More than half of Irish marketers are fearful of damaging their company’s reputation by using social media, according to research. They are dead right to worry. Twitter in particular, is very easy to get wrong and there are many examples of people inadvertently using corporate Twitter accounts when they meant to use their own. 

The highly irritating recent habit of some companies trying to muscle in on popular Twitter discussions with wholly unconnected sales pitches sent with unrelated hashtags, is equally hazardous. Since social media analysts have become increasingly fond of picking apart the worst offences online, these gaffes are getting a serious shelf-life. Simply deleting what you said won’t make it go away.

Some recent corporate tweets have been awful enough to be worth repeating, so here are my favourite examples of stuff all of us will be glad we didn’t do:

1. In March, this tweet was sent from the Twitter account of Robert Parsons, the chief executive of US domain listing firm GoDaddy. com. It included a link to a ‘‘holiday’’ video. ‘‘Just back from hunting problem elephant in Zimbabwe. Here’s my vacation video. Enjoy’’ The video showed Zimbabweans stripping an elephant for meat, while wearing Go Daddy baseball caps, with AC/ DC’s Hells Bells as the soundtrack. Parsons himself posed by the animal’s corpse. Cue an appalled public reaction, led by the animal rights group PETA.

2. This was sent from the American Red Cross Twitter account in February 2011. In error … ‘‘Ryan found two more 4 bottle packs of Dogfish Head’s Midas Touch beer … when we drink, we do it right #gettingslizzered’’ In fairness, there was a quick recovery from this as a lightly toned tweet soon followed to say normal sober service had resumed ‘‘and we’ve confiscated the keys’’.

3. This gauche marketing tweet was sent out by the American luxury leather goods firmKenneth Cole earlier this year (this version is based on subsequent reports as the tweet was – in fairness – deleted fast with an apology). ‘‘Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online.” This is a great example of precisely how not to endear yourself to anyone.

4. This was sent out by furniture brand Habitat during the Iranian presidential elections, relating to Mir-Hossein Mousavi, a leading candidate. “#Mousavi Join the database for free to win a £1000 gift card Was there any connection? No. Habitat was also using hashtag words like #iPhone to send out Twitter messages. And now all but three of Habitat’s British shops are set to close. With marketing ideas this desperate, it’s not that surprising.