Lessons learnt from an irresponsible headline and appalling hashtag
While headlines and hashtags are the lifeblood of great content, agencies have to take care with their use of words and own up when they make mistakes, says the founder of DARE Group, Sue Parker.
This week an unbelievable error of judgement was made by an appalling and unacceptable hashtag and headline by David Koch’s KBB Digital agency.
In a post on LinkedIn from their MD, Dave Chaffey the hashtag #socialsuicide was used with the question “What does social suicide look like”. It then linked to a blog and video headlined “Social Suicide – The Biggest Mistakes to Date”. The post and hashtag has been removed and the article renamed ‘Social Slip – The Biggest Mistakes to Date’.
It is tacit that headlines and hashtags are the lifeblood of great content eyeballs, engagement and distribution. We are all scrambling for the juiciest hook to promote brands, stories and social issues. And trending hashtags have taken on a new life of their own particularly on the largest business social media platform LinkedIn.
In an article about content and quality, the errors speak to the quality control at Mumbrella.
Necessary additions in parentheses.
“in (a) world where brand equity is hinged towards vulnerability and authenticity – step up (to) the plate.”
Of course sometimes words need to be removed or replaced to create understanding.
But putting the 2 words (of) ‘social’ and ‘suicide” together is the WORST possible use of the (word??) in our world now.
Perhaps you can get a human to read your copy before its uploaded.
Thanks George, that line has been fixed.
Wow George, never mind how important the underlying message of the article is, you thought it more important to point out a couple of typo’s. Good for you.
Finally someone has taken on the importance of throwing that word around for clicks. It really happens all too often. Pairing it with social media as well, is a slippery slope. I know we live in a world where being politically correct sometimes get out of hand, however, when it comes to suicide, I don’t believe we can take a chance. We really do need to be more socially conscious when it comes to sensitive topics.
This article seems to have been written simply for the sake of writing an article.
A comment on the article in question would have been more appropriate.
I guess this comment is also to the same tune, should’ve just kept it to myself.
Sorry for wasting everyone’s time – maybe I’ll write an article about it.
It’s good to know that using the word suicide with either ‘political’ or ‘career’ is less of an issue??? That’s an established norm is it? Perhaps a long held cultural quirk, or maybe it’s some sort of rule of grammar?
What a ridiculous piece, based on upholding decency and high standards of communication, and then arbitrarily applying a different standards for yourself. And dor a pair of remarkably similar terms, that simarly, have a dark association with very real instances of suicide.
I’d continue on, but the hypocrisy is starting to get quite heavy around here.