You would have to live in a bubble to not know about the recent scandal with former Senator Anthony Weiner.  The past month has been an on-going explosion of his social media mistakes that for some reason he thought would be kept private as long as they were not sent from his personal account.

For a quick synopsis on Weiner’s case:  A lewd photograph was sent from his personal twitter account to a woman, not his wife.  After a preliminary denial, Weiner admitted that he lied about someone hacking into his account along with several other inappropriate encounters and relationships on social network sites like facebook and twitter.

<a href="http://www.brandiron.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/weiner-photo.jpg"><img class="size-thumbnail wp-image-830 alignleft" title="weiner photo" src="http://www.brandiron.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/weiner-photo-150x150.jpg" alt="" width="192" height="192" /></a>Weiner is not the only one getting busted these days .  It seems that people have constant issues either with posting too much personal information or not being able to distinguish between personal and public or work life.  Examples range from Weiner, to several corporate employees, to a school teacher who got fired simply for posting photos of herself with drinks in hand on a trip abroad.

Here are two examples of people tweeting something personal on a work twitter account…

The first is when Kenneth Cole tweeted about their new collection on the same day that violence erupted in Egypt.  They tweeted “Millions are in uproar at #Cairo.  Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online.”  The tweet was later removed followed with several apologies.

The second example is when a worker for Chrysler's outsourced media company tweeted on the Chrysler account (@Chrysler Autos) “I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to F***ing drive.”  Apparently he meant this post for his personal account…too bad because he was fired shortly after.

What can we learn about these social media mistakes you may ask?

It seems simple but these tips can help anyone not to get caught in one of these increasingly common sticky situations…

Keep in mind…
<ul>
	<li>There      really is no distinction between personal and business accounts</li>
	<li>Nothing      is really private on the web</li>
	<li>Be      aware of how you post and to whom you share your posts</li>
	<li>Protect      your security</li>
	<li>Be      careful of the content you post</li>
</ul>
<a href="http://www.bluefountainmedia.com/blog/the-weiner-principle-plus-5-more-social-media-meltdowns/">http://www.bluefountainmedia.com/blog/the-weiner-principle-plus-5-more-social-media-meltdowns/</a>

<a href="http://www.powerhomebiz.com/blog/2011/06/what-congressman-weiner-can-teach-small-businesses-about-social-media/">http://www.powerhomebiz.com/blog/2011/06/what-congressman-weiner-can-teach-small-businesses-about-social-media/</a>

<a href="http://www.wsbtv.com/news/21586641/detail.html">http://www.wsbtv.com/news/21586641/detail.html</a>

http://www.learningfrombigboys.com/2011/06/learning-from-the-social-media-mistakes-of-rep-anthony-weiner.html