Pace Salsa Fails Social Media… Or Does It?

Pace Salsa seemed to have had a pretty epic social media failure over the weekend, which the Huffington Post covers pretty well. The twitter conversation contains a ton of intrigue, including:

• Robots
• Salsa blackmail
• Fake Twitter accounts
• Employees trying to get others fired

Pretty great, huh? Too bad it was totally fake! But for training purposes, let’s pretend it was real. The obvious lesson is not to automate your Twitter account. Twitter is simply another communication channel and you wouldn’t automate your responses to support emails, would you? Didn’t think so.

Now let’s move on to another question. Could a social media policy have protected the employer were they to fire an employee for what happened? We’re going to say no. Not because “Eric” and “Miles” didn’t do anything wrong, but because they didn’t do something that would violate any content that’d be lawful to put in a social media policy.  (sidebar: if you read this article, you may say, “But we’re not unionized, why does this matter for us?” This is why.)

Had this really happened, my main takeaway on Pace’s behalf would be to improve training for those running their Twitter account. They should better understand what Twitter is for and better understand that how they communicate with customers is important.

But it was all just a prank, so carry on, Pace, with your salsa making!