11 Things to REALLY Never, Ever Say on Facebook

Facebook is great for sharing embarrassing pictures of friends, jokes that aren’t all that funny, memes that quickly run their course, and links to stupid articles like this one. But there are many types of status updates and links that you should never, ever post. I’ll go through some of them here (and maybe you can think of others):

The Death Threat

The worst thing to find in your news feed on a Monday (besides all those OMG It’s Monday again! posts) is a note from a friend promising to kill you. It’s kind of a reverse happy-birthday post, where instead of somebody copying and pasting a false platitude to recognize your special day, they threaten to ensure you never see another one.

11-things-to-never-post-facebook-death-threatWhether or not you want to warn someone about their impending death at your hands, or fill them in on the gory details, there really are better ways to get someone’s attention. You could use the “Poke” feature, for instance; Facebook created it to avoid people like you constantly posting angry screeds declaring your vicious hatred and your plans to act on it. Plus, it can keep you out of jail.

Instead of sending death threats, find a nice kitten photo to share. It might help you calm down a bit.

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Deconstructing the #McDStories blunder: What could they have done?

mcdonalds #mcdstories social media failYou know how a lot of teary downer movies come out in January, in an effort to capture the mantle of “Best Movie of the Year” before anyone else? On January 18, it seems the McDonalds chain used that approach in their attempt to win the award for “Biggest Social Media Blunder of 2012” with the #McDStories hashtag.

Why do social media marketing ideas sometimes fail so grotesquely? Sometimes the idea is truly idiotic, or malformed, or naive. #McDStories is different. It actually seemed like a good idea for a well-known brand like McDonalds, which trades on convenience, cost, speed and a chipper all-American wholesomeness. The problem is that McDonalds is well-known to different people for different reasons.

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