Political PR -- when a political candidate are off message

You are the PR director for a political candidate who has decided to autonomously Tweet and post to Facebook. Some of his/her Tweets/posts are off message and controversial and are receiving criticism. What is your response and why?

Firstly, whatever a politician says, he/she will receive criticism. When it comes to misunderstanding or ambiguity of messages sent on Twitter and Facebook, he/she needs to articulate his/her stance, in order to let people understand what he/she is really talking about. It's also necessary to explain the previous posts and make them on message. If he/she does not explain anything, other people are very likely to exaggerate and distort the information, and make it even more misunderstood.


In reality, politicians may delete posts. But sometimes it may not be a good idea to do so. Because information distributes really fast through the Internet and it is impossible to solve problems simply by deleting posts -- some people must have already copy and paste the posts. Quite likely, people may think the politician is escaping from what he/she have done if the posts were deleted. Clarifying misunderstanding is probably the best way in this situation.


Then, I will strongly suggest the candidate reviewing his/her tweets and posts on Facebook very carefully before publishing them. He/she should make sure everything post online is clear and on message. If it possible, asking assistants or counselor to view posts first. Just like when you are doing mathematics exercise, it will be more difficult for you to discover mistakes than it for other people. 


Apologize if necessary, especially when some posts have misled the public.


Deleting posts may be considered if the posts will jeopardize the party he/she represents, or the candidate cannot explain well on previous posts. But even posts are deleted, the candidate still need to clarify what he/she really wanted to say, which must be on message this time. Also, he/she needs to make statement on reasons of deleting previous posts. Then people may view deleting posts as a gesture of admitting mistakes and willing to make it right.