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Last week, Pizza Hut Southern California’s Facebook page committed quite the online faux pas, and as a result, suffered a good bit of embarrassment.  That in and of itself could be quite scary for a business.  But here’s the real scary part: one little checkbox was the culprit.

Pizza Hut was using the Facebook Questions feature on their page.  They had posted a poll question with a number of possible responses.  Businesses use this feature all the time on Facebook.  It’s one of the better ways to get feedback from your fans.  However, Pizza Hut had checked one little box, and that caused a whole lot of problems and embarrassment for them.

When you add “Poll Options” to a Facebook Question, there is a checkbox there that says “Allow anyone to add options.”  Obviously, if you check this box, anyone on Facebook can add a possible answer to your question, with no administrator approval.  Well, they did check that box and then not long afterwards, someone posted an answer containing profanity.

Even if the page doesn’t have a high number of “Likes” or viewers, there can be fallout from a mistake like this.  If just a few people see something like this, they can express their disappointment by posting their feelings on the page. Once that happens, the bad press can spread like the wildfires out in Texas.

There are some steps that businesses and organizations can take to prevent something like this from happening.

1. Pay Attention to the Small Things – That was the first thing that could have prevented this from happening.  Uncheck one little box.  That’s it.  When trying a new app, test it out first so that you’ll know what it does and how to fix it should something go wrong.
2. Constant Awareness of your Page/Site – Try and monitor your fan page or website as often as you can – especially after posting new content.  If you can’t monitor it as much as you’d like, take advantage of Facebook’s notification features or use a website like HyperAlerts, which can send you notices whenever someone comments on your fan page or website.
3. Fix the Mistake as Quick as You Can – This one is pretty self-explanatory.  As soon as you discover a mistake or error in a post such as this, fix it as quickly as you can.  The online community can be pretty forgiving, but you still want to correct mistakes like these as quickly as possible.  Make sure that you can check on your page from home or from your mobile device, in case you have to fix something after hours.