photo via TwistedSifter.com.