Will Someone Please Provide McDonald's Social Media Team With Black Friday Content?

By  Kevin Pang

As someone professionally employed in digital media, allow me to peel the curtain back and reveal how we make the internet. Today's lesson: social media! Formerly the segment of media relegated to early-20s staffers being paid $35,000 a year, savvier companies have realized investing in the social media department can yield fruitful dividends. Whether on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, it's about engagement with the user, making the public feel some emotional connection to the brand. Also, it's where the kids are hanging out these days! Social media: It's not some passing fad, it's important!

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Now, nobody wants to work on Thanksgiving night. Social media teams don't actually spend all day by their laptops obsessively checking analytics. Thanks to advances in online technology, brands are able to schedule out social posts hours and days in advance. (May we suggest SocialFlow!)

So no, McDonald's social team likely didn't purposely type out this tweet Friday morning with gravy still dripping from their maws:

It was, we're presuming, an honest mistake. This happens to the best of us.

Then there are the responses. Of course, Twitter users—always a helpful bunch void of knee-jerk snark—were quick to respond with suggestions for social copy:

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This past March, McDonald's social media team created a slightly larger Twitter uproar, and likely not because of a scheduling error:

A McDonald's spokesperson offered a "we were hacked" explanation, which likely wasn't true, because a corporation as large as McDonald's almost certainly uses an encrypted password system for their social channels, rather than a easily-discoverable password such as HamburglarJesus3000. That's just standard social media best practices.

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