Whether you've just started up your own business selling novelty cupcakes or you're an international supermarket brand that buys every spare piece of land in the country in order to build lots of mini supermarkets, social media is now an essential marketing tool. Twitter in particular can add a voice to your brand, adding personality and appeal.
Now, this shouldn't be too difficult if 1)your brand is a person and 2)you are that person. However, this proved a little tricky for 2000-and-no-one-cares X Factor winner James Arthur, who last week handed over/was rugby tackled to the ground for control of his Twitter account to his management team after a series of faux pas'.
Let us now analyse all of these social media mishaps in order to avoid falling into the same pitfalls ourselves. Or, to just laugh at him.
1. Don't abuse the RT
It's nice to get compliments. Who can deny the spring in their step after someone says “Ooh, you look nice today”? Or the grin that spreads across their face when someone describes the meal you just made as “really nice”? Now imagine how much of a dick you'd look if you then wrote a send-to-all text that looked like this “Sarah said I looked nice today” and then four hours later followed it up with another that said “Mum said my soup was really nice”.
This is essentially what retweeting compliments is. It's also the kind of annoying shit that your news feed will be flooded with if you follow James Arthur. Whilst I'm sure he is very excited about the release of his debut, and most likely final, album he seems totally unaware of the fact that 15 year olds would call a dishwasher inspirational if it got them a retweet.
Also, if you're reading this James, retweeting the horny tweets of underages girls is kinda gross. I'm not expecting you to do anything as meaningful as saying “Hey girls, I really appreciate the support but I'm not going to retweet your comments because by doing so I will in fact be validating them and giving you the impression that offering yourselves sexually is the only way to get noticed and ladies, you're much better than that”, but next time maybe just, ya know, ignore them?
Retweeting should be reserved for dry tweets, hilarious pictures and giveaways, but only if the prize is really REALLY good.
2.Don't pick a fight you know you can win
Out there in 'real life', where there is grass and fresh air and stuff, arguing with a child when you're an adult is pretty embarrassing. Well, there's no Twitter loophole; it's still embarrassing. Calling teenage girls “sad and pathetic” for questioning your claims that your album was self-penned is...sad and pathetic.
Unless you're arguing about feminism, homophobia, racism, politics or exchanging furiously typed tweets with the customer services profile for an online retailer then it's best to just leave it, yeah?
3.Don't pick a fight that you
definitely can't win
It's an
undeniable fact of life that there are people that are cleverer than
you. You probably follow some of them on Twitter. They might
occasionally tweet something that you think is 'not cool', but in
these situations I find it best to keep schtum. Not necessarily
because your argument is any less valid then theirs, but because they
most likely have the wit and vocabulary to publicly annihilate
you.
Case and point- James Arthur vs Frankie Boyle.
Whilst some of the things that Frankie Boyle says make me pull a weird face in which the corners of my mouth turn down and I suck in air through my teeth, the suspiciously-curly-eyelashed X Factor winner was asking for 140 characters of shit the second he used the phrase “fucking queer” in a particularly cringe worthy rap battle with Micky Worthless (?).
I won't relay the whole argument as that would be tedious (as opposed to the rest of the post, RIGHT?), but a highlight for me was Boyle saying that he'd confused James Arthur's photo with a child's drawing of a monster. The feud climaxed with Arthur telling us all that he was “coming off Twitter for good”; the social media equivalent of flouncing off in a strop.
As I was scanning through the tweets between the two, I could think of only one thing, a quote by Simon Amstell from the Never Mind The Buzzcocks episode with Donny Tourette in it- “He's a professional comedian, you can't win.”
4.Don't forget about the 'draft' function
I am a big believer in drafting things out. I would gasp in horror when, during my GCSE's, boys would tell me that they hadn't written a plan for their coursework. Believe it or not, this post was drafted. If I'd have publicly rapped a homophobic slur then you betcha, I would draft my public apology before dividing it up into 140 character segments and releasing it like a dove.
Unfortunately, James Arthur did not.
