Social Lesson of the Day: Think First.

We have all seen hundreds, maybe even thousands of memes. But something went terribly wrong this week in the meme world and it teaches a lesson we all should have learned quite a long time ago. You must think first.

On Monday, November 10th, Bill Cosby tweeted an invitation for people to use his photo in a meme. I don’t think he ever thought about what could happen. #Fail. Plagued by rape and other allegations, Cosby opened pandora’s box and what resulted was a slew of negative tweets. He immediately removed his tweet but it was too late.

There is great power and social media. It can be used to do great things and it can be used otherwise. It is important that when you execute a social media strategy, you carefully think about what you are about to do – especially when working on accounts with high profiles and lots of followers.

Bill Cosby is not the only person who has made this mistake. Mega brands like McDonalds and the New York Police Department have made similar mistakes. McDonalds asked people to tweet their McDonalds stories to #McDStories and a similar pandora’s box was opened. “Here your challenge: eat #McDonalds without something to wash it down & tell me you don’t throw up #McDStories,” is an example of one tweet. This one was mild.

You may also remember when the New York Police Department had the brilliant idea to ask citizens to tweet pictures of them and police officers to #MyNYPD. What followed were scores of pictures of police officers beating citizens. Another #epicfail.

Take this simple piece of advice. Think first. Then execute. It will make your work so much easier in the long run. Other epic fails? We would love to hear your stories…