Another Day, Another Social Media Screw-up - Delta Airlines Edition

I have taken a look at some pretty terrible social media screw-ups on my blog in the past and every time I write about it, I always think to myself that it has to be the last time that we will see a major brand botch it badly. Enough articles outlining various social media failures exist at this point that we could create an entire Encyclopedia Britannica of what not to do when engaging with the public on social media.

But, thankfully for us, and much to the chagrin of communications managers everywhere, companies like Delta Airlines still exist and somehow find new ways to remind us that social media is always just a little more complicated than it needs to be.

After the US beat Ghana 2-1 on Monday night, Delta decided that this was an appropriate tweet to send out:

Twitter quickly pointed out that there are, in fact, no giraffes in Ghana. This issue could have been solved if the social media team had taken a collective thirty seconds to Google whether or not giraffes were in the country. Here, let me do it for you.

Sure, everyone wants to be part of discussions on current events. We get that and accept that it must be done. But if you are going to do it, then why stray from the safest possible tweet?

The team should have stopped and asked themselves several questions:

• Will adding the image enhance the tweet in any way? 

I know that tweets with images are more engaged with on Twitter, but did Delta really think that would be the case here? Legitimate question - how is this tweet improved with an image? You can't add an image to a tweet every time and expect it to be better. Show some discretion and pick your spots.

• Okay, let's go with an image. What two images represent these countries? 

Gee, I don't know, what is arguably the biggest thing that the average person uses to identify foreign countries? A flag. The country's flag. Why are you making this harder than it needs to be? You don't stand to gain anything really by being part of this, but you sure as heck stand to lose by doing it incorrectly.

• Why are we selecting these images?

Again, a question so simple and, yet, nobody seemed to have asked it. Because if they had, the group would have Googled whether giraffes are in Ghana and decided to go a different route.

If you clearly don't have your ducks in a row, sometimes it is better to just sit a few plays out than put yourself in a potentially compromising position. And that's a lesson that Delta is learning the hard way.