Following the news that some fans were asking iTunes for a refund after buying his album and then hearing him use “fucking queer” as an insult in a rap battle, Arthur tweeted that “homophobia is not something that [he] believes in” and that he was “disappointed in [himself] for being so naïve and deeply sorry to any gay or lesbian people out there.”
Now, if James had just saved that tweet as a draft and said to someone “Would you mind reading this? Just want to check that I don't sound like a dick” then that someone would have hopefully said this- “Actually James, you do sound kinda dickish. Firstly, you've confused homophobia with Santa. You've suggested that you were naïve for saying “fucking queer” in an open forum, rather than saying that you were ignorant for saying it in the first place. Also, heterosexual people can find homophobia to be offensive, so I'd probs just change that last bit to 'anyone I've offended'”
He then rounded his apology off by saying “Plus Rylan is one of my best mates and he's as gay as they come.” Nothing like the old 'some-of-my-best-friends-are-black' defence to really validate an apology.
5. Don't say stupid fucking stuff like this
“I actually was a child in need though...Were you?” on the night of Children In Need.
And there we have it folks! Five tips for avoiding ending up with 'acute exhaustion' like James Arthur. I think it's fitting to sign out with James Arthur's final tweet-
#LOVE to my fans but I'm coming off Twitter for good. HQ will be doing all my tweets from now on. PEACE!
Nothing says peace like capital letters and an exclamation mark.
Case and point- James Arthur vs Frankie Boyle.
Whilst some of the things that Frankie Boyle says make me pull a weird face in which the corners of my mouth turn down and I suck in air through my teeth, the suspiciously-curly-eyelashed X Factor winner was asking for 140 characters of shit the second he used the phrase “fucking queer” in a particularly cringe worthy rap battle with Micky Worthless (?).
I won't relay the whole argument as that would be tedious (as opposed to the rest of the post, RIGHT?), but a highlight for me was Boyle saying that he'd confused James Arthur's photo with a child's drawing of a monster. The feud climaxed with Arthur telling us all that he was “coming off Twitter for good”; the social media equivalent of flouncing off in a strop.
As I was scanning through the tweets between the two, I could think of only one thing, a quote by Simon Amstell from the Never Mind The Buzzcocks episode with Donny Tourette in it- “He's a professional comedian, you can't win.”
4.Don't forget about the 'draft' function
I am a big believer in drafting things out. I would gasp in horror when, during my GCSE's, boys would tell me that they hadn't written a plan for their coursework. Believe it or not, this post was drafted. If I'd have publicly rapped a homophobic slur then you betcha, I would draft my public apology before dividing it up into 140 character segments and releasing it like a dove.
Unfortunately, James Arthur did not.
Following the news that some fans were asking iTunes for a refund after buying his album and then hearing him use “fucking queer” as an insult in a rap battle, Arthur tweeted that “homophobia is not something that [he] believes in” and that he was “disappointed in [himself] for being so naïve and deeply sorry to any gay or lesbian people out there.”
Now, if James had just saved that tweet as a draft and said to someone “Would you mind reading this? Just want to check that I don't sound like a dick” then that someone would have hopefully said this- “Actually James, you do sound kinda dickish. Firstly, you've confused homophobia with Santa. You've suggested that you were naïve for saying “fucking queer” in an open forum, rather than saying that you were ignorant for saying it in the first place. Also, heterosexual people can find homophobia to be offensive, so I'd probs just change that last bit to 'anyone I've offended'”
He then rounded his apology off by saying “Plus Rylan is one of my best mates and he's as gay as they come.” Nothing like the old 'some-of-my-best-friends-are-black' defence to really validate an apology.
5. Don't say stupid fucking stuff like this
“I actually was a child in need though...Were you?” on the night of Children In Need.
And there we have it folks! Five tips for avoiding ending up with 'acute exhaustion' like James Arthur. I think it's fitting to sign out with James Arthur's final tweet-
#LOVE to my fans but I'm coming off Twitter for good. HQ will be doing all my tweets from now on. PEACE!
Nothing says peace like capital letters and an exclamation mark.
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