Damage control for hacked Twitter accounts

A hacked Twitter account is the modern-day version of a brick through the front window of your business; it makes a mess and is off-putting for customers. Twitter has fairly good security measures in place but once in a while, hackers sneak through anyway.

Do you have a plan if your Twitter account is ever compromised, treating your customers to a stream filled with foul language or links to unsavory sites? Of course, the first thing you'll do change your password and contact Twitter. Once that's done, how do you go about repairing your damaged reputation? It's not as difficult as you might think.

First of all, don't panic. If your Twitter stream is suddenly filled with profanity or generally juvenile Tweets, your customers will probably catch on pretty quickly that your account has been hacked. Rather than send complaint letters to you, they'll probably send sympathy cards since most everyone on the Internet these days can sympathize with your plight.

Next, contact your customers or user base in a way that makes the most sense for your business. For some, that may be an email campaign to everyone on your mailing list. Others may want to put up a blog post or a brief note on the company home page acknowledging what happened. VIP customers, investors, or anyone you think may have been particularly offended by the hacked content may warrant personal phone calls or notes.

Resist the urge to make a really big a deal of the incident however; you simply want to communicate to customers that you're aware of what happened and are taking steps to correct it. If you've acted quickly enough, don't be surprised if someone says, "What hacked Twitter account?" That's a Good Thing because it means they never noticed (of course, it also may mean not enough customers are reading your Twitter stream, but that's an entirely different discussion).

Remember that even though Twitter seems to be on the tip of everyone's tongue, a huge segment of the population has never even heard of the service. Of those that have, some surveys indicate that a mere 6% actually use it. In other words, it's likely that the incident never got on many -- if not most -- of your customers' radars.

Once the incident is behind you, take steps to prevent something like it from happening again. Even if you aren't sure who wreaked the havoc, consult a lawyer to find out what recourse is available to you. It's also a good idea to put policies in place that allow you to act swiftly and harshly if a hacked account turns out to be an inside job.

Mom was right, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It's imperative to dedicate a couple of people to consistently monitor and update your company's Twitter stream. It's not enough to register an account and then update it once every couple of weeks -- two-way communication is what makes Twitter tick. Regular Tweeting keeps you in touch with your customers, and you'll also know very quickly if your account has been compromised.

In the end, remember that this incident was probably a bigger ordeal for you than it was for any of your customers. Though you may be absolutely mortified, most customers will understand and forget about it faster than you can say, "Fail Whale."