Justine Sacco, a former PR executive at IAC/InterActiveCorp, sparked a firestorm of controversy after posting a joke on Twitter about AIDS in Africa on Friday.

Dubbed “the tweet heard ‘round the world,” Sacco sent the following message to her 500 followers before she boarded a flight for Cape Town: “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” By the time she arrived in South Africa, the tweet had gone viral. Soon after, she was fired.

Here are three PR lessons to learn from the PR executive’s Twitter nightmare:

Above all, encourage your employees to practice what they preach. For goodness’ sake, Sacco was a PR executive. As NPR’s staff social media guidelines put it, “Conduct yourself online just as you would in any other public circumstances and treat those you encounter online with fairness, honesty and respect, just as you would offline.”

Related Resources:

  • Fired PR executive apologizes for AIDS in Africa tweet (Reuters)
  • Zynga: A Lesson in Managing Disgruntled Employees (Not) (FindLaw’s In House)
  • 5 Strategies to Prevent Ex-Employee Lawsuits (FindLaw’s In House)
  • More In House Lawyers Are Taking Up Social Media (FindLaw’s In House)

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