Social Media Roundup: Always Double-Check Your Work
Business

Social Media Roundup: Always Double-Check Your Work

How the Taliban revealed private email addresses of hundreds of people by accident. Also: A hotel company asks PR agencies to pitch them … with a focus on brevity.

We’ve all done it.

That email gets sent out. You’ve dotted every “i,” crossed every “t,” and even double-checked, just for good measure. Then you screw something basic up and are left cleaning up the mess.

It’s OK, it happens. People will forgive you. Plus, it’s not nearly as bad as what the Taliban just did. That and more in today’s Social Media Roundup:

Don’t do as the Taliban Does

Today in tactical errors: The Afghan War is full of high stakes and lots of dangerous situations with little room for making mistakes. That’s why a mistake as basic as mass-emailing your contacts using CC instead of BCC could prove to be particularly bad. That’s what a Taliban representative did last week, revealing more than 400 email addresses of journalists, spokespeople, and other figures. Some of those figures weren’t happy. “Taliban have included all four of my email addresses on the leaked distribution list. Quite reassuring to my safety,” said journalist Mustafa Kazemi, a prolific tweeter. Obviously, your stakes may be not nearly as high as the Taliban’s probably are, but you could probably learn a lesson from this about email security. (ht @johnYSchen)

You Have 140 Characters. Go

One way to get pitches from potential PR agencies? Request them via Twitter. Recently, Starwood Hotels’ Aloft chain sent out a message asking PR agencies to pitch them, using the hashtag #RFTweet. To go along with that, it launched a site presenting the pitches. The company will be asking for pitches over the next month. “If we like what we see, we’ll get in touch with your agency,” the company writes. Crazy, or just crazy enough to work? AdAge has more details. (ht @ready2spark)

What’s the quickest way a potential vendor could make an impression on your association? Let us know in the comments.

Ernie Smith

By Ernie Smith

Ernie Smith is a former senior editor for Associations Now. MORE

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