Another day, another social media related PR fail. Last week RJ van Spaandonk,  Core Group executive director, seemed to take on the whole blogosphere via Twitter. See themacblog.co.za’s aptly titled RJ van Spaandonk + Twitter: a pr disaster. A semi-repentant RJ wrote an “educational” article in The Weekender’s media section in which his take out from the unpleasent experience was the following:

So, what is the lesson in this for others, and especially for businesses that feel the pressure to embrace social media? My advice: stay away from Twitter.

You may think that after careful deliberation you are able to capture the essence of your message in 140 characters, but anything more complex than half-time rugby scores is bound to be misunderstood. It is just not a channel for nuanced conversation.

More importantly, I had forgotten that entries can be “retweeted” individually, and thus out of context they can look rather stupid.

I learned, to my detriment, that tyrants lurk around, trying to exploit your every mishap, and Twitter has rapidly become, like unmoderated blogs before it, the preserve of anonymous agitators trying to look clever at the expense of others. Perils of hyperbole in cyberspace

Actually i’d suggest his take out should be don’t use a communication tool that you don’t understand the ettiquette of, whether its traditional media interviews or social media. Plenty of companies have managed to use it as a decent communications tool. He could have for example written a detailed article and refered people to it. He could have built up decent relationships with key influncers by sharing his insight /opinions over time that might have led to them coming to his defence. Would he abandon TV interviews forever if an SABC journalist didn’t allow his side of the story come across to satisfaction in an interview?

Also worth checking out, just to see how messy the PR fail is, anti-Core site stopcore.co.za.

Oh dear…

Makes a good case study in how not to do PR though.